2026 HDC BIPOC EMERGING Dance ARTIST SchoLaRSHIP RECIPIENT

Dancer: Sherecia Mclean-Leslie. Photographer: Jean-Daniel Painson.

ongratulations to the 2026 HDC BIPOC Emerging Dance Artist Scholarship recipient, Sherecia Mclean-Leslie. Sherecia is a Hip-Hop freestyler and Afro-Diasporic dance enthusiast from Montreal, Canada. After being introduced to Montreal’s street dance community in 2015, she learned Hip-Hop and continued to develop a strong foundation in improvisation, better known as “freestyling”. Through practice and research, she later came to understand the importance of preserving and transmitting Black dances so they can continue to thrive across generations.

In 2022, a dance intensive training program at École des Sables in Senegal, West Africa, deepened her connection to African and Afro-diasporic dance traditions. The experience transformed her artistic practice, introducing new rhythms, postures, and movement that reshaped her relationship to her body and expanded her body language. Continuing her research in Black dance, in 2026, she later received a dance residency in Martinique, where she further explored her connection to African heritage through the traditional dance form known as Bele. Together, these experiences have profoundly influenced her artistic identity and continue to fuel her exploration of dance as a vehicle for storytelling, cultural memory, and self-discovery.

Follow Sherecia on Instagram: shereeces_

---