Christopher's dance is not gay

“My parents and my grandmother always encouraged me in everything cultural. Never one day did they hold me back and say this is for girls” — not even if his profession meant wearing leotards and dancing on his toes. Dance tutor/choreographer, actor and designer Christopher Sheppard, 43, is respected as an artist by his peers as well as the young and old in his neighbourhood, Morvant. “I am never ridiculed. Dance is an art of communication beyond verbal expression. It’s the rhythmic barometer of the soul.” He said it like a poet! “Dance is freedom, it is a language in itself. People have attached the gay stigma to it, but that is not so. At one time, I had given it a rest because I thought like that, but when I saw the male African dancers on their visit here, I got back into it.”

He said that while the artform needed more male dancers, “dance is still unrecognised in Trinidad. It is amazing to see what we do with dances outside (abroad). The thing that amazes me about the culture of Trinidad and Tobago is the energy we feed and give off. When we perform, the reaction is amazing. I think people don’t respect the arts and it is not seen as a serious profession, locally.” Just a few days before, someone from the USA called him up to organise a local delegation for a musical production in New Orleans. This came on observation of his work as chief choreographer for the production of the 25th anniversary of St Lucia’s Independence in February. Christopher, who is also founding member and assistant director of the La Chapelle Dance Company, was invited by one of the organisers of the event, St Lucian Adrian Rougier, to work with a crew of over 100 dancers. The two-hour production was based on the country’s national anthem, highlighting scenes based on “the land, sea and light,” scenes like “Seas Rush In” and “Of Rain and Forest.”

“I had to create with bodies, the sea around the island. I had to create the Pitons. To do that I had to go to the sea for a week and look at the waves, and a bit of National Geographic.” The dancers gave such an impressive performance that the St Lucian Prime Minister commented that he “thought he was looking at the opening of the Olympics.” Prior to that, Christopher did a dance therapy session with “differently challenged” children of the Dunnottar School which culminated in a production called “I am you and you are me.” “That, too, was a great success and one of my highpoints, because there were a few students among the 45 children at the centre, whom the caretakers said never participated in any activities there, but when I did the dances with them they were jumping and very much involved,” he said.

Christopher has been dancing ballet, folk and jazz for more than 30 years since his boyhood days when he lived on Nelson Street in Port-of-Spain, with the neighbourhood group “The Exotics.” From there, he danced his way to the Best Village group “Lower Morvant Way of Life,” which he helped form, and eventually to the La Chapelle Dance Company, in 1985. He started out, at first, dancing for the fun of it. “I was 12 at the time and I just went to do the chants while they (‘The Exotics’) were dancing. That was when they used to practise in an old house on Henry Street, the site where NUGFW is now. I think somebody (dancer) didn’t show up and I was pulled in to dance and from then on never stopped.

“When I had moved to Morvant, I remember one time going to the community centre in the area and seeing some girls doing a dance, but not correctly. I decided to help them out and that was when they decided to form a Best Village group.” After the Hummingbird Dance Theatre, where he was schooled, closed its doors with the death of dance tutor Cyril St Louis, Christopher joined Carol La Chapelle. He recalled: “Carol kept calling for me to come to her theatre. One day she sent a message. She said if I wasn’t coming she was coming to me.” Christopher is a tutor at the La Chapelle Junior School.

He is also an actor and has starred in various roles including a mad man in the Rawle Gibbons production Ten to One and as the corrupt police officer in Sing de Chorus at the Little Carib Theatre. He was also featured in the Mermaid Productions play Master Harold and the Boys produced by Mervin De Goeas and was recently called for a role in an upcoming De Goeas feature, Man Talk. Added to his credits is his skill in transforming genuine leather into decorative appliques and accessories which, in the past, have adorned numerous Heather Jones designs. His appliques, earrings and necklace pendants are mainly floral designs — hibiscus, anthuriums and roses and coloured with fabric paint. “There’s nothing I don’t think I can’t do,” said the plumber by trade. “I could make you laugh, cry and make you come on stage with me.”