Ring’s Open For One And All: Kalinda As Portal-Healing & Communal Intimacy

About the Workshop

Join interdisciplinary Artist-Scholar, Educator, Martial Artist, Jamie J. Philbert for 'Ring’s Open For One And All: Kalinda As Portal-Healing & Communal Intimacy', a women-centered journey into Kalinda as a sacred space for healing, connection, and community through movement, rhythm, ritual, and care.

Agenda

Arrive: 12.30-1pm

Workshop starts: 1-2.30pm

About Philbert-Kalinda Technique

“Kalinda is the ability to be beautiful in the face of chaos and death-”

— Rondel Benjamin, Co-Creator of The Philbert-Kalinda Technique for Dance and Performance

Founded in 2019 by Jamie Philbert and rooted in Trinidad and Tobago’s cultural and martial art form, Kalinda and Kalinda born iterations, this technique is the co-creation of Jamie Philbert, co-researchers and martial artists Rondel Benjamin and Matthew Brown aka “King David” who transitioned in June 2020.

Philbert-Kalinda Technique for Dance and Performance is a codified technique rooted in Trinidad and Tobago's martial art and cultural form, Kalinda. Kalinda is an ancient multidimensional performance complex that includes call and response songs called lavways, dance, drumming, ritual and stick fighting. It is a codified martial arts system. The technique seeks to reflect these tenets and deepen the exploration of the futurism it presents through Kalinda, the Antillean and diaspora dances that hold kinship with Kalinda's system and its cosmological roots. It further seeks to honor the cultural transporters of this form by including their names, histories and contributions within the codification and its academic studies. Philbert-Kalinda Technique for Dance and Performance is co- created by Jamie Philbert, Rondel Benjamin and King David Matthew Brown who recently transitioned in June 2020.

About Jamie. J Philbert

Jamie J. Philbert is a dance graduate of Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School for Music, Art and The Performing Arts. She earned a first class honours Master of Arts in Ethnochoreology at the University of Limerick in 2023 and is currently pursuing a PhD in Cultural Studies at the University of West Indies.

Her work explores the intersections of African Diaspora martial traditions, everyday rituals of embodiment and how their material and immaterial aspects inform and challenge archival practices for Caribbean spaces. By examining the tangible (African-Caribbean martial weapons, instruments, spaces, etc.) and intangible (music, movement, proverbs, etc.) aspects of these traditions and their relation to everyday life, Jamie seeks to identify untold narratives that connect the past, present and future. This work enriches the dialectic of memory, articulation, meaning-making, intertextual learning, and documentation through performance, education, research, and community engagement.

Guided by integrity, care and respect for the communities and traditions she engages, Jamie’s research focuses on the sacred complexity of interplay in music, language, movement, oral tradition, graphic writing, percussive combat styles and ritual. Jamie weaves ancestral knowledge into contemporary frameworks that support artistic growth through the ongoing development of Philbert-Kalinda Technique for dance and performance (P.K.T).

P.K.T, a multi-modal arts practice co-created with two elders of the Kalinda community in Trinidad and Tobago, Rondel Benjamin and now transitioned, King David Matthew Brown, has been presented at renowned institutions and conferences, including Norwegian Theatre Academy, University of Limerick, Theatre and Dance at Wayne State University and the Powers of Love: Parse Biennale Conference.

Exchange: Pay What You Can

The workshop is being offered free of charge. Any donation will be greatly appreciated and help support the continuation of this work.

Host or Publisher Bois Academy of Trindad and Tobago & The Royal College of Art