Mem­bers of the 3Canal and Mal­ick Folk Per­form­ers crews will cel­e­brate the life of lim­bo queen Ny­dia By­ron with a Bon­go Night at the Big Black Box Mur­ray Street, Port-of-Spain, to­mor­row from 6 pm.

The cul­tur­al com­mu­ni­ty was thrown in­to mourn­ing last Tues­day when By­ron, 67, died un­ex­pect­ed­ly.

By­ron, who learned her craft from lim­bo dance pi­o­neer Ju­lia Ed­wards, was an icon in the cre­ative and cul­tur­al in­dus­try and was best known for her fire-bar lim­bo danc­ing. She se­cured a hat-trick of TU­CO Na­tion­al Lim­bo Cham­pi­on ti­tles from 1998-2000 and per­formed with both the Mal­ick Folk Per­form­ing Com­pa­ny and 3Canal’s dance troupe for many years. She al­so op­er­at­ed Fire­Queen Pro­duc­tions, which pro­vid­ed dance rou­tines and folk dancers for stage shows, cor­po­rate events and con­duct­ed lim­bo work­shops.

In 2001, she and fel­low Trinida­di­ans Kim­my Stoute-Robin­son and Na­tal­ie Joseph-Set­tle made his­to­ry when they joined the cast of Uni­ver­Soul Cir­cus, Amer­i­ca’s first black-owned cir­cus, which fea­tures one-of-a-kind per­for­mances from around the world. In the year they joined, By­ron head­lined the cir­cus as Lim­bo Queen of T&T. She went on to serve as man­ag­er and chore­o­g­ra­ph­er of the Caribbean seg­ment of the cir­cus for six years. Along the way, her unique tal­ent saw her per­form be­fore South Africa pres­i­dent Nel­son Man­dela, Queen Eliz­a­beth II, both now de­ceased, and for­mer US Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma.

By­ron was al­so a men­tor to many, in­clud­ing Stoute-Robin­son and 3Canal dance troupe mem­bers, Mal­ick Folk Per­form­ers and par­tic­i­pat­ing groups in the Best Vil­lage com­pe­ti­tions. She al­so de­vot­ed a con­sid­er­able amount of her time teach­ing dance at Good­will In­dus­tries, an in­sti­tu­tion serv­ing stu­dents with dis­abil­i­ties.

By­ron’s fu­ner­al is card­ed for the St John’s RC Church, Church Street, Diego Mar­tin, from 10 am on Wednes­day.