NARIS­SA FRAS­ER

Point Fortin dancer Shemic St Hillaire flew T&T’s flag high as he re­cent­ly com­plet­ed a dance-the­atre res­i­den­cy at Ober­lin Col­lege, Ohio, in the US. As he re­turns home for the next few months, he is gear­ing up for his own pro­duc­tion ti­tled Upinde II on June 12 in San Fer­nan­do.

St Hillaire, 23, is cur­rent­ly pur­su­ing a bach­e­lor’s de­gree in per­for­mance and chore­og­ra­phy at the renowned Ed­na Man­ley Col­lege of Vi­su­al and Per­form­ing Arts in Ja­maica.

Bi­en­ni­al­ly, the school hosts the Rex Net­tle­ford Arts Con­fer­ence. In the lat­est edi­tion, he par­tic­i­pat­ed in the lec­tures and work­shops of a par­tic­u­lar pro­fes­sor who hap­pened to be Pro­fes­sor of Dance and African Stud­ies De­part­ment at Ober­lin Col­lege.

“And I guess I sort of be­came a mentee of his, and he in­vit­ed me as his in­ter­na­tion­al guest artist to be part of a pro­duc­tion,” he ex­plained.

He said he was “ex­treme­ly elat­ed” when he got the news, but al­so filled with grat­i­tude.

“It was al­so a mo­ment of af­fir­ma­tion be­cause even though I’m still in school at the mo­ment, I’m grate­ful that I can pur­sue pro­fes­sion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties while study­ing. So it’s def­i­nite­ly af­firm­ing that I am on track.”

He par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Spring 2026 pro­duc­tion Laugh and Cry Can Live Same House, which was chore­o­graphed and di­rect­ed by Dr Ta­lawa Presto. The show ran from May 1 to 3 and was done in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Con­ser­va­to­ry of Mu­sic.

“The work brought to­geth­er Africana and Caribbean move­ment vo­cab­u­lar­ies, live West African and Hait­ian per­cus­sion, en­sem­ble singing, and the­atri­cal sto­ry­telling,” St Hillaire out­lined. “(It) ex­plored how black com­mu­ni­ties hold both joy and grief si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly and ex­am­ined the re­la­tion­ship be­tween mem­o­ry, move­ment, sound, an­ces­try and fu­tu­ri­ty through em­bod­ied per­for­mance.”

In ad­di­tion to per­form­ing with the en­sem­ble, he did a so­lo to Ni­na Si­mone’s ren­di­tion of the po­em Strange Fruit, which speaks of the lynch­ing of black Amer­i­cans dur­ing the Jim Crow era. She sings, “strange fruit (peo­ple) hang­ing from the poplar trees… South­ern trees bear­ing strange fruit, blood on the leaves and blood at the roots.”

For St Hillaire, per­form­ing to a song so deep in mean­ing was en­thralling. “It brought up so much with­in me that I didn’t know was there… It wasn’t just my­self on stage, it was a full tran­scen­dence of what is with­in me, with­in the col­lec­tive ex­pe­ri­ence and with­in the an­ces­tral ex­pe­ri­ence as well.” He added, “So I think all of that was re­al­ly chan­nelled in this space, to be able to un­earth and up­root the ex­pres­sion that was nec­es­sary.”

His per­for­mance was even high­light­ed in The Ober­lin Re­view, a stu­dent-led week­ly news­pa­per, which de­scribed it as “un­for­get­table” and full of emo­tion.

He said through­out the res­i­den­cy, many praised him for his “gen­uine ex­pres­sion” and “gen­uine spir­it” both on and off stage.

En­sur­ing he did not leave with­out high­light­ing his cul­ture, he al­so fa­cil­i­tat­ed a Car­ni­val-in­spired move­ment work­shop with stu­dents once the pro­duc­tion was over. It in­tro­duced par­tic­i­pants to Caribbean move­ment prac­tices, rhythm, im­pro­vi­sa­tion and sto­ry­telling. It al­so high­light­ed the African in­flu­ences across Caribbean cul­tur­al tra­di­tions.

Ex­plain­ing that he opt­ed to show­case the tra­di­tion­al sailor and jab mo­lassie char­ac­ters, he said it was well re­ceived by the stu­dents.

“In the be­gin­ning of the work­shop, I took the time to re­al­ly ex­plain what Car­ni­val is and kind of set the tone. I was grate­ful that I was able to bring the at­mos­phere from T&T in­to that room in Ohio.”

He be­lieves the ex­pe­ri­ence re­in­forced his com­mit­ment to cul­tur­al preser­va­tion, arts ed­u­ca­tion and in­ter­na­tion­al artis­tic ex­change. He added that Prestø’s grand­fa­ther al­so hails from T&T.

He is soon host­ing the sec­ond edi­tion of his pro­duc­tion Upinde, both as a fundrais­er for his stud­ies and to ex­pand youth ac­cess to the arts. It will be held on June 12 at the Na­pari­ma Bowl in San Fer­nan­do. Show­time is 7.30 p.m.

“This year we ac­tu­al­ly part­nered with spon­sors and or­gan­i­sa­tions to help sup­port youth ac­cess to the arts. For ex­am­ple, we’re work­ing with the Point Fortin Po­lice Youth Club.”

So far, they have gath­ered around 50 young peo­ple to be able to ex­pe­ri­ence the pro­duc­tion, and he hopes as the years go by, the num­bers will con­tin­ue to in­crease.

“Many young peo­ple across T&T have lim­it­ed ac­cess to live artis­tic ex­pe­ri­ences, cre­ative men­tor­ship and spaces for mean­ing­ful self-ex­pres­sion. Upinde II seeks to help bridge that gap by part­ner­ing with youth groups, schools and com­mu­ni­ty or­gan­i­sa­tions to pro­vide ac­cess to the pro­duc­tion for young peo­ple who may not oth­er­wise have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to at­tend.”

He said the arts help fos­ter con­fi­dence, dis­ci­pline, lead­er­ship, cul­tur­al pride, emo­tion­al aware­ness and com­mu­ni­ty con­nec­tion.

He aims to raise US$10,923.50 for his sec­ond-year stud­ies.

“Study­ing at Ed­na Man­ley has been phe­nom­e­nal. I’ve seen a vast im­prove­ment in my tech­ni­cal and artis­tic (skills),” he said. And he hopes to con­tin­ue shin­ing.