Roslyn Car­ring­ton

Dr. Joanne Kil­go­ur-Dowdy is one of our most pro­lif­ic writ­ers, with a bib­li­og­ra­phy that's sev­er­al pages long. Her pub­li­ca­tions span the top­ics of ed­u­ca­tion, dance, dra­ma, fem­i­nism, and cul­ture.The Jul­liard alum is al­so still heav­i­ly in­volved in dance, the­atre and film, and the video and the­atre pro­duc­tions she has writ­ten, pro­duced or di­rect­ed are ded­i­cat­ed to the up­lift­ment of women and their com­mu­ni­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly women of colour in the racial­ly charged North Amer­i­can en­vi­ron­ment. At the mo­ment, she's Pro­fes­sor of Ado­les­cent/Adult Lit­er­a­cy at Kent State Uni­ver­si­ty.She's in Trinidad to pro­mote her lat­est book, Art­ful Sto­ries: The Teacher, the Stu­dent, and the Muse. The book is about four male Trinida­di­an per­form­ers: a dancer, a drama­tist, a mu­si­cian and a light­ing de­sign­er. It's the third of her books to be pub­lished by Pe­ter Lang, some­thing she con­sid­ers quite an ho­n­our, con­sid­er­ing the cal­i­bre of writ­ers be­long­ing to that pub­lish­ing house.Three of these men were ac­quain­tances as far back as her Holy Name days. The fourth she met about 8 years ago. "Ac­tu­al­ly, he was the per­son who in­spired me to write the book, be­cause I re­alised there were so many male per­form­ers who we know noth­ing about. We might hear their names if we're in the dance or dra­ma cir­cle, but if you're out­side the cir­cle; you have lit­tle doc­u­men­ta­tion in Trinidad about the lega­cy of per­form­ing artists. Dr. Derek Wal­cott is writ­ten about be­cause he's a No­bel Lau­re­ate. Beryl McBurnie is writ­ten about in some­one's Mas­ter's the­sis, but if you go to the li­brary and say you're look­ing for in­for­ma­tion on per­form­ing artists in Trinidad, you will be a long time dig­ging."

The book has been sev­er­al years in the mak­ing; she be­gan work­ing on it in 2004, when she came back to Trinidad to bury her fa­ther, for­mer bronze-medal-win­ning Olympic weightlifter, Lennox Kil­go­ur. "I met one of the artists, who was a founder of the folk dis­ci­pline in Trinidad. Talk­ing with him, I re­alised I didn't know the his­to­ry of dance in Trinidad. I knew a piece of the his­to­ry of dance." A dancer her­self, she was ap­palled by the gaps in our own writ­ten his­to­ry of the arts, and re­solved to do some­thing about it."The men have joined high­er ed­u­ca­tion as ed­u­ca­tors," she adds. "They have be­tween them 100 years of ex­pe­ri­ence, start­ing from when they be­gan per­form­ing in Trinidad to where they are now in the US and Cana­da." The men of­fer a range of ex­pe­ri­ences, com­ing from dif­fer­ent eco­nom­ic back­grounds and hav­ing tak­en dif­fer­ent paths in their per­form­ing lives. For their pri­va­cy, and that of the col­leagues and friends they sug­gest­ed she con­tact, Dr. Kil­go­ur-Dowdy elect­ed to use pseu­do­nyms.Since the men all teach out­side of Trinidad, she an­tic­i­pates some back­lash from those who think these men are giv­ing away their knowl­edge to for­eign au­di­ences. Her re­but­tal is sim­ple: "Why has Trinidad al­lowed the "oil" to run in a di­rec­tion that is not of ad­van­tage to us?"Why is Joanne Kil­go­ur out­side writ­ing about Trinida­di­ans? That be­gan in slav­ery; we can't un­do that in a minute." The for­mer mem­ber of the Banyan Tele­vi­sion work­shop and stu­dent of the Caribbean School of Danc­ing was first in­tro­duced to lo­cal au­di­ences through the pop­u­lar Twelve and Un­der tal­ent pro­gramme. Thir­ty years on, pro­grammes in which she has fea­tured are still run­ning on lo­cal TV. "I still get peo­ple call­ing me up and say­ing, 'I saw you on TV last night!'"

Those with long mem­o­ries might re­call a brief an­ti-can­cer TV spot in which she which at­tempt­ed to teach women how to con­duct a breast self-ex­am...by bar­ing her breasts and demon­strat­ing. The out­rage was swift and bru­tal, but she's thank­ful she had the courage to do it. "I've lost sev­er­al friends to can­cer, and I feel that was a way I ho­n­oured their mem­o­ry, and the strug­gle some are still fac­ing with can­cer." She re­grets that she wasn't able to achieve the lev­el of aware­ness she hoped."No­body re­mem­bers what I taught about ex­am­in­ing the breast, but every­body re­mem­bers I was seen with­out my top on tele­vi­sion. I should have helped save a lot of lives in Trinidad, and I don't think that hap­pened. And for that, I will al­ways beg God's for­give­ness."Still, though, she's philo­soph­i­cal about the ex­pe­ri­ence. "The out­cry was part of my growth curve. You have to have a firm be­lief in what you choose to do. No­body can point at me and say 'You say one thing and do an­oth­er'. If it's im­por­tant, you put your­self on the line."Art­ful Sto­ries was launched in Trinidad last Fri­day. It's avail­able in lo­cal book­stores as well as sev­er­al on­line re­tail­ers.