Rainy Demerson is a dance artist and scholar invested in global intersectional feminism and decolonial embodiments. She has trained extensively in San Francisco and New York City, as well as at L’ecole des Sables in Senegal, Teatro Nacional de Cuba, and Escola de Dança da FUNCEB in Brazil. She has produced concerts in New York and Senegal and her work has been presented in festivals across the United States and in South Africa and Trinidad.
Dr. Demerson’s pedagogical praxis is informed by many years of teaching disenfranchised youth as well as formal study in the Dance Education MA at New York University. She also holds an MFA in Dance from Hollins University and a PhD in Critical Dance Studies from University of California Riverside where she published her dissertation, Decolonial Moves: Re-Membering Black Women in South African Contemporary Dance. She taught at Lindenwood University, El Paso Community College, Crafton Hills College, Scripps College, California Polytechnic University Pomona, and California State University San Marcos before joining The University of the West Indies Cave Hill in Barbados. There, she has been instrumental in the creation of a ground-breaking Dance BFA program that merges tradition and futurity from an Africanist lens. She is also part of the guest faculty in the Hollins University MFA in Dance. Her work has been published in Dance Research Journal, Journal of Dance Education, Journal of Emerging Dance Scholarship, Critical Stages, Research in Dance and Physical Education, and several anthologies. She is currently the Editor in Chief of Dance Chronicle journal.
