A Bermudian dancer’s film about dance, racial identity and education made it into a prestigious British film festival.

Honor Minors’s documentary, To Dance, and To Speak, debuted at the Raindance Film Festival last month, along with other films made by students at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee (Boco) in Boston, Massachusetts. The 21-year-old just happened to be in London at the time of the festival and was able to attend.

“The Raindance Film Festival was incredible,” she said. “I honestly didn’t know what I was going into. It was awesome seeing our films on the big screen and having people ask us so many insightful questions. Many people enjoyed the Berklee films, and they were all so different so I’m glad the audience got to see a range of art forms showcased.”

To Dance, and to Speak is inspired by the experiences of her and her friends at Boco.

She was used to working in spaces where she was the minority. The dance schools she attended in Bermuda were predominantly White.

“The styles we were learning weren’t necessarily cultural styles or commercial styles,” she said. “It was very much modern, ballet or contemporary.”

What challenged her at Boco was that there weren’t many spaces for Black dancers such as social dances.

“Then I found a community of dancers who had also sought that out,” she said. “We made our own spaces.”

She and her friends talked a lot, in a casual way, about their experiences as Black dancers in largely White spheres and how they were coping with that transition.

One of her friends had grown up doing jazz in Atlanta, Georgia.

“She had never been around large groups of White people before,” Ms Minors said. “Moving to Boston and being in dance spaces with people who were so talented and didn’t look like her, was very challenging for her.”

Ms Minors made the film as a project for one of her final classes Take Me To the River, taught by documentary film-maker, musician and producer Martin Shore.

The course guided students through writing, shooting and editing their own short films rooted in their Africana Studies work.

From the beginning, Ms Minors knew she wanted her friends’ stories to be at the centre of the project, told in an intimate, personable format.

Trying to get on top of things she actually started putting the film together in the second year of the three-year Master of Fine Arts programme.

Time was still one of her biggest challenges. “In my senior year we had projects every week,” she said. “We were doing performances every weekend and travelling.”

During her last semester she probably had just one weekend where she did not have a performance scheduled. “It was very physically taxing,” she said.

While the film looks at the present, it is firmly rooted in historical understanding.

“I studied African dance at Boco for all three years,” Ms Minors said. “We were only supposed to do it for two semesters, and I would always apply and get into the class because my professors knew how much I loved it. I studied a lot of West African dance styles, and it just taught me a lot about our history, about how like innate the movement has always been.”

Four drummers came to class every day, she recalled.

“Being able to dance and learn alongside new people every semester really made me feel very comfortable and excited to keep dancing these styles,” she said.

Those studies deepened her perspective not only on African diasporic movement more broadly, but also on Bermudian traditions like Gombey dancing.

In a class on classical African-American composers, she was surprised to find the Gombey drum appearing in the syllabus.

“I knew Gombeys had African roots, but I didn’t know that we were going to cover that in class,” she said.

She took great delight in leading the class through her own mini-module on the Bermuda Gombeys.

Recently, she brought those histories into a contemporary context through a shoot with local fashion brand Cassine in Hamilton.

“They were working on a Cup Match campaign,” Ms Minors said. “I ended up getting to dance with some Gombeys.”

Ms Minors describes herself as a multifaceted artist, but choreography is her deepest love.

Over the past three years at Berklee, she choreographed for music videos and live performances. In Bermuda, she performed with Troika, a dance company led by director Seldon Woolridge.

She said he really nurtured her choreographic voice.

In September, Ms Minors plans to move to London to continue her career as a freelance dance artist and model. She has already met with agents who will represent her.

Before she leaves, though, she is back on home soil, pouring herself into another collaborative project.

In the Space of Us, a new show at City Hall on Friday and Saturday, brings together Bermudian artists Dominique Willis, Krystal Lowe and Ms Minors, along with eight performers from around the world.

“Dominique has brought back around eight people from all over the world who are joining me and three other Bermudians on stage,” Ms Minors explained.

“It has been really fun. It has been a very interesting process because some of the bodies of work are already completed, so it’s almost relearning and resetting dances. I just love that, and I’m definitely being challenged by it.”