Fay­ola K J Fras­er

Dancer, chore­o­g­ra­ph­er, prin­ci­pal, ed­u­ca­tor and per­former at the core, Brid­gette Wil­son is no stranger to a big stage. De­scrib­ing per­form­ing along­side Machel Mon­tano at St Mary’s Col­lege Fete with the Saints as “the best day of my life,” she brought down the house with a pas­sion­ate ren­di­tion of Mon­tano’s 2025 song, Pardy, leav­ing fete go­ers chant­i­ng “Brid­gette! Brid­gette!” long af­ter she ex­it­ed the stage.

Wil­son, an avid lover of the mas, re­mem­bers be­ing “on cloud nine mil­lion” and “feel­ing like Be­y­once” through­out the per­for­mance with Mon­tano, a crown­ing mo­ment and true cul­mi­na­tion of her pas­sion for per­for­mance, Car­ni­val and so­ca.

Wil­son be­gan danc­ing at three years old at the Caribbean School of Danc­ing, where she re­mained through­out her child­hood and teenage years and has re­turned as a teacher and now the prin­ci­pal of the dance school.

Up­on com­plet­ing sec­ondary school and spend­ing a gap year teach­ing dance at her al­ma mater, St Joseph’s Con­vent Port-of-Spain, she knew that “dance was some­thing that brought me joy and peace, and some­thing I knew I had to have in my life,” which guid­ed her to her cho­sen course of study at the ter­tiary lev­el.

Re­flect­ing on her de­ci­sion to fol­low her pas­sion, she mus­es, “I loved dance. I didn’t have the bal­le­ri­na body or the top tech­nique, and I didn’t know if I could do it. But the teach­ers at the school en­cour­aged me, and I re­alised that be­ing in­volved in dance doesn’t al­ways mean you have to be the dancer.”

Sur­round­ed by a crop of tal­ent­ed dancers at the Caribbean School, many of whom chose dance as a ca­reer, Wil­son felt so­lid­i­fied in her de­ci­sion to pur­sue a Bach­e­lor of Fine Arts in Dance and grad­u­at­ed with ho­n­ours from York Uni­ver­si­ty in Cana­da. She sub­se­quent­ly earned her Mas­ter’s in Chore­og­ra­phy from the Trin­i­ty La­ban Con­ser­va­toire of Mu­sic and Dance in Lon­don.

As she cul­ti­vat­ed her love for dance, an­oth­er pas­sion burned in­side of her, the love of Trinidad Car­ni­val. Grow­ing up in a big ex­tend­ed fam­i­ly, Wil­son vivid­ly re­mem­bered spend­ing every Car­ni­val sea­son at her fam­i­ly’s home on Belle Smythe Street in Wood­brook.

“I can still hear the shak­ing of the house when a big truck was pass­ing down the road,” she says. “As a child, it was so fas­ci­nat­ing.”

Those ex­pe­ri­ences wit­ness­ing the bands pass­ing by even­tu­al­ly turned in­to per­mis­sion from her grand­moth­er for Wil­son and her cousins to “chip from the top of the street to the end of the street and come back home,” in­still­ing in her a fun­da­men­tal con­nec­tion to mas.

Through­out her teenage and adult years, she played mas, and on one oc­ca­sion, she felt that she had enough and “was ready to hang up my Car­ni­val shoes.”

In 2014, she got a call from her friend and cre­ative di­rec­tor of the Lost Tribe, Valmi­ki Ma­haraj, with a new idea, “to bring back the art of Car­ni­val, big cos­tumes, a prop­er por­tray­al, a vi­sion of beau­ty,” and thus the Lost Tribe was born.

Ma­haraj asked Wil­son to come on board to work with him on the pre­sen­ta­tion of the band on the stage, and in Lost Tribe’s 2015 de­but, she led and chore­o­graphed 25 dancers, who con­verged on the stage in all white, a show-stop­ping dis­play that sym­bol­ised a resur­gence of the orig­i­nal char­ac­ter of Car­ni­val.

“Be­ing part of the Lost Tribe brought back Car­ni­val for me in a whole new light, and for the first few years, I was part of it pure­ly for the love of Car­ni­val.”

Af­ter ten years of spend­ing her Car­ni­val Tues­day re­hears­ing with dancers to pre­pare for the stages, and in 2024, where “so many lit­tle things went wrong, and we didn’t get to do our full pre­sen­ta­tion,” Wil­son en­tered the 2025 Car­ni­val sea­son with a di­min­ished fer­vour, lack­ing her usu­al zest for the mas.

Though she con­tin­ued in her role with Lost Tribe, Wil­son found her­self search­ing for the spark that once fu­elled her pas­sion for the mas.

Then, on Jan­u­ary 17, Machel Mon­tano dropped his hit, Pardy, which Wil­son heard on the ra­dio on her way to help her stu­dents record au­di­tion tapes for their sum­mer dance in­ten­sive pro­gramme.

“This is the best song ever,” she told her­self, lis­ten­ing to it on re­peat as she parked at the school, and played it for her stu­dents to sing and dance to, which she de­scribed as “the small­est bit of stress re­lief.”

On her birth­day week­end af­ter the song’s re­lease, she at­tend­ed a fete, and a spir­it told her that she had to take the mic and sing what had quick­ly be­come her favourite song.

“I stood next to my friend and told her there’s some­thing in my soul telling me I have to grab the mic and sing this song,” she said, “I couldn’t ex­plain what it was.”

Act­ing on her in­stinct, when the song came on, she took the mic and start­ed belt­ing out Pardy to the crowd, and the par­ty was im­me­di­ate­ly ig­nit­ed with her en­er­gy. The next day, she went to work as nor­mal, and at al­most 4 pm, her phone start­ed go­ing off with mes­sages telling her that Machel Mon­tano had post­ed the video of her singing Pardy and was look­ing for her as his side­kick per­former for the Car­ni­val sea­son. Mon­tano al­so dropped a Pardy com­pe­ti­tion, which Wil­son en­tered, sub­mit­ting a video to win a par­ty with Machel. Her video was wide­ly shared and was di­rect­ly shared by var­i­ous peo­ple with Mon­tano, which clear­ly got him well ac­quaint­ed with her.

On Feb­ru­ary 8, at Fete with the Saints, Mon­tano eas­i­ly recog­nised Wil­son’s face in the crowd, as she had plant­ed her­self front and cen­tre to hear him per­form her favourite song.

“I was dy­ing for this mo­ment to see Pardy per­formed live,” she re­calls. Re­mem­ber­ing the mo­ment in the per­for­mance where she and Mon­tano’s eyes made four, she says, “His fa­cial ex­pres­sion changed; I could tell he saw me,” and he sig­nalled for her to come on the stage to sing with him.

Af­ter send­ing two of his male dancers to help her over the fence and up the stairs, Wil­son took to the stage, and with tears in her eyes, was hand­ed the mic by Mon­tano to sing Pardy.

“This mo­ment brought back how much I miss be­ing on a stage and per­form­ing; it was the most ex­hil­a­rat­ing ex­pe­ri­ence, and it shocked me the way that the crowd had such a strong sup­port­ive re­sponse to me, a ran­dom hu­man.”

The crowd cheered for the ten to 15 min­utes she was on stage non-stop, chant­i­ng her name and bask­ing in her ren­di­tion of the lib­er­at­ing song, com­mis­er­at­ing on the song’s sen­ti­ment that every hard work­er in­deed de­serves a “pardy”.

When she de­scend­ed from her rous­ing per­for­mance, she was in­vit­ed back­stage to chat with Mon­tano, and she re­galed him with sto­ries of “how I used to stalk him as a teenag­er walk­ing from school to the dance school and how much I’ve loved his mu­sic and per­for­mances ever since.”

With the pub­lic’s new-found in­ter­est in her, she wants to pro­mote more than her own sto­ry and share her pas­sion for her ca­reer.

“I want to chan­nel peo­ple to sup­port the Caribbean School of Danc­ing to the best of my abil­i­ty,” she says. “We have had a rough few years af­ter COVID, but we are still bat­tling and need the pardy!”

A defin­ing mo­ment that beau­ti­ful­ly en­cap­su­lat­ed her var­i­ous pas­sions, Brid­gette Wil­son lit up the stage, cre­at­ing an un­for­get­table night for every­one present.