Antoinette Connell

Antoinette Hercules Connell, who is originally from Trinidad & Tobago, has been a performing member of the KanKouran West African Dance Company for thirty-five years. She has studied under the guidance of the company founder and artistic director Assane Konte, and promotes intercultural understanding through education and performing arts. Throughout her dance career, Antoinette has traveled in every part of the U.S. and the Caribbean as a performer, choreographer, and instructor of dance. Antoinette’s outstanding reputation with the company has spawned numerous alliances/collaborations with organizations and institutions throughout the United States and abroad. On the local and national levels, these include: The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Smithsonian Institution, National Symphony Orchestra, Lincoln Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music, California Center for the Arts, Howard University, Model Secondary School for the Arts at Gallaudet University, George Mason University, University of Pittsburgh, and Virginia Technical Institute. Antoinette performed at the opening ceremony of the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta Georgia. Internationally, Antoinette has experience at the Island Center for the Performing Arts, St. Croix, and choreographed dances for the performing artists in Trinidad and Tobago Carnival. Special projects through the DC Commission of Art and the Kennedy Center include the Progressive Life program where inner-city children learn about African and Caribbean culture through dance and drumming, and Imagine Celebration where children throughout the United States learn about West African and Caribbean dances and music. Antoinette attended University of Maryland and has been a certified personal trainer for the past twenty years; she understands how the body works as a professional ethnic dancer. Currently she teaches West African Dance at Washington Ballet THEARC and is an Adjunct professor at George Mason University.

Degrees:

Associate’s Degree, Dance