Experiencing Interruptions?

GiveBack BeMoved: Barbados

*OFFICIAL DOCUMENTARY*

GiveBack completed it's first project, Barbados | Be Moved, in October 2019, touching the lives of over one hundred performing artists in the course of week. Be Moved, the documentary, is currently being edited, and a work-in-progess version of the film can be viewed above.

GiveBack is returning to Barbados this April to facilitate three weeks of activities as part of Dance Month 2020. The program will include over 160 contact hours with local performers, and the creation and staging of 10 different performances for the We Gatherin' year-long community building celebration.

This project is entitled Barbados | Soul Dance. The GiveBack team will :

- Conduct technique intensives

- Mentor and coach local dancers, choreographers and teachers

- Create new choreography

- Stage and direct pop-up performances which will make dance more accessible to the general public

- Lead community outreach programs to bring the joy of dance to people of all ages

-Facilitate mindfulness and stress-reduction workshops

- Coach and mentor members of the street dance community

- Coordinate and facilitate a DANCE AWARENESS DAY to educate the public about the world of professional dance through:

* Demonstrations of training methods for different dance styles and techniques

* Lectures about the life of a professional dancer and the demands of the international dance industry

* Choreographic showcases

* Open Q&A between the GiveBack team, local artists and the audience


Our aim is to raise the profile of dance in Barbados so that it can be seen and respected as a viable career and not just a hobby. The filming of Soul Dance is an integral part of our educational outreach. A film episodic series will be created and will tell the stories of the lives of both individual performers and local dance groups. Their rigorous training, hopes, dreams, daily challenges, family support or lack thereof, successes and failures, will be captured and the series will be used locally for education as well as marketed regionally and internationally to highlight the lives of artists in the Caribbean.

This project is being planned in conjunction with the National Cultural Foundation of Barbados. We will work with hundreds of dancers, teachers, students, youth, and members of the general public over the course of three weeks. The project will positively impact every individual participant, and send ripples of heart-opening, boundary shattering, consciousness shifting inspiration out into the fabric of Barbadian society.

Soul Dance is part of an on-going incentive to cultivate a new dimension of the Performing Arts throughout the Caribbean and Barbados is the first stop. We are already in the process of establishing connections in Jamaica with the goal of launching our first GiveBack Performing arts and Fashion project there in the coming months. We are excited to unfold similar projects throughout the Caribbean, which are tailor-made for each island, taking into consideration their unique arts and cultural heritage.
GiveBack is an initiative which facilitates the sharing of ideas, skills, talents and passions between members of the Caribbean diaspora and their countrymen back at home.

Barbadian Celia Grannum and Jamaican Kris Jobson met during their freshman year at Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. They became fast friends, aware of an energetic resonance beyond their Caribbean roots. They supported each other through the rigorous training of their program and the challenges of stepping into the world of professional dance in New York City. After graduating, they criss- crossed the globe, and their paths intersected in the United Kingdom, Switzerland and Miami. As their lives expanded to encompass new career pursuits and family responsibilities, their friendship deepened, and they continued to giggle like the freshmen of years prior. Today, they bring their combined talents, experience and creative power together in a venture that is dear to both of their hearts - sharing their light with their community back at home.

Here is the first part to many segments and to 'GiveBack BeMoved' - Barbados Edition!

  • Ricky Mendez
    Director
    Lake Lagusan (Short)
  • Celia Grannum
    Producer
  • Kris Jobson
    Producer
  • Celia Grannum
    Key Cast
  • Kris Jobson
    Key Cast
  • Project Type:
    Documentary
  • Runtime:
    27 minutes
  • Completion Date:
    April 15, 2020
  • Production Budget:
    6,800 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    Barbados
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Digital Cinema Package:
    Unavailable
  • INDIEDANCE Film Festival
    Los Angeles
    United States
    September 6, 2020
    Southern California
    Silver Award Best Documentary Short & Best Choreography
Director Biography - Ricky Mendez

Ricky Mendez is the founder of Reverie Films, in Miami, FL. Film is Ricky’s passion, and when he is not working on the set of feature films like Bad Boys For Life, or coordinating commercials for major cruise line companies, Ricky channels his creative talent into his own short-film ventures. A child of Dominican parents, Ricky feels the Caribbean running through his veins, he's been working hard since the talent landed in his hands during high school in tv production class. Since then he's been passionate to share stories with everyone he encounters around the world.
He's in no rush to the top he understands that everything comes on a global scale when you put your all and passion into the project everyone connects too!

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

For Several decades, Barbados has had a strong cultural presence to dance and in it’s all of its forms. With it’s way of incredible skill, dedication, grit and self expression, production has truly focused on the core elements from the mind and bodies of the professional instructors, Celia Grannum & Kris Jobson. During the making if this production, we want to take the audience through the journey and experience of Celia & Kris going back to a place to where they started their dance careers and make an impactful yet emotional story. Capturing these elements, the delivery to the audience with appreciate and want to ry out Barbados whether if it’s ballet, free-form, jazz, contemporary dance, etc, they will feel a complete visceral reaction to the island!

Having the opportunity to connect and speak with Celia for the first time regarding the project, all I could sense and see the amount of imagery and color the island of Barbados has. The extinctive history of their dance community and how The GiveBack Team is able to encourage our production’s vision to capture their professional teaching’s to the youth of Barbados. The ability to establish a trusting relationship to seek the similar balance of emotion of the younger aspiring dancers as they interpret the older, wiser and developed mindsets of Celia and Kris, was a unique interpretation coming to a different country as reception varies and comes a different artist delivery. Working with children, during these modern times, requires much imagery and attention to detail. Often time, finding Kris or Celia in their one on one speaking with the students is what we want to take away during the Giveback process, the ability to GiveBack of what they mastered (or what one mastered) and reciprocate it back in a form or way so the youth can take in and they understand. Capturing the light in their eyes, as they made sure that the kids got it!

What drew me most to cultivate this story was the relationship Celia had with her mentor Richild Springer as she was the island’s dance legend, a free spirited angel that danced to the infinity. It was very important to me to have the audience feel the same emotion connection as she once had with her and how her career was vastly encouraged by her wisdom and her acceptance of Celia. During production, I didn’t want a single numb moment or a dull second, with so much to see and experience in Barbados there is a story to tell in every corner. Kris and Celia journey to the different schools and studios during filming. I discovered testimonials from different mentors about how dance was becoming more of a larger then an average living, more then just the basic careers (i.e, doctor, plumber, accountant, etc), it’s broke through a barrier of dance arts careers to inspiring a span of different dance careers for entertainment throughout the world. To show the language of dance and how Kris and Celia explain it has momentous and spiritual truth.

To wrap up, we want you to move you through dance. We want to have a connection with want is new and how the older methods meet them to transpire a new mode of dance. This was a real challenge keeping up and adapting to the dance style of filming for this documentary. With honorable mention to the ones we met and let us in the doors of their establishments of the National Culture Foundation, Louise Woodvine Dance Academy & Powerhouse Studios, production will delivery a touching notoriety for the audience to have similar empathy for the art of dance and all of it’s similar proprietaries in Barbados.

Ricky Mendez
Director, Reverie Films