SOUNDS is not a performance you simply watch. it is one you feel through your entire body. It is a physical ode to the power of music: sounds you don’t just hear, but that resonate and vibrate throughout your whole being. Choreographer and artistic director Donna Chittick weaves Caribbean rhythms, African influences and hip hop into a pulsating, high-energy experience where dance, music and vibrating energy merge. She takes you on a personal journey back to her roots in Sint Maarten, where music is first and foremost something to be felt. How does sound affect your body, your emotions, your energy?
The vitality of Caribbean music — the driving rhythms of soca and konpa, alongside new sounds from Africa — forms the foundation of this work. Within this euphoria, hip hop, Caribbean influences and South African movement language blend into a powerful whole.
Four dancers and one vocalist bring a lived Afro-Caribbean energy to the stage. Their movements are instinctive responses to familiar sounds — echoes from Africa, carried across the Caribbean and resonating through voice and rhythm. Music is both their origin and their compass: the energy that gave birth to them and continues to guide them. In their purest form, without masks, they reveal what music sets in motion within their bodies.
Soca, konpa, hip hop and African sounds become fuel for movement rooted in identity, community and memory. Music becomes visible and tangible through light, vibration and raw physical expression.
SOUNDS celebrates Afro-Caribbean heritage: music as a source of joy, connection and resilience. It echoes generations before, during and after the Transatlantic slave trade, revealing how sound shapes and binds communities.
BackBone makes this experience accessible for deaf and hard of hearing audiences through vibro-belts, rhythmic light and vibrational elements.
Let yourself be carried away. Feel the beats.