CARIBPR WIRE, NEW YORK, NY, Thurs. Oct. 5, 2023: The Dance Grenada Festival returns for its fourth season on the beautiful island of Grenada.

Taking place under the theme: “The Time is Now: Unification under the Grenadian Sun,” this year’s festival focuses on the important role dance plays in the preservation of culture and history, the promotion of cooperative economics, and as a key contributor to the important creative industries sector, known as the Orange Economy.

From October 20th-23rd, the four-day festival will feature nine dance workshops that will take participants on a journey across the African Diaspora. Among the classes will be Caribbean Contemporary, Afro-Cuban, Soca, Traditional Grenadian Folk Dance, and Hip Hop taught by internationally acclaimed dance artists from Grenada, Trinidad, New Orleans and New York.

The Dance Grenada Festival is a central hub for dance innovation, scholarship, and entrepreneurship. It celebrates its fourth season at a pivotal time for the cultural and creative industries sector with the recent creation of the Grenada Office Of Creative Affairs.

“At a time when we are pushing the creative arts and the orange economy in Grenada and providing tools and resources for what can be viable careers, we have to create the spaces for unity and collaboration as well as economic empowerment,” says Founder and Artistic Director, Shola K. Roberts.

“We cannot do this by ourselves, and there is strength in unification. There is strength in coming together to continue to spread this message of the cultural, educational, and economic value of dance and the creative arts. Dance Grenada is proud to be a source of the continued support needed to grow this important sector on the island and beyond,” added Roberts, a Caribbean Dance expert and professor of dance at Arizona State University.

As the premiere dance festival taking place in a cultural epicenter like Grenada, Dance Grenada continues to serve as a unique platform for engaging international cultural exchange and empowerment. It expands exposure to African diasporic dance styles and techniques among Grenada’s artistic community, illuminates the island’s traditional dance styles and all that Grenada, known as The Spice Island of the Caribbean, has to offer.

The Dance Grenada festival also provides consistent support and investment in the dance and wider creative sector through its cultural and educational programming, student scholarships, and advocacy.

In addition to an array of dance classes and performances, other festival highlights include  a series of panel discussions featuring local and international talent, cooking demonstrations   with beloved Grenadian chefs Belinda Bishop and Joachim Joseph and an international vendor’s marketplace. Dance Grenada will bring university students and faculty to the island and  honor some of the island’s renowned cultural practitioners for a second year in a row.

“This festival is a hub for legacy, scholarship, innovation and entrepreneurship as we try to connect our brothers and sisters across the diaspora in the name of dance,” says Roberts.

For more information on Dance Grenada and how you can purchase tickets to this dance festival, visit dancegrenada.com.

About Dance Grenada

Dance Grenada, A Dance Festival provides a platform for Grenadian and International dance artisans to share and increase their knowledge base of traditional and contemporary dance styles and techniques through dance workshops, performances, panel discussions and symposiums while contributing to the larger Grenadian and international dance community.

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CARIBPR WIRE, Brooklyn, NY, Tues. Sept. 5, 2023: The Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival, (BCLF), returns this year to celebrate its milestone fifth season in New York City.

Through the BCLF, Caribbean thought and intellectualism, which are often underrepresented in popular culture, have a unique platform to be celebrated, appreciated, and thrive. From September 7th-10th, lovers of literature will once again have the opportunity to experience this dynamic literary festival as it brings Caribbean stories and storytellers to the forefront of New York’s culture scene with interactive events.

“The BCLF festival has been bringing together talented writers, captivating storytellers, and passionate literature enthusiasts from all walks of life for the last four years,” said Director of Operations Mellany Paynter. “It’s a true celebration of culture, diversity, and the power of words. Festival 5 will be full of vibrant energy and more events than any year prior. It is a must-attend 4-day experience.”

Since its inception in 2019, the BCLF festival has gathered under its wing over 250 Caribbean writers, publishers, and creatives, including renowned contemporary and classic authors like Jamaica Kincaid, Elizabeth Nunez, Tiphanie Yanique, Velma Pollard, and P. Djeli Clark. This year, the organization selected Bahamian writer Ethan Knowles as the winner of the coveted BCLF Elizabeth Nunez Award For Writers In The Caribbean for his short fiction story “Sponger Monkey.” The Caribbean-American Writer’s Prize was awarded to Jade Leatham from Dominica for her short fiction story “Jungle Siren.”

The festival will also feature celebrated writers from Barbados, Jamaica, Trinidad, and other islands. The four-day event, which takes place at several locations across downtown Brooklyn, will include panel discussions, a film screening, a Kalinda workshop, and poetry readings and events such as “Writing For The Future,” exclusively featuring writers who write Caribbean stories for children.

Also on its roster is “5 Minutes With Elizabeth Nunez”, an original BCLF short film series celebrating a selection of novels by Elizabeth Nunez and “Bad Man Doh Cry”: a literary conversation about the norms, dynamics, relationships, and rites of passage of Caribbean masculinity through the selected works of three award-winning male writers.

“Festival 5 is a triumphant declaration of the persistence of Caribbean spirit and the insistence of its people to thrive. This year, we marry various disciplines (film, music, and indigenous art forms) that each holds a story at its center in celebration of Caribbean culture,” said Festival Founder Marsha Massiah-Aaron.

As the premiere literary festival taking place at the epicenter of the Caribbean diaspora, BCLF’s multifaceted programming continues to amplify, expand, and showcase the notable contributions of Caribbean and Caribbean-American writers.

“Without our stories, we are nothing. Our work at the BCLF has been to insist that the ones who own these stories and share them with the world are rightly acknowledged, credited and celebrated,” said Massiah-Aaron.

For more information on The Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival and the daily schedule, please visit bklyncbeanlitfest.org/

About BCLF

The Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival is a celebration of culture as expressed through the pen of the storyteller and the voice of the poet. Our platform is designed to facilitate vibrant conversations about Caribbean identity via a series of readings of classic and contemporary stories, podcasts, and conversations. The highlight of our work is the annual capstone festival, which is supported by ever-evolving year-long programming.

EDITOR’S NOTE: An image for use with this story is available HERE