New Traditions Festival 2017

Shermica “Sokanista” Farquhar is a Brooklyn-born Trini and Soka Tribe Founder. Shermica began dance training in Ballet, and moved on to Modern, Jazz, West African, Salsa and Hip-Hop. She combined with her love for her culture and travel by starting the Soka Tribe brand. Generating an expressive and emotive carnival-like experience, the Tribe enables individuals to let go of their inhibition, move freely and motivate others to join a movement. Soka Tribe has hosted events in 7 major cities, and in 2017 expanding to Boston, Philadelphia, Trinidad, and Cuba. Concurrently, Shermica runs Solutions by SF strategy consulting firm dedicated to clients with growth and development. www.sokatribe.com

Maxine Montilus is a Haitian-American dance artist. She has performed with Ase Dance Theatre Collective, Balasole Dance Company, KaNu Dance Theater and Tamara LaDonna Moving Spirits. Maxine also performed with SpeakDance Collective in the Festival of Art and Folklore in Santiago de Cuba in April 2016, and was featured in the theatrical production “La Sirene: Rutas de Azucar” produced by Lukumi Arts in December 2016. In 2014, she choreographed BallyBeg Production’s Equity-approved showcase, “The Taste Of It”, and was a 2015 nominee for Outstanding Choreography/Movement in The New York Innovative Theater Awards for her work in the production.

www.vimeo.com/maxinemontilus

Safi Harriott specializes in dance education and cultural studies. She combines an awareness of her own movement through the world with an evolving understanding of systems of power and their impact on individual bodies. Committed to international exchange, she has performed and co-taught in Kingston and New York with collaborators Zita Nyarady (Toronto, Canada) and Nancy Hughes (Buffalo NY, USA). More recently, she has served as Visiting Dance Faculty at the Cambridge School of Weston. In 2014 she received an MFA in Choreography and Performance from Smith College. Harriott has also trained at the Laban Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies, and is currently an MA candidate in Socio-cultural Anthropology at Columbia University.

I am a performance artist and creative and critical writer whose work is deeply informed by my cultures and communities, by history, and by a sense of play. I draw on reality to create non-literal interpretations of contemporary and historical experiences of Caribbean and African people. My staged and guerilla performance art builds on over 20 years of training in Afro-Caribbean dance, circus arts, butoh, and ballet. Awards include a residency at Alice Yard (Trinidad) and a grant from the Franklin Furnace Fund. The goal of my work is to make people feel, wonder, and think, usually in that order. www.rosamondking.com

Award-winning choreographer Marsha Parrilla is the Founding Artistic Director of Danza Orgánica. She was born and raised in San Juan- Puerto Rico, and moved to NYC in 1998. Since then she has been choreographing, teaching, and performing. Marsha holds a Master’s degree in Dance Education from NYU, and is a Massachusetts Certified Dance Teacher. Marsha Parrilla is a Luminary Artist at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Neighborhood Salon. She is a proud recipient of the Creative City Grant, and the New England Dance Fund- awarded by the New England Foundation for the Arts, and a Festivals Grant awarded by the Massachusetts Cultural Council towards We Create! Celebrating Women in the Arts. Most recently, Parrilla was awarded a Creative Development Residency at the prestigious Jacob’s Pillow. Marsha has taught Dance in NYC and Boston Public Schools, Boston University, the State University of New York in Stony Brook, the Roxbury Community College, and Green Street Studios. Parrilla is the founder of the Dance Research Online Forum- a site dedicated to free and progressive dance education, and is the Artist Representative at the Boston Dance Alliance Board of Directors. www.danzaorganica.com

Candace Thompson, a Trinidad and Tobago native, is a dancer, choreographer and certified fitness professional specializing in personal training and corrective exercise. She is the beauty and brains behind CanDanceFit, Artistic Director of ContempoCaribe and Founding Executive Director of Dance Caribbean COLLECTIVE. Her dance training is extensive, beginning in Trinidad and Tobago, where she received instruction in modern dance and ballet, at La Danse Caraibe under Heather Henderson-Gordon. She is a graduate of Adelphi University’s BFA in Dance with the Ruth St. Denis Award for excellence from the dance department, and has gone on to work in various dance styles including Afro-Caribbean, Classical Modern, Modern/Contemporary, Contemporary Floor Technique, Jazz, Soca and West African. www.candacedancefitness.com