Sonja Dumas is an arts practitioner, educator, and theorist, specializing in Caribbean culture. Her main areas of concentration are dance and film. She is a Co-Founder of COCO Dance Festival, the largest contemporary dance festival in the English-speaking Caribbean, and is the Founder and Artistic Director of Continuum Dance Project. Her films, which are often experimental with various Caribbean themes, have appeared in film festivals around the globe. Most recently, she founded Zum-Zum Museum, an interactive children’s museum highlighting various aspects of Caribbean heritage. Sonja holds a BA from Princeton University, a Master of Business Administration from Columbia University and a Master of Arts in Carnival Studies from the University of Trinidad and Tobago. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Cultural Studies at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, where she is considering speculative history models that use elements of African-Caribbean dance in Trinidad and Tobago towards the development of a Caribbean somatic practice.

Image credit: Michele Jorsling