Moonshine 2025

Moonshine 2025 Brings Guest Artists Kieron Sargeant and Tiffany Merritt-Brown for Annual Black History Month Performance Celebration

MADISON – The University of Wisconsin-Madison Dance Department and Professor Chris Walker are delighted to present Moonshine, Friday, February 28, 2025 at 3:30 p.m. in the Margaret H’Doubler Performance Space, Lathrop Hall, 1050 University Avenue. This free event brings together campus, community, alumni and students in performance to celebrate Black artistic scholarship and the Black experience with live music, contemporary theater and dance during Black History Month.

This year, with expanded support from the Dance Department and new partnerships, Moonshine will highlight the work of two Black higher education scholars, Kieron Sargeant, assistant professor at Skidmore College and Tiffany Merritt-Brown doctoral lecturer at Hunter College. 

Sargeant’s visit is supported by the International Visiting Artist Program, a collaboration between the International Division and the Division of the Arts.  He is an interdisciplinary artist, choreographer, drummer, and dance researcher originally from Trinidad and Tobago.  He will perform “He Shall Walk,” a solo work that explores movement, memory, and the transmission of ancestral knowledge through the body. Premiered at Northwestern University’s Black Arts Consortium in 2022 and further developed during his residency at the New Waves! Institute in 2023, “He Shall Walk” is an introspective journey into the role of the “mourner”—a figure that carries generational wisdom, navigating grief and resilience through ritualized movement. Sergeant’s work  explores the relationships and retention of African dances in the diaspora and investigates the morphology of African and African Diaspora movement vocabularies and their intersections with the U.S. classroom.

Tiffany Merritt-Brown, a UW-Madison Dance Department alumna (BFA, Dance 2016), will present a duet titled “Tender is the Night,” an immersive dance experience that explores the depth and nuance of Black femininity. Through movement, the work honors the strength, vulnerability, and compassion that defines sistahood and kinship. It is a poetic reflection on Black women coming together in a world where intimacy, care, and vulnerability take center stage. Merritt-Brown is a choreographer, performer, scholar, and educator and a native of Miami, Florida. Her scholarly and choreographic research explores the socio-political ramifications of identity and its impact on BIPOC communities. She uses dance as a conduit to re-imagine and re-envision Black futures from a Millennial perspective.

Other performances featured on Friday include N’Jelle Thorne of FuturPointe Dance, an ensemble Hip-Hop performance from Barrio Dance, choreographed by AJ Juarez, and performances by Eric Newble from the Office of Multicultural Arts Initiatives, First Wave scholars and UW-Madison Dance degree students. 

Leading up to Friday’s performance event, the Dance Department is partnering with the Caribbean Association of Madison to host a free community masterclass with Kieron Sargeant on Thursday evening from 6:00-9:00 p.m. at the Goodman Center. This class is open to the public.

Masterclasses with Sargeant and Merritt-Brown will also be held at Lathrop Hall from Wednesday through  Friday throughout the day. These classes are open to currently enrolled UW-Madison students.  

MOONSHINE PERFORMANCE
Fri Feb 28, 3:30 p.m.
Margaret H’Doubler Performance Space, Lathrop Hall
Free & open to the public

MOONSHINE MASTERCLASSES
UW-Madison Masterclasses with Kieron Sargeant
Wed Feb 26, 9:55-11:35 a.m. – Caribbean Skirt Techniques
Thu Feb 27, 2:25-4:05 p.m. – Caribbean Skirt Techniques and Carnival Dances
349 Lathrop Hall, 1050 University Avenue, Madison, WI
Open to currently enrolled UW-Madison students

Community Masterclass with Kieron Sargeant
Thu Feb 27, 6:00-9:00 p.m.
Goodman Center, 214 Waubesa St, Madison, WI
Free & open to the public

UW-Madison Masterclasses with Tiffany Merritt-Brown
Thu  Feb 27, 12:30-2:10 p.m. Dance Composition
Thu Feb 27, 2:25-3:15 p.m. Dance Technique
349 Lathrop Hall, 1050 University Avenue, Madison, WI
Open to currently enrolled UW-Madison students

MOONSHINE RECEPTION
A reception in the Virginia Harrison Parlor, Lathrop Hall, will immediately follow the performance.

ABOUT THE CURATOR
Chris Walker is a professor in the Dance Department at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Special Advisor to the Provost on the Arts. He is the founding artistic director of the First Wave Hip Hop and Urban Arts Program. A contemporary dance artist and scholar from Jamaica, Walker’s work investigates African Caribbean dance as a lens for environmental activism, social justice, and cultural preservation, bridging creative practice with academic inquiry.

Walker’s choreographic research engages with the cultural technologies and resistance aesthetics of the African diaspora as foundational movement and mythology for his contemporary art. His work spans concert dance, movement dramaturgy for theater, and interdisciplinary collaborations with visual and performance artists for museums, alternative spaces, and film. His internationally presented works—such as Rough Drafts, Facing Home: Love & Redemption, and Seaweed King—blend historical research, contemporary aesthetics, and embodied storytelling to interrogate themes of migration, resilience, and the politics of belonging. His choreographic explorations extend to artivism, using performance to engage communities in urgent dialogues on cultural and environmental sustainability.

In his scholarly research, Walker examines the historical and contemporary intersections of dance, identity, and community. His recent academic contributions include the chapter “Dancing to a Different Beat: The Distinctive Evolution of Dance Education Research in Jamaica,” a collaborative work that explores the historical development of dance education in Jamaica, particularly through institutions like the Edna Manley College and the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission. His other published works—Dance Inna Dancehall, Route to Roots: The Evolution of Jamaica’s National Dance Theatre Company and the School of Dance, Edna Manley College, Facing Home: A Phobia, and Seaweed King: Weaving Loss and Renewal in the Anthropocene (forthcoming)—extend these themes, blending personal and collective narratives of resistance, resilience, and cultural memory.

ABOUT KIERON SARGEANT
Kieron Dwayne Sargeant is an interdisciplinary artist, choreographer, drummer, and dance researcher from Trinidad and Tobago. He holds an MFA in Dance from Florida State University, an MA from Ohio University, and a BA from the University of the West Indies. Sargeant’s career is marked by his dedication to the traditions of the African-Caribbean Diaspora. He currently serves as an Assistant Professor of Dance at Skidmore College.

His performing career includes collaborations with prominent institutions such as Florida State University, Collegium for African Diaspora Dance, Woezo Africa Music and Dance Theatre Inc., the International Association of Blacks in Dance, NYU Steinhardt, the Nigerian Dance Guild, Ecole des Sables, and Simon Fraser University. His choreography has been featured internationally, including performances in the United States, Canada, Cuba, Grenada, Barbados, Togo, Nigeria, and on various European stages with MSC Cruise Lines.

Sargeant’s collaborative projects include interdisciplinary research with Rutgers University on Ignatius Sancho, as well as community engagement initiatives like “An Evening of Research and Talk” at the University of Iowa and “Rhythm and Groove” at the Iowa Dance Festival. Sargeant has also been a teaching artist in residence at institutions such as Woezo Africa Music and Dance Theatre Inc., the University of Iowa, and the New Waves Dance and Performance Institute. 

Sargeant’s research has been published widely, including “Transatlantic Dance Traditions” with Caroline Copeland and “Flick the Skirt: The Amplification of the African Body” (forthcoming chapter in The African Diaspora and Civic Engagement). He continues to present his work at conferences like the Collegium for African Diaspora Dance and the International Association of Blacks in Dance.

Sargeant’s research interests include the role of the skirt in Caribbean dance traditions, examining how it serves as a conduit for expression and empowerment. He travels extensively for research, investigating the morphology of African Diaspora and African dances as they intersect with the U.S. classroom, and exploring the relationships and retentions of African dances in the diaspora.

Sargeant’s notable work “He Shall Walk” (2022), presented by Northwestern Black Arts Consortium, delves into his personal journey as a “Mourner,” exploring generational wisdom and history through choreography. Sargeant’s recent works include choreographing “In the Red and Brown Water” by Tarell Alvin McCraney at the University of Iowa and receiving the Artist in Residency at the New Waves Dance and Performance Institute in 2023. His commissioned works span from projects with Contemporaine Togo and the Virginia Arts Festival to “Rebirth” for Minnesota State University and “He Shall Walk” for the Northwestern Black Arts Consortium. Read more here: https://www.skidmore.edu/dance/about/faculty/kieron-dwayne-sargeant.php

ABOUT TIFFANY MERRITT-BROWN
Tiffany Merritt-Brown, a native of Miami, Florida, is a choreographer, performer, scholar, and educator. She holds a BFA in Dance from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an MFA in Dance & Social Justice from the University of Texas at Austin. As a daughter of the Atlantic and the Caribbean, Tiffany’s scholarly and choreographic research critically examines the socio-political implications of identity and its impact on BIPOC communities. She utilizes dance as a conduit for reimagining and re-envisioning Black futures through a Millennial lens. Her work has been presented nationally and internationally at prestigious venues and festivals, including Jacob’s Pillow, the American College Dance Association Conferences, the Detroit Dance City Festival, the LineBreaks Festival, the Woodshed Dance Platform, the Cohen New Works Festival, Arts on Site NYC, BAAD! (Bronx Academy of Arts & Dance), Miami Dade College, the KAYE Playhouse, and CADD (Collegium for African Diaspora Dance). Internationally, her work has been showcased at the WDA-A (World Dance Alliance-Americas Conference) in Puebla, Mexico, and Tanara Public School in Chepo, Panama. She is an alumna of the Jacob’s Pillow Ann & Weston Hicks Choreographers Fellows Program and a co-founder of the Florida Black Dance Artists Organization. Tiffany is a 2024 Angela’s Pulse Dancing While Black Choreographic Fellow and serves as the Administrative Director for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s AileyCamp Miami. She is also a dance professor at Hunter College in New York City, where she continues cultivating spaces for artistic inquiry, critical dialogue, and embodied storytelling.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Moonshine is produced by the UW-Madison Dance Department and made possible with support from the Division of the Arts, the International Division, the Office of Diversity, Equity & Educational Achievement, Office of Multicultural Arts Initiatives, the Black Cultural Center, Barrio Dance, and the Caribbean Association of Madison. This event was made possible with generous funding from the Anonymous Fund and the Dance Department.

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