About GiveBack BeMoved Forward Projects
STORY
GiveBack is an initiative which facilitates the sharing of ideas, skills, talents and passions between members of the Caribbean diaspora and their countrymen back at home.
Barbadian Celia Grannum and Jamaican Kris Jobson met during their freshman year at Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. They became fast friends, aware of an energetic resonance beyond their Caribbean roots. They supported each other through the rigorous training of their program and the challenges of stepping into the world of professional dance in New York City.
After graduating, they criss- crossed the globe, and their paths intersected in the United Kingdom, Switzerland and Miami. As their lives expanded to encompass new career pursuits and family responsibilities, their friendship deepened, and they continued to giggle like the freshmen of years prior. Today, they bring their combined talents, experience and creative power together in a venture that is dear to both of their hearts - sharing their light with their community back at home.
The biggest aspiration for this documentary is dedicated to the great Barbadian dance icon, Richild Springer. Passing away in the summer of 2019, Richild leaves us with so many remarkable memories with her knowledge, beauty, and elegance, came an inspiration of excellence through the cultural dance arts. She took Celia under her wing and showed her the way of compassion and giving, thus inspiring this project, GiveBack BeMoved, to transcend and spread the spoken language of dance through every young artist. Whether if it's ballet or jazz, in the USA to Europe to the Islands - Celia has travelled with Richild's wisdom and continued to refine the world of dance through Richild's eyes.
AIM & FOCUS
Our aim is to raise the profile of dance in Barbados so that it can be seen and respected as a viable career and not just a hobby. The filming of Soul Dance is an integral part of our educational outreach. A film episodic series will be created and will tell the stories of the lives of both individual performers and local dance groups. Their rigorous training, hopes, dreams, daily challenges, family support or lack thereof, successes and failures, will be captured and the series will be used locally for education as well as marketed regionally and internationally to highlight the lives of artists in the Caribbean.
This project is being planned in conjunction with the National Cultural Foundation of Barbados. We will work with hundreds of dancers, teachers, students, youth, and members of the general public over the course of three weeks. The project will positively impact every individual participant, and send ripples of heart-opening, boundary shattering, consciousness shifting inspiration out into the fabric of Barbadian society.
Soul Dance is part of an on-going incentive to cultivate a new dimension of the Performing Arts throughout the Caribbean and Barbados is the first stop. We are already in the process of establishing connections in Jamaica with the goal of launching our first GiveBack Performing arts and Fashion project there in the coming months. We are excited to unfold similar projects throughout the Caribbean, which are tailor-made for each island, taking into consideration their unique arts and cultural heritage.
