Kieron Dwayne Sargeant is a Trinidadian-born interdisciplinary artist, choreographer, dancer, and dance researcher emerging out of the African-Caribbean tradition. Sargeant received an MFA in Dance Performance and Choreography from Florida State University and MA in Community Dance Practice from Ohio University. Over the past 20 years, he has been involved in documenting, assessing, and analyzing dance traditions of the Caribbean and establishing a canon of dance teachings and workshops, informed by his research, to popularize the ancestral survival of movement traditions between the Circum-Caribbean and Western Africa.
His research focuses on the emerging field of African Caribbean and African Diaspora dance practices. In particular, his work explores both regenerative and deconstructionist methodological approaches to engaging with African Traditional Trinidadian Dances for the commercial and contemporary dance world. His artistic practice includes translating sacred cultural and spiritual practices into artistic practices, resulting in dance works for the concert stage. He has performed works by Merce Cunningham, Charles O. Anderson, Tiffany Rhynard, and Milka Djordjevich among many others. In 2020 he founded and launched the Kieron Sargeant Dance and Dance Education Foundation of Trinidad and Tobago, which is a new platform for artists/dancers to nurture their creativity, inspire their environments, and empower themselves and the future of the arts industry in Trinidad and Tobago. From August 2021 to March 2022 Mr. Sargeant was a collaborator on a Mellon funded project, Writing the Body with Dr. Lara Cahill-Booth, an English professor at Miami Day College. Sargeant was a Visiting Assistant Professor of Contemporary Forms of the African Diaspora at the University of Iowa during the 2021-22 academic year. Sargeant is an assistant professor of dance at Skidmore College.
Check out the choreography Sargeant created for the UI Dance Company, "The Legend of the Pitch Lake Myth 2023," below: