NDTC Journal, #2, 2012

NDTC

JOURNAL ISSUE #2, 2012

NATIONAL DANCE THEATRE COMPANY OF JAMAICA

EDITOR Barbara Requa

Barry Moncrieffe, Artistic Director Marjorie Whylie, Musical Director NDTC JOURNAL is published by the National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica, 4 Tom Redcam Avenue, Kingston 5, Jamaica, West Indies.

(876) 631-5879, 477-0021, 631.5849 ndtc_jamaica@yahoo.ccom www.ndtcjamaica.org NDTC Facebook Albums

DESIGN AND PRODUCTION Christopher A. Walker Mark Phinn Marlon Simms

Front Cover: NDTC 50 collage by Marlon Simms NDTC 50 logo by Kori Solomon Sulkari feat. Marisa Benain and Orlando Barnett – photo by Mark Phinn

©Copyright 2012 Photographs: All Photographs are of the National Dance Theatre Company in performance, by Maria La Yacona (except where stated)

NDTC FROM THE EDITOR

Barbara Requa...............................................................................................................................................04

SPECIAL TRIBUTE • Himself and Moi!

Maud Fuller............................................................................................................................................05

ARTICLES • Imitate or Create…???

Prof. Rex Nettleford............................................................................................................................09 • Understanding Inward Stretch and Outward Reach: Intricacies in Community Arts Engagements via Renewal and Continuity

Kevin A. Ormsby ..................................................................................................................................12 • NDTC, Beyond 50: Renewal and Continuity – A point of view

Carl Bliss..................................................................................................................................................20 • The Janus Effect: The Journey of self­definition and heritage of the

National Dance Theatre Company (NDTC)

Clive Thompson ...................................................................................................................................23 • Boundless Imagination and Creativity: Across Generations

Judith Wedderburn.............................................................................................................................29 • Theater Economics: A Comment

Prof. Rex Nettleford............................................................................................................................30

ARTIST CORNER • ‘Di Werks’: Arranging for the NDTC Singers

Ewan Simpson ......................................................................................................................................33 • Third NDTC Member as Director of School of Dance

Kerry‐Ann Henry .................................................................................................................................36

FROM THE ARCHIVES • Revisitng the Past, Forging the Future

Compiled by Mark Phinn..................................................................................................................39

JOURNAL

ISSUE #2, 2012

COMMENTARIES, NEWS AND REVIEWS • NDTC NEWS

Compiled by Marlon Simms .......................................................................................................... 48 • LETTER

Carlon ‘Jackie’ Guy, MBE ................................................................................................................. 55 • NDTC Easter concert pleases again

Michael Reckord – Gleaner Writer .............................................................................................. 56 • Golden Rebirth: NDTC’s 50th restores the beauty and joy of dance theatre

Tyrone Reid – TALLAWAH Magazine ....................................................................................... 59 • Do Black Dance Companies Hit a Glass Ceiling?

Anya Wassenberg – The Huffington Post (Canada)............................................................. 60 • Jamaican ballet packs out New Alexandra Theatre

Deborah Hardiman – Express & Star (United Kingdom)................................................... 62

TRIBUTES • NDTC Dedicates Easter Sunday to Madge Broderick Published | April 8, 2012 – The Gleaner ................................................................................... 64 • Madge Broderick remembered Published | April 10, 2012 – The Observer ............................................................................... 65 • NDTC mourns the passing of Founding Member Monica McGowan Published | August 28, 2012 – The Gleaner .............................................................................. 66 • Tribute to Miss Monica McGowan

Nicholeen DeGrasse‐Johnson, EMC‐Sch. Of Dance, Junior Dept. .................................... 67 • Monica McGowan: A Remembrance

By Barbara Requa, NDTC Founding Member ......................................................................... 68 • NDTC Remembers Cuban­Jamaican Cultural Icon

Alicia Glasgow, PR............................................................................................................................... 70

TALEpiece • NDTC 50th ANNIVERSARY AWARDS CEREMONY (1962‐2012) Awardees.......................... 75

List of Photographs................................................................................................................................................ 77

FROM THE EDITOR

Season’s Greetings and a Happy New Year to one and all.

The 50th Anniversary issue of the NDTC Journal – 2012, offers a diverse body of information that highlights the history, survival and accomplishments of the Company as we complete fifty years in the dance arena and seeks to introduce new pathways and avenues of growth as we continue the journey towards the next fifty years. A special tribute to our late and revered Artistic Director, Professor Rex Nettleford, titled “Himself and Moi” penned by his close friend, Maud Fuller, will provide much laughter, while helping our readers to look at and reflect on the life of this renaissance man from another perspective.

A flash‐back from two articles written by The Professor provides a historical background that should interest and inform our current members. The first, entitled “Imitate or Create”, outlines the challenges faced by the ‘young’ NDTC as it seeks to define itself in order to present a style and flavour that speaks to our Caribbean roots. The second article – “Theatre Economics: A Comment” – shares some of the challenges experienced by amateur Performing Arts companies as they face economic dilemma, related to the scarcity of funding. In his article entitled The Janus Effect, Clive Thompson gives a detailed discourse on the “journey of self‐definition and heritage of the NDTC”. The well‐researched information highlights the connection between our African/European roots, the emergence of Jamaican/Caribbean dance pioneers (Looking back) and their influence on the formation of the NDTC (looking forward).

Articles under the theme Renewal and Continuity continue to attract attention. These include “Understanding Inward Stretch and Outward Reach” by Kevin Ormsby who introduces us to the ‘intricacies in Community Arts Engagement’ via Renewal and Continuity and shares a variety of solutions that allow for the smooth operation of Arts Organizations.

Carl Bliss in his article NDTC, Beyond 50: Renewal and Continuity offers a viewpoint for the restructuring of the NDTC administration and provides new insights into the reorganization of the current structure, while Judith Wedderburn in her short article, offers a vision for the Company under the ‘New Leadership’ as it approaches the next 50 years.

Artist Corner:

In this section, Company members Ewan Simpson and Kerry‐Ann Henry replay the renewal and continuity theme with some very interesting anecdotes that will keep readers smiling and at the same time inform.

From the Archives: Continuing the process of historical documentation, archivist Mark Phinn is able to pull together and document information taken from past articles that help to clarify and highlight the philosophy of the NDTC. The photographs demonstrate and support the beginning of an eclectic style that has led international critics to state “they (NDTC) operate as exponents of a primitive folk culture, as an interpretive dance company and as a modern dance aggregation”.

The final offerings from the 50th anniversary edition under the heading Commentaries, News and Reviews, provide a detailed account of the celebratory activities beginning with our Easter Sunday performance and ending with the 50th Anniversary Awards Ceremony where Company members and groups who have supported the Company since 1962 were recognized and lauded. As is expected, the photographic elements are superb and continue the high standards that have been set in the past. Kudos go out to Madame Maria LaYacona and other photographers who give of their time and expertise to create these wonderful Works of Art that showcase the beauty and agility of our dancers.

Break a Leg!

Barbara Requa Founding Member, NDTC

HIMSELF and MOI!

by Maud Fuller

The late Vice Chancellor Emeritus of the University of the West Indies (UWI), Professor Rex Nettleford, had been a presenter at the Association of Blacks in Dance (ABD) some six years ago at its conference held in Toronto, Canada. He knew very little about the Association, but managed to endear himself to everyone. So it seemed an appropriate gesture to honour him with a remembrance luncheon at its 2012 meeting – again, in Toronto. I was asked to provide a glimpse into the life and times of this unique person – brilliant academic and outstanding choreographer.

“Every thought, every idea comes to me as movement.” Thus spake the Hon. Rex Nettleford, Vice bear the brunt of running a nascent company – which he boldly christened the National Dance Chancellor Emeritus of the University of the West Indies in a private conversation. The dancer informs Theatre Company of Jamaica. It did not belong to the government. The government did not support the academic and the academic validates the dancer. its endeavours, its vision and ambition in principle, but financial backing was extremely slight. So how

did the Company survive and thrive and arrive at its golden jubilee of 50 years in this very 2012?

Regretfully, I did not know Rex as a child nor as a teenager. He loved to “boast” about being a country Nettleford and his charisma put the argument of cultural preservation and innovation to major boy, but this was no “country bumpkin.” When Rex arrived in Kingston from Montego Bay to attend businesses operations, persuading them to “commission” works – thereby supplying the essential university, he was already sophisticatedly urbanized with all the demonstrable qualities of a born funding for mounting a piece of work and for keeping the Performing Arts alive! leader. No stranger to responsibilities, he had to run his own dance troupe, exhibiting excellence in

time management and the adeptness at people management, while focusing his attention on I met Rex in the area of Dance, but by the time the NDTC was solidly afloat I had opted for Drama attaining a first class education. over Dance and was off to England on a British Council Scholarship.

His sense of school spirit and team effort was fully developed from early school days. A friend of his As a Rhodes scholar who had had lived up to and surpassed the ideals, the Rhodes Trust chose Rex regaled me with this episode. It was Sports Day and Rex’s House was struggling, when out came Mr. Nettleford as one of four people across the 20th century to bear the distinction of outstanding Rex wearing a pair of flaming red shorts to sprint his house out of the cellar.

Rhodes Scholar. Jamaica and the entire Caribbean were immensely pleased and elated: Rex was

beaming for another reason – the honour came with a substantial grant of money for an annual I met Rex at the Ivy Baxter Dance Studio where he was an instant star. Of course, his reputation and scholarship in his name. When Oxford conferred on him a doctorate (honoris causa), the citation was fame had preceded him, so there was good reason to lionize him. I guess this period was the only written in Latin but it posed no embarrassment to him, because he could read the Latin without formal training he was to receive as a dancer. Oh! He was familiar with all the big names – Graham, referring to the translation provided. One of his regrets in life is that he could not speak French. My Dunham, Ailey and others and understood the varying techniques; but even then, he was adamant brilliant words of comfort to him, “You know twelve French words? Well just m‐i‐x them up eena de about finding and refining his own technique. Rex was already out‐dancing everyone in the studio but patois – the real basolect, and dem will think that yuh speaking New Age French.” his attitude and demeanor bespoke respect and attentiveness to the teacher.

As a long‐time member of the international intelligentsia his reach extended to the shores of Canada.

Then he won the Rhodes scholarship – by the way, one of the qualifications for the Rhodes is Prof. Nettleford was a founding director of Canada’s International Development Research Council – a aesthetic prowess – so thank God for those flaming red shorts! So after graduating from UWI with a highly valued and long‐standing member at that. He was one on the thirteen Eminent Persons history degree, he proceeded to Oxford. overseeing the dissolution of Apartheid in South Africa. It is no surprise that he represented his

nation at UNESCO. At home, he was special advisor to Prime Ministers of every political stripe and He maintained the same pace of life, beating his books and partaking of every artistic experience unpaid Ambassador at Large, after demitting the chair of Vice Chancellor of the University. His name available to him. When he completed his studies he returned to Jamaica to begin his life‐long service and presence lent prestige to any function, any occasion, any event that was associated with him. and devotion to his alma mater. But the Baxter Dance Troupe was on its last leg, its last gasp, its last

everything and Rex suffered no crisis of conscience nor of loyalty in joining one of Baxter’s original With all ‘busy‐ness’ he was never too preoccupied to care for those in need – be it advice, members, Eddy Thomas, to pick up the reins and form a group with extended membership and a new endorsement, a kind word on behalf of someone to someone else, be it even illness. I was smitten vision. After a few years (maybe two) of a successful partnership, Eddy withdrew – leaving Rex to with a little known disease, Sarcoidosis. Rex called to ask if he should come up to see me. I reminded

him that nowhere among his many achievements and qualifications does it say MEDICAL doctor. And if he comes to visit because I’m sick, I will feel obliged to just DIE so that his visit would not be in vain.

His response, “Only the good die young and you are still in the land of the living,” which is shorthand for “You are neither good nor young.” His humour was not a biting one, he did not poke fun at other foibles. But he could reduce you to tears with a stern reproach and never with malice nor mean‐ spiritedness. Once, on a visit with me, he related some incidents of great disrespect and “dissing” done to him and I, as his pit‐bull, asked in much rage, how he dealt with them. In a calm voice with inner composure, he explained that at about the age of 21, already at University, something made him promise himself to do good and pledge to be a good person, forgetting all abuse and hurt that had been hurled at him. I can’t say he always lived up to the promise. But I know for sure, that when a very dear friend disappointed him, rather than lash out in response, he just removed that person from his roster of people to care about. And as he matured, I witnessed his self‐control and restraint at times that merited wrath and damnation. And those instances confirmed for me that he had grown into the “pledge of being a good person”.

Rex was the single most disciplined and determined person. His day was so structured that he squeezed more hours out of a day than anyone else. He was an early riser and I could explain the early rising but that’s another story. Why was his first choice for a meal unvaryingly, Chinese food?

That’s also another story for serious laughter.

In early middle‐age his sight began to go and he willed himself to depend less and less on the spectacles. In fact, he owned a pair so small that he could just close his hand to conceal them.

Unfortunately, the time came when he had to have eye surgery and of course, Mr. Rex defied the instruction to rest the eye, and began reading the day after surgery. He did not help himself by doing that and his sight kept deteriorating. He sent me a newspaper clipping of him in dark glasses with the caption, is this Ray Charles? He seemed to be enjoying the dark glasses so much, that he often forgot to take them off at night. His real aim was just not to go blind as his mother had done.

As a man in great demand to give lectures, speeches, addresses, interviews, to write articles for learned journals and magazines, he needed an encyclopaedic memory, a thesauric vocabulary and gigantic epistemology to avoid staleness by repetition, so Prof. Nettleford would coin a phrase or word as the occasion demanded: and many of these coinages have entered the lexicography of Jamaicanisms. His most popular coinage is the word “smaddification” – funny, but fraught with positive energy. The word “smadiffication” means the empowering of the marginalized in society to claim their personhood with all the fervour of inalienable rights [the Creole/patois word for SOMEBODY is smaddy]. One has the responsibility of demanding to be respected as someone who is equal to the rich, to other poor but honourable persons: a decent human being.

Rex was unable to put a lid on his creativity; this episode took place at my house several years ago.

He wanted to eat Johnny cakes, i.e. fried dumplings. I confessed that I could neither knead the flour nor shape the little globes. The gentleman just laughed at me and proceeded to knead the flour and shape the dumplings. They looked good and I was convinced that he knew what he was doing. So we cooked the Top; we cooked the Bottom, but eh eh! Neither of us knew how to cook the circumference, the dead white in the middle part. After some pondering, Mr. “Headley” decided that each of us should push a fork through either side of the dumpling and roll it back and forth in the oil.

He realized that all his back and forth was tedious, so he began to hum a little tune that he was making up on the spot, and then moving his feet back and forth in rhythm with the dumpling: and so it was that six fat Johnny cakes were cooked to choreography. Don’t ask how they tasted. Just thank God that raw flour is not a killer.

Here is the episode for the unfulfilled last meal. Rex called from Jamaica to give me a complete run‐ down of his itinerary for that week in the USA. He would arrive in Canada late Saturday night, and would be dining with me on Sunday. I was to call his two guests to give them directions to my house.

So I set the table for six just in case he increased the guest list. I was working on the menu when a call from Jamaica apprised me of the fact that he had taken ill in Washington. In my mind, the man was taking a well‐deserved rest but phone call kept warning me that it did not look good, and my own spirit had a deep foreboding that I might never see him again. Finally, on Tuesday night, word came that he had taken a few breaths on his own, then died: four hours before his seventy‐seventh birthday.

What exactly was/is his legacy?

Let’s look at that as two intertwined strands: wholly unravellable, and he would have it no other way.

The young man who entered university as a student of very humble beginnings and became the first alumnus to scale the heights to the Vice Chancellor’s Chair, has indelibly set a precedent for all who would aspire to the heights of academic achievements. He single‐handedly raised the image of trade unionism from placard‐bearing protest to scholarly endeavour. The volumes upon volumes of works on Culture related topics, History and its application to present day realities, the visionary who urged Black people to improve their minds and their lives by recognizing and acknowledging their abilities and awakening their potential, was and will remain the voice of one following in the wake of Marcus Garvey and Bob Marley.

I must confess that many of his books and tomes are way beyond the vocabulary and sentence‐ structure of ordinary, everyday usage. But the “ordinary” man is proud to know one of Rex’s texts and to think that ‘Prof’ did not talk down to him but expected him to grasp the meaning. When I meet one such sesquipedalian – a foot and a half long word – and recall that every “idea (including

words) comes to him in the form of movement,” I ponder which movement informed dat dere word!!!

Peter Williams’ sage advice was not a brand new revelation to Rex and his young Company. For Rex himself was grappling with that very issue. The advice was this, “Those who form Dance Companies should use the whole ethnic backcloth of their particular region as the basic foundation of their works. It is vital that those precious roots must never be destroyed.” And this is one of Rex’s great contributions to the dance. His expression of dance comes out of his appreciation of ancestral roots.

It is not by chance that his very first book on Dance is titled, “Roots and Rhythms.”

The first big work with the African focus was called simply, AFRICAN SCENARIO. In it he depicts courtship and marriage of a young African girl and boy with ceremonies and rituals common to most African tribes (at least in concept if not in minutiae). There were no balletic leaps, no pas de dis and pas de dat. Jumps were competitively high but in the African style. Movement was almost totally flat‐ footed but with the elegance of gazelles. The choreographer returned to Africa in THE CROSSING. A slave ship transports helpless, hapless, unwilling Africans across the Atlantic to North America for a life of humiliation and degradation. Then came the dance with which he as a dancer, is most identified – KUMINA. In it, he is the king leading his people through rural retentions of African rituals.

When his own dancing days were coming to an end, KUMINA was the one dance with which he would

grace the stage, to the delight of the audience on its feet gyrating and shuffling to the rhythm of the most pulsating, intoxicating drum beat.

MOSIAH, the tribute piece to Marcus Garvey is set partly in Africa and partly in Jamaica (for Rex, Jamaica is but a segment of Africa in terms of deeply‐rooted culture) he did not neglect our home‐grown heroes/icons. He used their music to choreograph suites of homage to Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, Jimmy Cliff and others.

The relationship with the dancers was in many cases, paternalistic: he encouraged and coaxed ambition and pushed and prodded talent.

The deeds of kindness to his dancers are legendary.

With the outpouring of shock, grief and anger at this irreversible act of God, people the world over sent elaborate compositions of condolences and personal accounts of their unforgettable encounter with him. It was decided to collate all these fine essays and poems into a commemorative tome labelled MAHOGANY,

and to go one step further by establishing a foundation in his memory. My grief and anger did not subside until with my own two eyes I witnessed his ashes being put into the ground and I had urged the people left at the graveside to “sing” him home to rest to his rest. I was too distraught, too dispirited to say or write anything worthy of being put in the memorial tome, and in as much as I applaud the intentions of the Foundation to promote the cause of Cultural Studies and Research, I know just how soon recipients of grants and any kind of assistance, forget the donor and the beneficence. So I knew that I had to do my part. “Lest we forget.” I decided maybe selfishly, that since I want to see him again (and not just as a duppy) I should honour him by providing the seed money for a monument: a statue that captures the dual personality of a world‐renowned academic and a world‐class choreographer and dancer.

Rex had told me a long time ago, that he had a strong memory of being passed over and over again the dead body of his great grandmother and then being washed in her bath‐water. Call it superstition if you will, but recalling it since his death, I have come to the realization that such an act must have replaced the poverty of his then family circumstances with a profoundly rich inner life that he nourished and allowed to blossom into a selfhood of which a whole nation hailed and still hails him as

a “maximum” son, who would urge every Black man, woman and child to freedom from self‐ limitation and worse, self‐degradation.

I have it from the most reliable source that Rex did “go gently into that good night.”

He did not rail against his lot Nor flail about, to not Go gently into that Good Night [Apologies to Dylan Thomas]

He may have gone too soon, but not in vain. His vision of Renewal and Continuity will be the guiding light and steady focus of his dance Company for many years to come.

His parting words were always – “Bless You.” And so I echo, Bless you all!

Toronto, Canada (IABD Conference, January 26‐29, 2012)

IMITATE OR CREATE…??

A Comment Artistic Director, NDTC (taken from NDTC Newsletter XI‐1970‐Septempber)

by Rex Netleford

The annual Season has come and gone. It has been very successful. New audiences are being built up; the Company’s style and maturity are said to be in greater evidence and there seems to be greater understanding on both sides of the footlights. This augurs well. But it also throws tremendous challenges in the way of the NDTC and as with the past, this new success is cause for anxiety for the future.

As Artistic Director, one has the final responsibility of deciding the things which will give the Company its true image. The operative word here is “true”. There has been a lot of cant about ‘relevance’ and the like and Dennis Scott in an excellent article published below in this Newsletter helps to clear up some of the confusion. My own statements made recently at the Culture and Conservation, (Caribbean Folkdance) Conference, in the Daily Gleaner Merry‐Go‐Round column and in the book Roots and Rhythms should give more than a clue to where I stand. Yet the confusion persists and comments and criticisms from some near to and far from the Company reveal that much work is left to be done to get thinking straight.

Let us start with ourselves. We in the Company must first be straight on the need for us to keep creating, experimenting and developing our work. But this were best done on the basis of our experience. We were praised in Atlanta, as we once were in Jamaica, for what the critic called our “basic integrity”. This we must never lose. To copy Martha Graham, Jerome Robbins, Doris Humphrey, Jose Limon, Alvin Ailey, Balanchine or Frederich Ashton is to miss the boat completely.

Beryl McBurnie, whose contribution to Caribbean dances cannot be taken lightly, has never failed in her countless discussions with me over the past fifteen years to emphasise the need for us in the West Indies to avoid the temptation at all cost. Imitation spells laziness and the myth of natural indolence has been used to our disadvantage so much in the past that it would do well for us to explode it once and for all.

Adopting wholesale, and without discrimination, the prejudices, choices and aesthetic principles of American Modern dance is no substitute for the prejudices, choices and aesthetic principles of classical ballet which used to dominate our thinking on dance but which we have happily come to learn to treat in a discriminating manner. The unpardonable arrogance of those who cannot see Jamaican dance‐theatre except in terms of the ‘standards’ ‘hang‐ups’ and clichés of American modern dance can have no place in the National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica. We must find our own modes of expressing ourselves in dance; treating with generosity and respect the ‘discoveries’ of other dance‐ theatre traditions but never slavishly tying ourselves to them so that we cannot see the great potential that lies in our own backyard.

Inferiority Complex It would do for some of us to remember that the great Nureyev or Fonteyn cannot dance African or Indian dances.

They are no less great because they are ignorant of styles and idioms in other great dance traditions. The great African or Oriental temple dancers whose tradition of dance‐theatre do not bring their names to lights of Broadway are no less great because they are unable to dance grandes pas de deux from

the Western ballet classics. And I doubt that they suffer the inferiority complex that many Jamaicans impose on themselves due to lack of confidence in ourselves and the muddle‐headed way we tend to assess other people’s in relation to our own.

Cross­fertilisation Great cultures are the product of cross‐fertilisation but this is not the same thing as imitation. The borrowings by classical ballet are duly transformed into matter that satisfies the sensibilities and taste of the Europeans (even when black ballet dancers were available, classical ballet companies continued to blacken the faces of white ballet dancers for ‘black’ roles. Balanchine’s “Figure in the Carpet” sensibly utilised the talents of Arthur Mitchell and Mary Hinkson to advantage). The Americans themselves have made the idiom of classical ballet into something distinctly theirs: the Americanisation of Mr. Balanchine the Russian is one of the great stories of cross‐fertilisation in art. Graham has benefited tremendously from her exposure to the Orient and like Ruth St. Denis her teacher has borrowed from that source. But the end results are hers – American not oriental.

Borrowings must therefore be internalised by the borrowers and if they are constitutionally indigestible should be dropped forthwith. It is ridiculous to try to transform NDTC into an American jazz group a la Jerome Robbins’ Ballet USA, or into an African dance ensemble a la ballet Africans, just as it would be pointless trying to make ourselves into a kind of colonial Royal Ballet Company. The paradox (and danger) is that there are insecure snobs around who would wish the NDTC to beg the travesty that the above implies. But one can take heart since audience response in the 1970 Season has

indicated Jamaicans’ willingness to accept much that is their own. It would be perverse of choreographers and dance‐ artists to ignore this significant development. They can indeed indulge themselves and satisfy their secret personal creative urges but they can never do this at the expense of the wider considerations that have to do with the realities. This is why choreographers and artists who have been exposed abroad and who wish to work with the Company must face the responsibility of finding out these realities and help to give them articulation rather than try to fight against them.

Mutual Respect Respect for our dancers as human beings and as agents of the creative process is a priority in all this. They must at this stage of our development be considered active participants in the process and not as passive bodies which must be bent to express the every whim of individual technicians and dance‐ creators. This in fact is the substance of some of the criticism levelled against dance companies in general. Happily dancers are human beings and rebel against their being automated if they feel like and so the dangers are less than imagined. But those dance‐teachers and creators who love to indulge the idea of “owning” a dance‐instrument (i.e. a dancer) are crashing bores at the best of times. Such attitudes not infrequently lead to people being simply used and then discarded. Alphabetical listing need not lead to alphabetical treatment and the NDTC’s hesitation to make stars out of

people whose firmament is yet in a process of formation, is based on a genuine feeling that the Company is experimenting and discovering. It cannot start parading as Broadway before it is itself.

Imitation?

The NDTC, then, must not be a pale imitation of American Modern or any other kind of dance‐theatre. In fact it must not be an imitation at all! It must be itself and stand or fall by its own work. The dance in Jamaica will not have gained much from the regurgitations of what goes on Broadway or at the Brooklyn Academy or at City Centre. It is better to and even fail in the genuine act of creating rather than be barely competent at projecting carbon copies of other people’s efforts. It is the challenge which faces all fields of endeavour in New Jamaica. The dance can be no exception!

Bodies without Minds?

Technique is most important but exclusive claims by one set of exercises over another are often misguided. In any case technique is a means to an end not an end in itself. It should never be allowed to take over from intrinsic artistry or else the accusation that the ‘NDTC dances well but dances about nothing’ will be unanswerable. Dancers cannot be expected to be automatons or physical specimens without minds. And those who would have the NDTC churn out vacuous precision routines without the use of the mind cannot wish the dance

movement well. This is not an argument for the ponderous, humourless, or the esoteric but too often the facile and the superficial is mistaken for lyricism and worse of all for dance.

The most able dancers of the Company are not surprisingly those who are able to use their minds well with their bodies and with some spirit thrown in for good measure. The works which have given opportunities for meaningful and unspoken dialogue between audience and performers have been those that employ thought. The NDTC has illustrated many object lessons in Jamaica – one of them is that dancers, contrary to common belief, are not mere physical husks without brains, soul or discipline. In any case no human being simply uses his body, and the isolation of movement as a basis for an art‐form was never meant to deny the human being of the use of his many other faculties. In this the folkdance tradition through its integrated rituals can teach many lessons and Jamaican choreographers would do well to study them carefully and learn from them. I wouldn’t agree with the hysterical assertion that dance as pure movement is dead but I can never deny that that kind of dance is never as alive as dance which embodies the totality of life. This, indeed, is the challenge that Jamaican dancers must face to make anything like an original contribution. This is the story of the greats whom many of us admire. But they have done their work, now we must do ours. There is no shortcut to the discovery.

UNDERSTANDING INWARD STRETCH AND OUTWARD REACH: Intricacies in Community Arts Engagement via Renewal and Continuity

by Kevin A. Ormsby

“All art is indeed mediated by social reality” Professor Rex Nettleford

INTRODUCTION: Since a teen, I have worked in communities teaching dance and for many years, as I became “a professional”, I thought my interaction with community would change, but it was not my interaction that changed but the communities themselves. In fact, I grew to see not one idea of community but a myriad of communities in which I now had to interact. My repartee within the professional dance community, still led to classes in community centres, the education system and recreational dance programs; all echoing a multiplicity of communities for which the Arts I practiced, engaged. As a Committee member on the Toronto Arts Council Community Arts Program, and in our granting assessment, we are passionate that proposed Arts engagement projects aim to, enhance communities, impacting the professional development of artists and creating a bridge between professional and recreational programs in the Arts. Every session, we have to assess the ideas of community differently because community has different meanings to various people and interest groups.

How do you articulate, affirm and understand community, is one of the key questions we think about for every application. If I might start with a very generic understanding as defined by the Oxford Dictionary, community is “a group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common, a group of people living together and practising common ownership: a community of nuns, a body of nations or states unified by common interests: (the community) the people of a district or country considered collectively, especially in the context of social values and responsibilities” (Oxford Dictionary). Of particular interest here in this paper, is the collective common interest in the context of social values and responsibility. How can this definition be understood in terms of the understanding of Arts and engagement? What are the cross sections of integration? Is it with engaging a participant that educational benefits of the arts for cultural and personal well being can be appreciated and understood? Poised with the foresight of artistic visionaries; cultural interaction and participation in the arts is at the forefront of many Jamaicans lives. Whether active or passive in the participation, this interaction informs and shapes a bigger sense of community and manifest itself into the phenomenon of a nationalist birth right. It would be impossible to tell any Jamaican that they do not live the culture of the nation.

How and in what forms do these integrations happen? How can it happen not in the processes of passive participation but active engagement in the arts? If experience teaches an artist anything, it’s that any community can be elusive "slippery like a mongoose; sly in its operations”. The word community rolls off the tongues of many but is sometimes never clearly defined enough to grasp the full attention of the mongoose. It is this illusive nature of community which I will address as necessitating clear directives in focus on how companies, artists and organizations first interact within the artistic realm (inward stretch) then, how organizations interact within communities (outward reach) while offering Arts engagements opportunities. Only then can the quality of the Arts engagement be lasting; an impact on the psyche of individuals who might never have had such an opportunity or experience prior.

I propose that community first, via an inward stretch, be understood through the ideologies, infrastructure, explorations of the mandates for an organizations and artists repartee within communities and secondly, that the structure of the first be replicated in value at the community level. The Inward Stretch (arts organizations involving artists, administrators etc) and the Outward Reach (the larger community involving audience, education system, private sector, local sectors); each require different yet similar approaches to the Community Arts engagement model. While varying engagement strategies can be assessed, all said strategies should emerge from arts organizational mandates cognizant of outreach leading back to the inward stretch (artistic communities of organizations). The understanding of an Arts Industry or one artistic practice as a potential industry and what that entails for an Arts organization is important to this discussion, because this understanding influences and solidifies the cultural realities of a nation; shaping its assessment, progression and future development. Arts Engagement in communities should also be considered as a renewal of artistic understanding hence, various strategies of Engagement will also be discussed.

INWARD STRETCH: Creating Community in Arts Organizations Professor Nettleford’s philosophy of inward stretch in so many contexts is about the internal, the elongating of internal sensibilities, harnessing of power and finding balance with the artistic, intellectual and social self. It was never explicit. It flirts strongly with the understanding of self and the transference of such confidence into many realms of who we are and what we do; roots sown into understanding what we do as artists and organizations. Working in the not for profit or voluntary sectors of Arts organizations, one sees a variety of disillusionment when simple branding /marketing or programming questions are asked. For example asking, “So what is the organization’s philosophy on the Arts or towards community and its employees?” As a Arts

Marketer, the answers most often vary but, in the variance of the answers, one can ascertain the internal communication of the organization. If half the personnel in the organization are not saying some common elements of the organization then there is a breakdown in the flow of information and its communication in that organization. While it may seem a harsh realization at first, this is important because, “a vibrant culture results from the full functioning of this communicative cycle. The weakening of any links along the chain—the closing of organizations or the departure of individuals that provide high‐quality art to the public, a decrease in the number and/or the capacity of individual appreciators of art, a lessening of opportunities to encounter works of art, a decrease in outlets for public discourse or a decline in the quality of that discourse—will weaken the cultural sector and diminish its benefits to the public”. (Laura Zakaras, Julia F. Lowell, Cultivating Demand for the Arts: Arts Learning, Arts Engagement, and State Arts Policy, RAND Research in the Arts, 2008)

The essence of a communicative community has to be present in an organization and starts with the effective communication of mandates, goals in programming, artistic understanding and curatorial directives. The internal structure of community questions the manner in which organizations engage their artists and administration in the programming to be replicated in the community. What do we want to say about our organization, our artists and the art form we practice becomes important starting points for such directives to be implemented. If community from our definition at the offset of this paper is “...practising common interests collectively” then these interests would need to be communicated within an organization to facilitate a collective psyche of creating community. The inward stretch in an arts organization has to work in tandem with creativity, fuelling connectivity via activism and advocacy. All areas should lend itself to a clearer and broader understanding of implementation, training and ultimately presentation.

Creativity is the selling point for an arts organization and should consider the untapped potential to be brought to maturation in the search for stronger internal reach which can be achieved through simple internal processes of organizational assessment, staff meetings, benefits (not always monetary), artistic collaborations between members and the information. Sharing sessions can lead to implementation. Everyone when entering an organization wants to contribute but it’s the opportunity for contribution and in what way this contribution can be used that can spark many other interests and longevity in the forms of contribution.

The communal framework of an Arts organization needs to look at individual and departmental strengths and call on these strengths when needed. Simple mechanisms to illicit the internal community can be information sessions on new approaches in work aesthetics and arts environments that can be shared via email, in meetings and on memos etc.. Building community in an arts organization is about investing in its employees while fostering organizational growth from such investments. “Development of artists” refers to what your organisation does to support the growth and learning of artists at all the stages of their careers. Similar to “curation and development of art form”, this element of artistic vibrancy is about an arts organisation’s

support for the wider art form and artistic community and its development of an art form by nurturing talent.

• Markemng • Outreach • Public relamons • Resource Development ADMINISTRATIVE

ARTISTIC

Execumve Director Board of Directors

Programming Performances Classes / Workshops

ARTS ENGAGEMENTS What can work in the Arts Engagement Sectors materialize for the Arts Organizamon

Community Educamon System post / pre performance talks • Arts Organizamon Driven • Community Partnership Driven • NGO Associated • Arts Engagement with a cause

An organisation may ask itself the following: • What development opportunities do we make available to artists?

• Do we enable the continuous learning and development of the artists whom we employ, and artists in the wider community?

• Do we create career development opportunities for artists?

• Do we ensure artists have the right skills to contribute to the organisation’s artistic objectives?” (Kevin du Preez – Project Manager, Artistic Reflection Kit, Australia Arts Council, http://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/artisticreflectionkit/elements/development_of_arti sts)

It’s asking questions, offering advice, while constantly affirming the goals of said organization that helps the organization grow. The organization, in developing an Arts engagement framework, would need to assess its place in the cultural industry and also understand the creative capital that becomes its artistic product. The following diagram suggests an understanding of community in an organization:

Programming for arts organizations and artists is paramount for the solidification of the inward focus. This is where the values established collectively, seek to resonate in creativity. What are the programs to be implemented? Who carries them out? Who administer the qualitative and quantitative assessments necessary? Understanding organizational policies as it relates to Arts Engagement is also important and is suggested. Clear policies of how the engagement happens will be crucial to the community arts initiative. Questions surrounding organization, its artists and engagement also involve mutual gains and benefits for both parties. Outcomes necessitates that the inward stretch influences the outward reach within community while also referring the continuation of arts making practices with the organization, artist and community. This is important to the cyclical benefits in the cultural topography in building an arts industry.

STRATEGIES TOWARDS ARTS ENGAGEMENT: Mapping Mapping is an understanding of the community marketplace required for the implementation of said arts engagement in communities and what this implementation in communities will look like. One can start by assessing needs within a community, liaising with organizations already working in the community and also creating possible partnerships. “An important element of artistic vibrancy is being relevant to communities beyond your existing audience. Reflecting on community relevance involves reviewing your understanding of your community, your connection with the community and your work’s relevance to this community.

We encourage arts organisations to explore community relevance in the context of your own situation. You should develop an approach to community relevance that reflects your organisation’s unique circumstances and goals.

Your approach should broadly follow these steps: Step 1 – Review your understanding of who your community is. Create a map of the community around you. This could be defined by geography (e.g. the region in which it operates), ethnicity or background (e.g. the Sudanese refugee community), by demography (e.g. young people), or in terms of an interest (e.g. local history), issue (e.g. the environment) or need (e.g. people affected by the Global Financial Crisis).

Step 2 – Develop a deeper understanding of these communities. This could involve analysing available information or having conversations with members of these communities. Either target individual groups and have detailed discussions with them or have initial discussions with a wide range of groups. Refer to the tools section for methods to use to better understand your community.

Step 3 – Explore how your organisation could use this information. After step 2, review what you have learned so far. Have you identified any opportunities? How do your program, venue, and cast reflect the culture of these communities? What could you do to be more relevant to these communities? Could these communities become your audience in the future?” (Kevin du Preez – Project Manager, Artistic Reflection Kit, Australia Arts Council, http://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/artisticreflectionkit/elements/relevance_to_community) The collective understanding of the implementation within an organization or by artists will need to be clarified. In many cases, this is where an understanding of the policies (the inward stretch) always seems to fall apart. This disjunction is always evident once the arts engagement initiative goes into the community. The process should include most if not all of the members in the organization.

Basic Elements of a Mapping Exercise:

1. Purpose of the Mapping – what do you want to get out of this process?

2. Methodology – methods use to gather information surveys, when how time etc.

3. Information Gathered – how will they be assessed, quantified etc.

4. Results – a collection of information gathered, and the findings

5. Future Initiatives ‐ creating programs with your findings and suggestions

Mapping can take many forms and shapes and can include a demographic mapping, mapping based on gender, social barriers, perception, environment, access, education etc., each giving arts organizations varying points of entry and information in what processes their arts engagement will entail. I caution that one actually should not use this as a stereotypical tool of engagement but as a medium for understanding issues that some communities might face and how you can use the arts engagement to address those issues or train your support staff and artists in how to deal with these issues if they arise. Here the inward stretch is about the reputation of an organization, the training and protection of its artists and their role in community and cultural engagement. The scope and lens has to be broadened to the understanding of role, positioning in the Arts Industry and advocacy for the future.

Training and Teaching Methods Training of engagers in the community will also be crucial to the work in communities.

This is about questioning the efficacy of an organization to execute with its artists and the programming required in a specific community. Aforementioned, engagers should have input into the process and should feel that they are a part of the implementation. Training should include inclusivity sessions where the skill of participants in the engagement is insignificant to experience the participants will gain; skill can be harnessed and further developed but their interests in the engagement and eventual development from that engagement can change due to a horrible experience.

Are the engagers in community arts engagement teaching in tandem with organization standards? I choose to start off with this question because it is important to think of the process of the engagement before its implementation and also to think of how this engagement refers back to the renewal in your organization and the continuity of the culture out of which all Arts organizations emerged. It’s also about reputation. Working in communities places Arts organizations at risk through tarnishing of its credibility and reputation. Teaching methods can be a fun and unique way to build community in organizations where the teaching methods are the ammunition to arts participation and effective engagement in communities. It is important that organizations understand this power but also the potential for the power being undermined by lack of preparedness for the work in communities. Two personal experiences in the field serve as examples of this relationship.

Case in Point 1:

While working in the United States and on tour in Cleveland, we entered a school to do a master class and were greeted by resistance. As we did not understand the socio‐economic circumstances of the resistance, we were not able to effectively provide any opportunities of influence about what we did as dancers with a renowned company. The class just had not interest and could not see any relationship to their socio‐economic circumstances. In fact, we resorted to doing a “master class” with zero participation from the students and were led to demonstrate what we did without having the active engagement of the participants with whom we came to give an artistic experience. I remember being totally disappointed not in the students as much as I was in myself for not being able to connect based on the socio‐economic reality of the students. Our biggest downfall was expecting that everyone would be interested in a master class. We were simply not prepared or trained in exercises geared at generating interest via the artistic content of our art form.

Case in Point 2:

As an Ontario Arts Council Artist in Education Grant Recipient, I go into various schools across Ontario for 125 hours over the course of the year. I facilitated a drama and dance program once. I found the students were not appropriately attired or prepared. There were students of Muslim background who had no previous training in dance. I used inclusivity methodologies, foremost, to vary and or change exercises in warm up done on the floor and in standing to make sure that the artistic content of my classes and the credibility of the OAC program was still maintained. This is due totally to my training in the certification program and had by the end of the engaged every student of that class in the activity of afro‐contemporary dance. The inclusivity training not only helped in this engagement but fuelled a blog on understanding cultural diversity in Arts Education.

Mentorship

Mentorship is an important part of building community in an organization but also in communities themselves as they will be the benefactors of the arts engagements. A hierarchy of mentorships help in supporting not only an organization’s ideology of the inward stretch but also in developing succession planning in various levels of the organization. This in turn fuels the outward reach of continuing arts engagements in communities via those mentored. The hierarchy system provides allies for future forms of engagement and multiplies the practical reach of renewal and continuity. Mentors would also need to be included in programming on many levels. The hierarchy of working with mentees can include mentorship at the following levels:

1) Administrative Level – from the artistic core with an interest in administration 2) Artistic – from the artistic core or residencies of regional / international sources 3) Community – from work in arts engagement, community organizations 4) Education – from schools, involving teachers, educators etc.

5) Private Sector – Administrators / Artists can mentor with various corporations

Other Areas for the Solidification of the Inner Reach:

The inner reach should always be about assessment for potential and continual growth.

Teacher and organizational evaluations, on site / surveys are important parts of the process for forward reach. It is a simple way to see how effective one’s programming is being executed in community. For many years artists entered and left communities without realizing the potential of these communities to the renewal and continuity of the work they do. The community through surveys get to contribute to the suggestions which will hopefully find their place in the programming and implementation of artists and organization. There is no understatement to saying that this provides a circular process of cultural artistic development indicative of the concept of inward stretch outward reach.

A study guide should be created for your arts engagement as it brings an organization and artists approach in a documented form into communities and becomes collateral tools for connecting Arts practice and advocacy. In the compilation of the study guide, there are no rules on how it should actually be. One piece of advice however, would be to make it as engaging as the art practices you plan to take into communities, thereby, allowing the guide to become the resource that is used in guiding the artistic engagement and conversations. The study guide will maximise the experience for participants in the outward reach and spiral into a substance of continuity for future engagement in particular communities. The study guide should relate specifically to the work being done and offer activities that can be continued by the community; leaving behind an organizational, artistic and cultural imprint of the arts engagement. If there is a performance

component to your engagement, do include questions and activities related to that performance to ignite curiosity and spark intellectual renewal in the artistic product. It should have referent points back to the organization, art form, and tools for future inquiry; all the while leaping to a clearer understanding for the participant’s role in cultural production.

THE OUTWARD REACH: Developing the Arts Engagement Framework With all the implementation and training done in your explorations of solidifying the inner reach via the organizations / artist’s role in community, the sourcing and work in building the relationships within the communities, will require some possible approaches to delivering the forms of Community Arts Engagement. Working in communities is never as easy as we think it will be ‐ there are the social, the cultural and personal implications of our engagement. It is important that one speaks with agents already in the communities. Who exactly are these “agents”? Agents can be your contact persons in the community centres or community agencies (other service organizations) with which you might create strategic partnerships to gain access into community. Community agents are a great source for understanding recent and historical progressions in these communities. Do heed the expertise and information provided from such agents and work to create and navigate your repartee with the information provided. As mentioned before working in communities requires a flexible breath between the inner reach and the outward stretch.

Community Engagement is the process of building relationships with community members who will work side‐by‐side with you as an ongoing partner, in any and every way imaginable, building an army of support for your organization ‐ an end goal of making the community a better place in experiencing the Arts. “Community Engagement is about connecting in a real way. When we interact with as many different people, and in many different areas of the community as possible, it does not take long to see that we all want the same thing; for our communities to be reflective of an admirable place to grow, work and live. Once this happens, and you find ways to deeply engage community members in the work your organization is doing, then you will find your organization’s short term needs begin to take shape almost on their own ‐ money, volunteers, board members, legislative support, etc.” (see www.Help4NonProfits.com)

Possible Community Models: 1. Arts engagement by an organization / artist (Art driven) 2. Arts engagement initiated by the community (Community driven) 3. Arts engagement in partnerships with NGO organization (support based organization driven) 4. Arts Engagement tied to a cause (Awareness, Access etc.)

An organization or artist does not have to do it on their own, by “thinking about this as true "engagement" means “including community leaders and resources in the conversation from day

one ‐ more in the spirit of "we'd love to have a relationship with your particular segment of this community ‐ can we think together about what that relationship might be?" With progression to the understanding that programs developed through this process will, of course, be of infinitely greater value and meaning to the people they are meant to serve.” (http://www.artsjournal.com/ontherecord/2008/05/community_engagement_the_route.html)

It’s about the working relationship we create and use to our advantage, including using already existing programming and contact as part of the artistic collateral to execute works in communities where, whether arts organizations are at the helm of community partnership or not, the outward stretch is enhanced by a supportive structure steeped in communities as the heart beat. In finding an organization’s voice in arts engagement, you are also providing a platform for listening to the voices emanating from the heart of communities. Give voice via the arts engagement.

Giving Voice It’s important that community Arts engagements programs find a way of giving voice via the models in understanding their roles in arts advocacy. One possible example is to make the creation process and work in communities accessible to everyone. GIVE VOICE. PARTICIPANTS / COMMUNITIES ARE SCREAMING TO BE HEARD. How they are acknowledged and the forms of this acknowledgement is up to the programming you provide. This should be that vehicle for mobilization of potential in your organizations and also in community. Think ahead of the challenges and find ways of minimizing those challenges for communities, your artists in communities and for your organizations. Toolkits are easy documents to create that can have situational concerns addressed and should become a part of the understanding required when working on the solidification of our outward reaches, the continuity of the form (arts engagement) and the renewal of traditions (organization and culture). Programming should be cognizant of issues in inclusivity and exclusivity; after all we want all to experience the power of the arts in changing lives; one community at a time. No one should feel separate from that reality and experience. What are some of these ideas on inclusivity? Some basic notions of Inclusivity affirm that, all participants are different. Therefore, consider altering a teaching style or the way in which an assessment is implemented so that this may benefit a wider range of students / participants not just those it is intended to support. Some of the challenges are below:

• Don’t assume prior knowledge. Not all your students will have A‐levels or have studied the same subjects • Do you, your colleagues and your students know how to get in touch with your institutions’ disability and equality service?

• Don’t assume students understand cultural references or colloquialisms, either written or verbal

•

Do not assume that a participant’s social upbringing has any implication of the potential to interact with the process of art making

Cultural sensitivity – there are diverse ethnicities that might interact or participate in your programming. Assessing some of those cultural experiences can be an interesting understanding of how to create arts engagement via commonalities and difference. This is where training of artists would prove paramount. While it’s an interesting entry point it can also be a volatile on if one is not prepared for how to deal with the issues raised. Chart the waters carefully.

Alternative sensitivity ‐ refers to everything from the taboo of gender, diversity in religion, sexuality, marriage etc. Attempt to give credence to the power of knowing rather than approving.

If we look at the community engagement model, this participant might have connections via parentage or resources that can be beneficial or detrimental to your Arts engagement initiative.

One cannot understate that the voice you give to participants in community informs the art that comes, not only out of that community but also out of the art‐making that emanates out of our organizations. Alvin Ailey says it best in his thought that “dance came from the people and it should be given back to the people.” The impetus for many art forms lives in the people, the communities where engagement is needed. A Community’s realities can be changed through the art form. There are many cities where a murals in the public space has created employment, beautification and participation in the Arts. Such projects are the creative and innovative re‐ imagination interrupting the colonial argument that art belongs in buildings where we go to engage in their beauty and move closer to the creative aesthetic that inspiration and art comes from the collective existence of things around us. If we invest in communities, they can be enriched from such investment influencing conversation and ever‐present permanence in the community’s psychological titillation of whats possible.

RENEWAL AND CONTINUITY: The Collective Ebb and Flow in the Interchange of ideas between Arts Organizations and the Community.

Implementing, nurturing and renewing the relationship of arts engagement in communities involve creating and implementing effective programs with the engagement component at the forefront. This is no easy feat. If done with the strategic understanding of initial interests and outcomes, then a move towards renewal and continuity of not only the organization, but the overall cultural fabric of a nation becomes an achievable goal. It should be this notion of continuity and renewal which drives and sustains one’s organization or one’s work as an artist.

In questioning the why and how, Community Arts engagement should connect to the inward scope of building future audiences, the growth of cultural appreciation, nurturing already existing patronage and sparking new interests in the Arts; all of which is possible with solid programming with those engaged through the communities of the outward reach. Exploring

continual relationship of such partnerships means that organizations can once again tap into these communities and continue to build on the foundations laid possibly leading (if in the directive of the organization) to satellite sites of the organization and can be a feeder to the organization’s school and artists.

Audience Development: Work in these communities can be a ‘magnet” for sending students with potential in varying art streams to be mentored by an artist in the organization. The chances are increased that if a participant from the community level is mentored that this participant could one day become an artist in the said organization which provided the initial opportunity for the engagement itself. This is the continuum of renewing resources that can lead to solid artistic / administrative succession planning for an organization. Audience development comes in so many forms and works hand in hand with public relations and marketing. Some of this marketing can be done by offering in the study guides other opportunities to engage participants with many opportunities in the arts beyond the artistic qualifiers. It’s important to make those connections and have them work for you even in Arts engagement. Its about the mapping one has done; taking inventory per say of one organization and its place / work within communities.

Never underestimate that power. Also nurture the communities in which you execute arts engagement. Here are some ways for nurturing that relationship with communities while building audiences.

Website: There are many free windows based websites that offer a variety of features but should breathe and live and reflect and inform every aspects of an artist or organization.

Enews: Keeping in touch with past participants allows for constant communication while allowing for the continuation of discussion of interests and offers the capability of renewing interests in ones organization.

Social Media: A powerful tool in generating, nurturing and fostering continuity. and to generate other interests in an artist or organization and for continuity.

Social groups and Organizations: Churches, rotary clubs, alumni associations’ among others are great areas for building and creating new audiences for various programming in arts organizations.

They are not just marketing tools as they are tools of engagement and outreach I would argue that cultural participation on many levels may indeed “hold at least one key to this puzzle of how we can engage our communities and public spaces much more, in ways which will bring a greater sense of social cohesion. Particularly with the creative powers of new social media, we have at our fingertips an incredible myriad of ways to re‐energize our civil society and communities. All so that we no longer have to be nostalgic for what might have been, and can instead focus our collective energies on what may be, all the while supporting cutting edge cultural events and arts organizations in our midst.” Tatyana Varshavsky, Creating Community

Through the Arts: Cultural Engagement, Democracy, and the Role of Civil Society, Journal of Communication, Culture and Technology, Georgetown University, 2008)

Community Involvement as part of the renewal process, can take on a variety of engagement / participation in an arts initiative. As an artist, I am always under the assumption that I am rarely using all my possible resources. Volunteerism by the parents or of your adult participants is one way of continuing engagement to the benefit of one’s organization. By having a simple registration form or by gathering their contact information with their profession at their request, you have the potential of using registrants as volunteers for your organizational developments; key mechanisms of building not only the industry of your organizations and networks but also a glue in the development of an arts industry, growing on the foundations of the concepts of inward stretch and outward reach mentioned in the previous sections of this paper.

Volunteerism by key persons you have worked with in community arts engagement can be influential in building the profile of an organization. I am suggesting that a toolkit for volunteerism also be created in the understanding of the inward reach. It allows for volunteers to understand their role in the proliferation of your mandates of the inner stretch of the organization and via their actions also work hand in hand in initiating potential for renewal and continuity.

Cultural Development: Notions of cultural development are always prevalent in the discussion around organizations and artist’s work in community arts engagement. The continuation of a sustained cultural reality can be harnessed by such work. How do artists and organizations make those connections in their work is significant not only to the survival and progression of cultural forms, but also in an understanding of the changes, progressions and future of the national cultural fabric. This relationship is cyclical and over time influences every aspect of what has been discussed in this paper. How can community Arts Engagement influence cultural development?

An analysis of the role of the JCDC (Jamaica Cultural Development Commission) can be a great source for statistical data for such influence. We can go briefly through such an analysis via a series of questions that could be the subject matter of quantitative research.

The Inward Reach ‐ JCDC would ask: 1. What are the services we have offered to schools, communities since our inception? a. this would set the understanding of service offered and also the mapping of where and how it has offered those services b. Who benefits from these services?

2. How and who have these services benefited? a. allowing for an assessment of the organizations reach and scope 3. How have these benefits helped / fostered the culture of the island

4. making a quantitative analysis of who is working and has worked in the areas they serve

Outward Stretch ‐ JCDC could: • reach out to these person (testimonials, to be judges, advisors etc) • have them work within JCDC’s work in communities / nationally • create residences, conversations, talk back between established, emerging and aspiring artists set up opportunities of artistic development for National Festival winners with working Artists

Renewal and Continuity ‐ JCDC now has: 1. The potential to influence cultural production via a psyche of artistic support and development 2. The ability to make a statement in the development of the Jamaican artistic industry.

This can also be used in a. the promotion of its own mandates via the website, lobbying organizations and social media and media itself.

3. The renewal of JCDC’s profile that would be aligned with a collective of artists and organizations in the continuity of the organization.

Though minimalist in its approach, this model highlights the possibilities that exist by the argued understanding of the inward reach and outward stretch toward renewal and continuity. The model would require a series of development via some of the suggestions throughout this document but always working within the socio‐cultural and economic understandings of the location in which programming is to be researched, implemented and executed. I am an advocate of creating a framework of engagement that is necessitated by the history / location of where the engagement will happen. I have quoted Professor Nettleford at the end of this paper and choose to echo the point of innovation. This is where through an understanding of working from the grassroots, innovation can lead to stability, renewal and eventual continuity. Martha Graham also says it best when she mentions that a dancer should learn the technique, master it before breaking it. The approaches and work done elsewhere mentioned here is a road map to the understanding and creation of such programs.

NATIONAL ENHANCEMENT AND IMPACT LEADING TO REGIONAL AND GLOBAL PRESENCE Community arts engagement can be that catalyst for national enhancement and impact, culture is at the forefront of many countries and allows citizens to see themselves and their ethnicities in the globalized world around them. Community arts engagement done effectively can be the fuel for larger initiatives shaping identity, culture and ignite unrelenting creativity in approach. Arts engagement is a cornerstone in any cultural foundation interested in supporting the development of creative industries and also the participation in the new creative economy of potential via the global ecology. Consequently, the framework has already been in place for such growth but need to be connected to a larger curatorial framework of why and how. There is no question that initiatives in communities will influence a national artistic community and help it adapt these opportunities to also foster development of further regional and global significance.

In fact, arts engagement as national significance should be a part of the existing coalitions of global arts engagement. One can question what international and regional initiatives can emerge via collaboration or be created for the enhancement of programming on a national level; once again increasing the inward reach, outward stretch and continuity in any organization.

Mathematics is about formulas which are applied to arrive at an answer, the Arts and community arts engagement are in turn finalizing its formulas. Gone are the days when artists just paint, dance, sing etc; when organizations operated without strategic plans, a Board of Directors, Administrative staff, Marketing and Outreach as these considerations have to be made into the formalizations of work and potential growth in the Arts and in organizations. I purposely did not provide what an organization or artist should do in creating community arts engagement programs but aspired to create a toolkit for which the engagement can be created, understood and applied to the reality of where the programs will be initiated. Though arts engagements might be similar, no two organizations or forums for arts engagement are the same but these formulations (what, when, where, how) should consider Community Arts Engagements as a

viable source of continuing the art form and culture on which its very continuity depends.

In the case of Jamaica “the creative economy of Jamaica represents 5.1 per cent of total output (Gross Domestic Product) which when compared with 12 nations ranked the island in fifth position with the US in first position at 11 per cent. "The United Nations estimates that the creative industries are growing at a faster rate than the world economy in general. Yet there is still a critical lack of empirical statistics on the contribution of Jamaican music or creative industries to national GDP. This has resulted in repeated undervaluation of this sector in an array of studies, with estimates ranging from $1.5 billion to $1.7 billion in generated revenue," stated Angela Davis. (http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/entertainment/Focus‐on‐creative‐industries‐‐ ‐UN‐report‐tells‐J‐can‐govt_8396757)

I argue that cultural industries are the precursor to creative industries mentioned above and Jamaica has always had coming out of independence; a cultural industry framework. The cultural industries are actualized for its values and potential via all the cultural programmes by artists and organizations like the JCDC, the difference is in making a cultural industry creative.

Making a cultural industry creative involving policies, organizational and artistic support via a granting systems, professional standards documents, educational standards, stakeholder and advocacy groups and some of the other steps mentioned in this paper. The progression from one to the next would need the flowering of the various sections of culture into inflorescence; each having its own codified framework of operations, support and presentation lending itself to the creative industry where collaborations on many levels from the community to the professional would drive and sustain the creative industry of the Arts in Jamaica.

“Continuity is naturally cherished. The renewal should however, take... the movement forward with yet more exploration, experimentation, originality, innovation...with dividends manifested in the instituitionalization of training and education in the art, in the mobilization of community cultural sources of energy.” (Dance Jamaica: Renewal and Continuity: The National Dance Theatre Company 1962‐2008, Ian Randle Publishers Jamaica, 2009)

Works Cited: Nettleford Rex, Dance Jamaica: Renewal and Continuity: The National Dance Theatre Company 1962‐2008, Ian Randle Publishers Jamaica, 2009 Nettleford Rex, Rex N: Rex Nettleford, Selected Speeches, ed. Kenneth O Hall, Ian Randle Publishers, Kingston, 2006 Nettleford Rex, Caribbean Cultural Identity: The case of Jamaica, Institute of Jamaica, 1978 Laura Zakaras, Julia F. Lowell, Cultivating Demand for the Arts: Arts Learning, Arts Engagement, and State Arts Policy, RAND Research in the Arts, 2008 Susanne Burns, Sue Harrison, Dance Mapping: A Window on Dance 2004 ‐2008, Arts Council England.

Arts Council England, Joining up the dots: Dance agencies – thoughts on future direction ‐ A companion report to Dance Mapping: a window on dance, April 2010

Web Resources: Arts Journal Blog http://www.artsjournal.com/ontherecord/2008/05/community_engagement_the_route.html Not for Profit Advice www.Help4NonProfits.com Australia Arts Council ‐ Artistic Reflection Toolkit http://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/artisticreflectionkit/elements/relevance_to_community Jamaica Observer Kevin A. Ormsby wishes to acknowledge funding for the presentation of this paper from:

NDTC, Beyond 50: Renewal and Continuity A Point of View

The one critical area in the National Dance Theatre Company (NDTC) that demands renewal and no continuity is the area of its administration. Make no mistake about it, the current administrative structure has served the company well in the past, but it’s no longer likely to take it successfully forward. The 21st century challenges demand a 21st century strategic response to the vicissitudes of the ever changing economic environment. At this juncture, it is my view that the major preoccupation of the Company’s leadership must be ensuring its continued artistic viability and long term financial sustainability. Let me hasten to suggest that its original mission and vision MUST remain intact. To do otherwise will relegate the NDTC to the rank of an “also ran” and pedestrian dance company. It is in staying true to this mission and vision that the company will stand out as a significant cultural development institution and force in the region and indeed the world.

Having established that, it is my view that despite numerous attempts by the late co‐founder and Artistic Director, Professor Rex Nettleford, at sharing the mission and vision of the NDTC over these many decades, it still has not caught much fertile soil in the places where it ought to, in order to ensure solid and sustained growth in the years to come.

The way the NDTC is structured (see cuurent structure), operated in practice over the past 48 years is that the Artistic Director was the dominant figure in not only the management committee and the general day to day management of the company’s affairs, but was also the main driver of most other areas as well as serve as Fund‐raiser‐in‐Chief. With the Company no longer having such a larger than life presence among its numbers, it cannot be business as usual. Whereas this may have served the company well in the past, and it sure did, it is no longer a viable option for future development 50 years after.

With the passing of Professor Nettleford, the role of Secretary/Treasurer has taken on more prominence. The current management committee comprise too many functions that have no place in a future NDTC Board. In fact, the roles of Wardrobe Mistress, Sound Director, Lighting Director and Stage Manager are all operational functions and should reside at the operational levels of the structure.

by Carl Bliss

Current Structure

MANAGEMENT

COMMITTEE

ARTISTIC DIRECTOR/CEO

Musical Director

DANCERS

SINGERS

MUSICIANS

My recommendation is for a restructuring of the organization as follows: Proposed Structure

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

ARTISTIC DIRECTOR/CEO

PRODUCTION

Musical Director

COMMITTEE

DANCERS

SINGERS

MUSICIANS

BOARD OF DIRECTORS: The management committee should be reconstituted as a fully functional Board of Directors. The board must have full responsibility for ensuring the financial sustainability of the National Dance Theatre Company. Persons on the board must not only have an appreciation and love for the arts, dance, dance theatre and music, but must also be passionate about the vision and mission of the company. They should also be in a position to make a significant contribution to its further development and represent the skills sets required to do so.

ARTISTIC DIRECTOR/CEO: This position provides the artistic and executive leadership for the Company.

PRODUCTION COMMITTEE: This grouping comprises all the creative technicians, and is led by the Artistic Director.

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT MANAGER: You will note that I have introduced the position of Business Development Manager. I firmly believe that the Company must identify the resources to bring such an operative on board.

Business This individual must have a successful track record in grant and proposal writing. A Development significant part of the job will also be identifying along with the Company’s general management and Board, any new business to pursue in order to bring new and additional Manager revenue streams into the Company.

The reality is that the relatively limited dance audience we enjoy in the country cannot by itself sustain the dance company. It never could! In fact, had it not been for significant resource inputs from private companies, foundations and individuals, it just would not be a financially viable enterprise. It has gotten more and more challenging accessing resources from these sources. Part of the reason for this is that the real national economy has been contracting for some time now, and so available resources have been shrinking. On the other hand, demands on the limited donor resources have increased exponentially over the CREATIVE last decade, and let’s face it, donors are experiencing donor fatigue from the overwhelming TECHNICIANS demands on them. The other stark reality is that the company has lost its greatest fund raiser after 48 years!

Increasingly, organizations such as ours have been embracing the concept of social entrepreneurship.

In part (large part), because they realise that they can no longer depend on the largesse of private or public gift giving for their sustainability. Social entrepreneurs are individuals who apply for‐profit

business principles to create businesses with the singular objective being, the use of those generated resources, to ensure the sustainability of the not‐for‐profit. In our case: the NDTC.

And as a Company we won’t have to look far for some of the business opportunities that could be easy fits with our own mission. As a start:

1. We have three (3) possibly four (4) music albums produced by the NDTC Singers over the years. These can easily be re mastered and presented in more modern formats for sale to the public. On our recent tour of the United Kingdom several persons sent me requests for CD’s of the singers and DVD’s of our dance works. Needless to say, they were shocked to hear that we had nothing of the sort.

2. Memorabilia, which is the stock in trade of enterprising theatre companies worldwide, could be created by us for sale to the public. These could include: • Branded Caps • Branded trainer tops • Branded T‐Shirts • Warmers • Branded sweat suits and other rehearsal gears • Key rings • Cards (The list is only limited by our own imagination)

3. Books and other printed material on the company. The NDTC is blessed to have had an Artistic Director who was a significant student of history, who understood the importance of recording our own history rather than depending on others to do so for us. “Dance Jamaica” editions 1 and 2 as well as “Roots and Rhythms” are seminal works produced by Rex Nettleford, and as far as I know they belong to the company. Every effort must be made to keep them in the forefront as our literary contributions to the world of theatre, dance, history and culture.

4. Real Estate: As one who was involved in the discussions surrounding the acquisition of the Old Church Road property, I am aware that the principal objective was to purchase an asset that would be a significant income earner, in the quest to identify ways and means of ensuring the financial sustainability of the NDTC. From those days, probably 25 plus years ago, it was clear that the company had to identify other means of sustaining itself, as private sector support was often uncertain, and net proceeds from our annual seasons were insufficient to support the continued and broader work of the company. There is need for

considerable rethinking on the part of the current leadership of the company as to the viability of the property in light of its original intent.

5. The Studio: This could be a significant income earner for the Company in light of its location and attendant facilities.

6. Overseas Tours

7. Local Tours

8. The Annual Season of Dance The above are just a few ideas that come readily to mind. No doubt the management along with the proposed Business Development Manager will be able to expand on them as they see fit.

THE JANUS EFFECT The journey of self‐definition and heritage of the National Dance Theatre Company (NDTC)

By Clive Thompson

As we celebrate our 50th anniversary as authors of an independent nation and the NDTC as the premier dance company of the region, the concept of Janus, a Roman myth of a two faced god, comes to mind. Janus is usually depicted as having a face in front and the other at the back of his head thus being able see the past and the future.

In looking closely at Jamaica’s past and at the genesis of our Caribbean modern contemporary and folk derived forms, it is very clear that dance has evolved or manifested itself as a significant part of our Jamaican psyche, as is evidenced in our musical forms. We see and hear the rhythms of our African ancestors in our gestures, the “groundedness” of our walk, the inflexions in our language and the idiosyncrasies of our religious and spiritual retentions and rites that are still being observed today. However, nothing remains of the indigenous Taino, who with the “discovery” of the island by Columbus in 1494, its subsequent conquest by the British and the imposition of European culture on the aboriginal Taino, were unceremoniously annihilated.

But the Jamaica’s history extends further as Europe brought Africa to the Caribbean through slavery. The colonizers came as victors, dispossessors and exploiters and Africa came as victims who were themselves dispossessed and exploited by their own and European counterparts. Later East Indians and Chinese arrived as indentured servants and still later, came other nationalities, mainly from the Middle East.

Together the two, Europe and Africa, shaped the Caribbean history over centuries.

Europe through the sugar and slave plantation, colonialism, and the doctrine of white superiority and Africa through their rejection of slavery, the triumphant struggle for freedom and justice, the indomitable spirit and creativity of the African peoples, while finding clandestine ways of practicing and handing down its culture to younger generations.

During this process, slavery was abolished and full emancipation granted. There were decades of great unrest, resulting in the development of national consciousness for full independence in 1962 and the creation of our national motto: out of many, one people.

However, with independence came the great question of ‘identity’ and understanding and embodying the phrase ‘Jamaican Culture’. In a larger context of the question there were many pertinent issues to consider. Are we identifying with the African heritage, Chinese, Lebanese, European, Jewish heritages or the mixing, blending cross‐fertilization of all the races, into one

Jamaican race or identity? Can we subvert notions of race, class, creed, religion to create that which we can call “our country, our culture, our nation”?

Even with these questions in mind, we have to be cognizant that Nationalism involves a timely use of the PAST, subversion and reinvention of the PRESENT and a faithful promise of an ideal and or better FUTURE in a WORLD that is meant for all of ‘us’, though for some it is a highly romanticized and unrealistic vision. Utopia cannot exist when man’s imperfections lead to destruction of self and others. But is this really the ideal approach we need in terms of achieving a greater‐good, that being a widely accepted purview that a Jamaican identity does exist?

What the British left behind is a history of suffering and severance through years of inhumane treatment of people of African descent. The remnants of the African culture are today evidence of defragmentation with a strained connection with the

Motherland that our forefathers fought to preserve. The rape of the African culture and the inculcation of our minds over centuries into believing that the white culture was superior and more beautiful to the black culture, which included our Religious rites, dances, music, and the Drum, was an attempt to not only erode our identity but to discredit and delegitimize who we are as Africans.

Today Jamaica is a multi‐racial society in which the African elements dominate the cross‐fertilization of other influences such as the European, East Indian, Chinese, Jewish, Lebanese et al. The first four decades of the 20th century suggested great changes in the Jamaican society had heralded a political and artistic awakening especially as it relates to the Art of Dance and Music. And by dance I am referring to British ballet first being taught to the children of the expatriates.

JANUS – LOOKING BACK Starting as early as 1907, there were three female teachers who introduced Ballet to Jamaica. They were Mrs. Melton Adams, Pansy Alexander and Ermyn Lyons. Hazel Johnson, who was referred to as a “high brown”, was raised as a white English upper‐class. She was taught to preserve her own by not mingling with the natives.

She was educated in England where she studied ballet, character, tap and Greek dancing before returning to Jamaica.

However, her father feared that Hazel and her siblings’ long absences from home during their impressionable years could make them even more alienated from their home so he arranged an extended trip around Jamaica, spending weeks at a time in each parish, observing the music and dance of the ‘natives’. Hazel became an excellent teacher, producing several shows and is credited as being instrumental in raising the artistic and technical prowess of dancers in Jamaica. She has gifted us with several of our early Master Teachers including the indomitable IVY BAXTER.

THE EMERGENCE OF THE CARIBBEAN DANCE PIONEERS Two women are credited for the exploration of Caribbean Dance “movement”. They are Beryl McBurnie, a Trinidadian dancer who would become the Caribbean’s “mother of dance” and U.S. born Lavinia Williams, a disciple of Katherine Dunham who after migrating to Haiti to study their folklore, became Lavinia Williams‐ Yarborough. Both Dunham and Lavinia Williams‐ Yarborough credited Beryl McBurnie for her influence on their technique and American modern dance in general. McBurnie was even more influential on Jamaica’s Ivy Baxter and the eventual founding of the National Dance Theatre Company.

Therefore, it’s imperative to speak of McBurnie and her early dance beginnings when addressing Caribbean Dance Theatre.

BERYL McBURNIE McBurnie was a precocious child who had developed an early interest in Caribbean folk dance primarily because she was forced to learn and perform the Scottish reels, jigs, and other British folk dances that were taught at her school. She considered them irrelevant and whilst she appreciated them for their beauty of movement, they did not represent her experience growing up in Trinidad. She wanted to express through dance, the way of life and aspects of the history of her own people and environment. Her interest led her to study Trinidadian folklore as “expression of the emotions of the folk”.

Her father wanted her to pursue a career in medicine and as such she was sent to Columbia Teachers College in New York. McBurnie resigned from medical studies

shortly after and took classes in Dance and Theatre Arts instead. She studied with Charles Weidman, Jose Limon as well as Martha Graham and Elsa Findley at Columbia, where McBurnie also taught Caribbean dance. She created a New York based dance company and was joined by Pearl Primus who had also worked in Caribbean and African folk forms. A performance would include dances from Haiti and Cuba, folk songs, Calypso and live drumming. This blew the New York audiences away and McBurnie was immortalized as a star known as La Belle Rosetta.

The company drew the attention of Alvin Ailey who congratulated her after he saw one of their performances in New York. They made such an impression on him that he spoke of the company for an entire day following their show and referred to McBurnie and Primus as those two outstanding West Indian women. It was no surprise therefore that later in 1978 the Alvin Ailey America Dance Theatre would pay tribute to the ‘Three Black Divas of Dance’ ‐ Beryl McBurnie, Katherine Dunham and Pearl Primus for their profound influence on the development of American Modern Dance. I had the pleasure of performing at that tribute.

By that time, McBurnie had already launched her company Little Carib Theatre and Dance Company in Trinidad and its repertoire reflected a West Indian emancipatory spirit which was deeply indebted to the African heritage “brought into these Caribbean Islands in the hell‐holes of slave ships”.

The Little Carib Company was invited to Jamaica as part of the country’s tercentennial celebration in 1955 and was an all island smash hit. They returned two years later to teach at the Summer School of the University College of the West Indies along with Lavinia Williams‐Yarbourugh and others. I attended the summer school as a young dancer and was the youngest student in the class.

Through Caribbean dance patterns, McBurnie introduced us to the specificity and richness of our West Indian expressiveness in gesture, lore, and rhythm as well as a fuller understanding and appreciation of our multi‐cultural heritage, of which most

of this vital expression is of African origin. Despite much love, adoration and achievement, the Little Carib Theatre was allowed to die for lack of financial support, lack of appropriate theatrical space and time for training in order to develop a new sophisticated technique. Yet, the seeds were sown and growing elsewhere in the Caribbean – Jamaica. (Dr. Sabine Sorgel)

IVY BAXTER Renowned as the pioneer of Jamaican pre‐independence Dance Theatre, Ivy Baxter was a trained Physical Education teacher; she was also trained in ballet and modern dance at the Sigurd Leeder School, London. Prior to going overseas, she studied ballet with Hazel Johnson, the premiere ballet teacher of the time and simultaneously, modern creative with Phyllis Stapella and Berta Fowles, two Canadian teachers at her alma mater, Wolmers Girls School. At this time, she received a scholarship to attend the University of Toronto and on completion returned to Jamaica where she formed her dance company, the Ivy Baxter Dance Group, in 1950.

Not long after her return and the formation of her group, she was invited by the University of Toronto to teach Caribbean dance. After teaching for a year and a half, she was awarded a one‐year scholarship by the British Council to attend classes at the London Sigurd Leeder School. Inspired by Leeder’s focus on movement as expression of self‐identity, on her return to Jamaica, Baxter was eager and ready to interpret the language of her country’s rich reservoir of ancestral movement. She began to explore, research and learn her Jamaican folk dance forms – Kumina, Pocomania, Gerreh, Brukins and other forms that existed in all the parishes of the island, and these dances became an important part of the repertoire for her company, thus sharing with Jamaicans – particularly the urban middle class – a part of their rich African heritage that was lost under colonialism.

Ivy Baxter was perceived as a vital voice in Jamaica’s local dance theatre scene. Her talent and inspiration produced the cradle of Jamaica’s Dance Theatre and along

with Beryl McBurnie is celebrated as a pioneer of Caribbean dance. For twelve years, 1950‐1962, the Ivy Baxter Dance Group was the flagship for the modern dance movement in Jamaica. Its accomplishments facilitated the formation of the National Dance Theatre (NDTC) in 1962.

JANUS ‐ LOOKING FORWARD REX NETTLEFORD AND THE NATIONAL DANCE THEATRE COMPANY There is nothing new anyone can say or write about our beloved Prof. the Hon. Rex Nettleford, that has not been written or said already. He was a man for all seasons.

This most remarkable of men who gifted the world with so many of his gifts departed the world too soon but the legacy he bequeathed us, in this instance, is the National Dance Theatre Company, which reflects his passion for the Caribbean, Jamaica and Dance. He cared deeply for the Company’s future because he understood what it meant for Jamaican Dance Theatre and cultural identity through the arts.

THE VISION The vision to have a Company of dancers, singers, musicians, creative technicians and administrators who demonstrated discipline and sustained commitment in contributing their talent and time to the development of a style of dance theatre that truly reflected the lore of the people of Jamaica and the wider Caribbean is indeed an amazing one.

The timing of the Company’s formation in 1962, the same year as Jamaica’s independence from Britain, was a deliberate and important move. It was highly symbolic, especially with the name ‘National’, of the questions that arose from matters of identity, ethnic and otherwise. The Company challenged notions of self‐ respect, nationhood and freedom and the name ‘National’ fuelled the discourse on questions of who we are that were ultimately resolved through movements and song in the Company’s performance. The mission of the Company therefore sought

to harmonize the various and diverse strands of the Jamaican cultural complex and to bring dance to the centre of that discourse. By Dance, I mean all forms ‐ ballet, modern creative dance theatre, (pioneered by Ivy Baxter) and all the folk forms from West African origin dance, which has included music being that it is part and parcel of our folk heritage. Were it not for the genius of Rex Nettleford and the faithful contribution of those who shared his vision, all that exists as the NDTC and Jamaican Dance community would certainly not have evolved the way it did.

JANUS’ VIEW At the inception of the NDTC, the Founding members came predominantly from the Ivy Baxter Creative Group and Eddy Thomas Dance Workshop with the addition of members from the Soohih Ballet School, The Faye Simpson School of Ballet, Betty and Punky Rowe, Barbara Fonseca and Gordon‐Ramsay.

Although the dancers were trained in established techniques coming from America and Europe, the quest was to discover a style that would be distinctly Jamaican pertinent in their artistic journey. Hence, a great deal of experimentation on the various techniques were carried out, which involved fusing Caribbean Dance vocabulary from the islands’ folkloric heritage and combining the literal with the abstract through careful distillation. The challenge was how to apply these techniques in terms of West Indian movement patterns from a folklore that abounds in movements, songs and oral tradition.

The choreographers had to therefore plunge deeply and adventurously into the creative imagination to create dances from universal ideas and ancestral knowledge.

As Rex Nettleford said: We have the advantage of being able to refer to the vocabulary of many different techniques with a view to develop in the style of our own. For whether we like it or not, we are an amalgam of different cultural strains which are yet to find the coherence and distinctiveness that can be expressed in any precise terms

The Company has grown with each new‐generation, in terms of technique and stage craft. There is a surge of new and emerging choreographers which augurs well for the prospect of ‘renewal and continuity’ in the Company’s vision.

JANUS OVERVIEW Founding Members • The Founding generation provided the energy, dynamics, and vibrancy needed to showcase Jamaica’s rich lore to Jamaica and the rest of the world while developing an administrative structure and system of training that would sustain the Company for more than four decades. Their work brought international acclaim to the Company and international attention to the value of the arts in nation building.

Bridge Generation • This generation brought to the fore, highly gifted, talented and exceptional performers who sustained the excellence of the Company’s Founders. They continued to enrich the work of cultural agencies, dance education and performance in schools and community groups and engaged in active research of traditional forms for preservation, documentation and education.

New Generation • This generation continues to build and experiment with the fusion of the NDTC Style and 21st century technical skills while addressing contemporary issues facing their generation. Some will morph into choreographers, administrators and heads of departments who in time will govern the Company, thus ensuring its continuity.

MUSIC IN THE ERA OF RENEWAL AND CONTINUITY Former Musical Director, Marjorie Whylie, has established herself as a dedicated musicologist with a natural feel for the dynamics of music for dance. She has

conducted extensive research in Caribbean and African folk music and rhythms for works by choreographers and presentations by the Singers during Seasons. For decades she had worked as Leader of the Singers, arranger‐composer and accompanist. She conducted lectures for and in the Company and has worked constantly with instrumentalists to create her own style and a large body of original compositions.

‘Miss Marge’ continues to be in great demand as a Jazz soloist and had said that "The musical palette of the NDTC can be bold and colourful, pale and pastel, striking and awe‐inspiring" much of which she is credited for. The new Musical Director is Ewan Simpson, an Attorney at Law and a talented Choral arranger who is poised to make his mark on and through the Company.

As we celebrate Jamaica and Company’s in our 50th year we recognize that the thrust towards self‐definition is at work in nations across Diasporas. It is movement that exists in many pockets and bears witness to African retentions that are sensitively preserved, vividly performed and practiced. Stories are still handed down by Griots and the culture and rich history of the Maroons has not eroded with time. Folklorists and scholars treasure the legacy of our ancestors and through Queenie of St. Thomas and the Revivalists our precious heritage lives on. As Jamaicans, we are proud of our ancestry, whether that ancestry is African, Asian, European or a mixing of or blending of these races. We see the concave chest and the isolation of the hips, supple spines and shoulders

shaking blended with Modern dance into a rich, fluid, lush, supple, organic, yet dynamic and elegant quality of movement that not only links us to our past but states unapologetically that we are true Jamaicans and we are proud of it!

BOUNDLESS IMAGINATION AND CREATIVITY: ACROSS GENERATIONS

by Judith Wedderburn

This is the vision that I hold of the National Dance Theatre Company (NDTC) of Jamaica, under new leadership, as it approaches the next 50 years. As with the first fifty years, there will be challenges.

Some will be new and different, others will simply be constant reminders of life itself, while demanding respect for our inherent humanity, transcending differences and leaving no space for disrespect. The newer challenges are shaped by a world in which technology has created a seamless global environment that demands new and confident expressions of self, community and nation. To be effective and enduring, these expressions require a deep commitment to maintaining the highest standards of personal and cultural integrity that boldly affirms, without a doubt that THIS IS WHO WE ARE, with no space for imitations.

I argue that perhaps the greatest challenge for members of the NDTC going forward, will be to use the lived experiences of their generation as the creative force that drives the continuity and renewal, both vital to the Company’s continued success in the world of dance‐theatre, at home and abroad.

The lived experiences of each generation shape the way we think, the way we love, the way we create, the way we experiment, and the way we dance and sing. Continuity will honour Jamaica’s classical dance traditions in which integrated rituals embody the totality of life and culture. Renewal will, simultaneously, demonstrate the endless possibilities which co‐exist for re‐interpreting these traditions, and identifying different ones, through the lens of a new generation of choreographers, dancers and singers. Through these lens, boundless imagination and creativity will be released from that nexus where Mind, Body and Spirit reside, to produce expressions of dance‐theatre as experienced by the new generation.

The new leadership as well as the young choreographers, dancers, singers and creative technicians of the NDTC now have the signal honour of taking the Company into the next fifty years. Such an honour does, however, carry substantial responsibility. To whom is the NDTC responsible, we might ask? First of all, to ourselves, to acknowledge the value of what now exists, both strengths and weaknesses, and see the many possibilities that exist for building on this foundation. Secondly, to like‐minded Spirits (present and past) who share our passion and commitment to the building of institutions, like the NDTC, as an integral part of expression of self and national development. The experiences of a new generation of dancers and singers expressed through disciplined, well‐honed minds and bodies, will determine the nature of the space that the NDTC will occupy on the cultural landscape, nationally and globally. It is through determination, discipline and courage, commitment

to the cultural integrity and excellence of their own craft that members of the NDTC will demonstrate to themselves and to their audiences, that yes, boundless imagination and creativity continues – across generations.

…..on the tall girl side of the Bridge Generation!

THEATRE ECONOMICS A Comment (taken from NDTC Newsletter VI – 1969)

To those of us who like to think that the grass is greener on the other side, that Government is wicked in not dispensing grants and subsidies to make theatre artists “live”, and that Jamaican society is not aware of her luck in having in her shores inspired children of the Almighty, here is something to think about:

“........economic pressures which beset the arts are not temporary – they are chronic. If things are left to themselves deficits are likely to grow. Above all, this view implies that any group which undertakes to support the arts can expect no respite. The demands upon its resources will increase, now and for the foreseeable future. [Established groups with well­ run fund­raising machinery] may find survival in the future no more difficult than it is today. But for the smaller more experimental and less well­organised groups, and the organisations which are not operated on a non­profit basis and so do not live by philanthropy, a state of financial crisis may just be perennial – it may well grow progressively serious”.

The quotation above is from the 20th Century Fund study of the performing arts in the United States. The book is called THE PERFORMING ARTS: THE ECONOMIC DILEMMA. It is a depth study of the problems “common to theatre, opera, music and dance” in Uncle Sam’s country. ALL JAMAICAN ARTISTS SHOULD READ IT – AND TAKE HEART. The authors – Wm. J. Baumol and Wm. G. Bowen – saw no rosy future for the American commercial professional theatre. They also prick the bubble of gas about the so‐called “cultural boom” of the sixties in the American theatre.

As for dancers, they are numbered among the poorest of the poor and many in America may indeed be devising less strenuous ways of remaining poor.

The authors concede that the difference between professional theatre and amateur is a very hazy one. They sometimes refer the term “professional” to all work showing high standards of competence. They also use the term to cover artists who are either paid or unpaid. But of the future they had this to say on p. 407 of the work:

“Whatever happens, the long­run outlook for the commercial theatre as it is currently organised seems grim. But this future world, which is potentially so inhospitable to at least some types of professional performance, may be expected to provide a climate in which

by Rex Nettleford

amateur activity can flourish ........In fact in some areas of activity amateur operation may be all that is financially feasible ­ the recent growth of the “off off­Broadway theatre”, in which actors, director and author may all be unpaid, can perhaps be ascribed in part to the financial problems of off­Broadway”

Financial feasibility is the key to understanding the ‘amateur situation’ in Jamaica. IT IS LIKELY TO REMAIN THAT WAY FOR THE FORESEEABLE FUTURE. There is a body of opinion that sees organisations like NDTC and LTM (and of late the National Theatre Trust) being state‐owned and state‐supported. The fact is that groups like NDTC and LTM are in competition with organisations such as hospitals, schools, university and voluntary social welfare agencies. They all Share a similar technology – are eleesemonary and will any day gain higher priority on the conscience of political decision‐takers or firms who wish to give something.

Nothing short of funds from a Foundation (and these tend to go to University and scientific research rather than to the arts) or a generous benefaction from some nut of a balletomane or theatre fanatic will give the strong foundations that the professional theatre needs. (New York City Ballet was lucky to have Lincoln Kirstein – a millionaire in his own right; the Harkness Ballet speaks for itself – it is Mrs. Harkness, the heiress, who “owns” and runs it; Martha Graham was lucky to have a de Rotschild behind her – her productions cost a pretty penny; and companies like the Danish, British and Russian ones have substantial grants from their governments as well as guaranteed gate receipts – the result of years of careful nurturing and conditioning of national audiences).

There is justification for using funds from the national treasury. The authors of the book already cited has this to say:

“If one agrees that the performing arts confer general benefits on the community as a whole, in the manner described above or in other ways, he must conclude that in part, and perhaps in large part, the arts are public goods whose benefits demonstrably exceed the receipts one can hope to collect at the box office. It is a long­standing tenet of economics that if the wishes and interests of the public are to be followed in the allocation of the

nation’s resources, this is the ultimate ground on which governmental expenditures must find their justification”

I doubt that the Jamaican Cabinet will feel inclined to the view that total support of the theatre arts is a sound tenet of economics when unemployment, low agricultural yield, space for schoolchildren, overpopulation and West Kingston are in the offing.

It would be interesting to see what a similar study of Jamaican theatre economics would throw up. The scale of operation is small enough to make the exercise possible. What interests this writer is how artists, as artists, manage to live in the Jamaican society. Most dancers do something else and when they work exclusively at dance it is as teachers. The classical ballet teachers who are established are apparently “comfortable” with their arrangements. Creative dance teachers are building up their areas of work. 80 students at £5 per term can bring the creative dance teacher £12OO per year (of three terms). This is more than a graduate teacher gets in some reputable schools. Further freelance work can add a few more pounds. The important thing is that such a dance‐teacher must have some discipline in budgeting to make his work worthwhile. So must the painters who will sell their paintings sporadically throughout a year. The Art School Diploma is accepted as a basic requirement for teaching and so many graduate artists are teaching in schools at a regular salary and still painting for themselves. Many have drifted into commercial art which is one of the most lucrative areas of employment in Jamaica today. The Art School may well remember this since there is seemingly still need for a number of expatriate graphic artists in the country. Musicians can hardly complain: if they are not swallowed up by commercial bands for fulltime they are on a part‐time basis while they hold down other regular jobs ‐ sometimes as regular musicians too. Musicians do not play for free when they play with amateur productions in the way dancers, singers and actors are expected to.

And they seem strong enough to get away with not putting in adequate rehearsals (which have to be paid for) and with even turning up late for performances. Another good outlet for them is the developing recording business. Some pop singers have seemingly benefited from this development. It is good that an artiste like Prince Buster can make a living here though like all sensible artistes he has invested in business. Artistes are likely to be “laid off” at any old time.

Actors and producers, like dancers and choreographers are among the least happy. If actors/producers teach as some do they get a steady income (they sometimes hating teaching — but this is what Jamaica has to offer at this time).

Pantomime payments are handsome enough in the upper echelons of stardom but it scales down inevitably to little more than out‐of‐pocket expenses if one takes into account the period of rehearsal and the long run – some five months altogether. Topical revues such as “Eight O’Clock......” and “Rahtid” reportedly — pay handsome fees to participants but this may be only part reality and part rumour. The productions always advertise themselves as being in aid of

some big charity. Jamaica Playhouse has aspirations to paying but it is understood that they have never been able to fulfil these high hopes. They were even robbed of some box office income one night during their last production. National Theatre Trust labels itself professionally‐inclined but its participants do not get paid as far as this writer can ascertain. In fact there was a public “declaration” in a newspaper column called “Merry Go Round” that it had lost money on its most recent production. Theatre 77 is a co‐operative effort that ploughs back its meagre “profits” into building‐up its effort. Both leading spirits behind it are drama teachers — elsewhere. Architects may not be regarded as artists in the normal sense — I think they are, and more. They are madly functional and are apparently not doing badly, it is said: some are even considered rich by Jamaican standards and a few are genuine patrons of the “lesser” arts. A few will probably say that their seven years of expensive study in universities abroad should not be compared with the few years dancers spend hopping around or actors spend emoting: but that would be begging the question. An excellent architect is certainly comparable to an excellent dancer, choreographer or drama producer – assuming one is interested in excellence. The society just doesn’t offer equal opportunities for these different excellences. Critics are not necessarily artists though here in Jamaica quite a few of them may be said to qualify — as actors, dancers, playwrights, play directors etc. They all do something other than criticising but they do make “a little something” off many an “amateur” production in the theatre as well as on canvas, in clay etc. Newspaper editors and radio station managers are to be congratulated for giving the arts so much attention and providing some pittance for critics. It is often more than people who create get out of their works.

Gate receipts cannot always be relied upon — it is safer to say they can never be relied upon. Yet some theatre enthusiasts still depend on them hopefully. The programme with its many ads helps to foot the bill. To this extent the commercial firms of Kingston support the arts much more than many artists are willing to admit. Even with the pantomime the programme brochure is an important money‐maker to help defray production costs. NDTC gate receipts of some £2000 in a season are just under what a Season costs to put on ‐ each dance is a complete production in itself. The programme brochure, thanks to the hard work of certain members of the Committee, helps to make up losses. In some years, firms such as Desnoes and Geddes, Rothman’s Jamaica Ltd. and Alcan Jamaica Ltd have “sponsored” the Seasons. In other seasons the NDTC has had to start from scratch. Outside of inescapable expenses in connection with preparation of the production (costumes – in all its phases —, sets, lighting equipment, labour) and the musicians there are no monies paid out for talent fees (dancers etc.). NDTC has ended up with a great many assets but little money. And the little that is “made” is made because of the philanthropy of free service. This philanthropy is a necessity in the present state if creative work is to be carried on in the theatre. Even with the pantomime there has to be some charity – the proceeds still go to pay off the enormous debt on the Little Theatre which, despite its faults, “has served many groups very well. Those who talk about the poor masses from West Kingston not being drawn into “St.

Andrew Theatre” should think about the implications. Can they afford the time needed for the work and can they give that time “free”?

With the free service philanthropy being given by actors, dancers, singers designers, creative technicians and a very few musicians, the question is whether they will allow any one of their numbers to make money off them without themselves all sharing in the spoils. Many a group has suffered from this dilemma. The all‐should‐be‐paid or none‐at‐all formula is never absolutely applied but it can never be absolutely ignored, else operations will just NOT run smoothly. Even when everyone is paid, there is bound to be argument about differentials as one would find in any work situation where there is a good trade union instinct. In an “amateur situation” this is particularly explosive. We know that public funds are not readily available and any individual who wishes government funds without establishing their effort as a fully co‐operative enterprise working for the general good (as well as for some personal satisfaction) is barking up the wrong tree. Even well‐established community efforts like the LTM is not getting public funds for the asking; individuals who as artist go on to make people feel that they feel that the society owes them a living and ought to do something about it sometimes do the greatest disservice to the arts. Many writers (and poets) who are in a class by themselves seem attuned to doing something else once they give up the pleasures of exile and return home. All our artists will have to remember that society also owes others a living – carpenters, plumbers, teachers, street cleaners, doctors. Everybody has somehow got to get down to the business of working, to make that living, however!

The future of theatre economics is tied up with the future generation. The audience has to be educated around to the habit of supporting the theatre and the arts in general in the way that our present generation supports Julie Andrews, Richard Burton and Miss Taylor and that 007 agent at the cinema box office. NDTC itself has always been pledged to the responsibility of lecture demonstrations to the young. It did several in the past and must resume them now, National Theatre Trust and Theatre 77 must do the same with drama and not expect monetary returns.

Training programmes at low cost must be available to the young. Classical ballet attracts many of the young but too many of these children are at the mercy of ballet mommas who are eager to prepare their daughters for the social whirl (and better still marriage) instead of being artistically creative. Many people do not believe in taking drama lessons: efforts by the UWI Extra Mural Department have had varied success. Dance and drama in education is also something to work for. There lies our potential audience of tomorrow.

As for immediate needs artists will have to be prepared to keep trying at the National Lottery.

Some rich patron is another possibility but potential donors of that vintage are concentrated in Montego Bay and are not always easy to get at. The ideal is for the Cabinet to attract into it some “mad artist” type who will push through a cabinet submission to make civil servants out of

accomplished performing artists. But can you see any Government in this country giving priority to the performing arts when constituents are almost on the breadline, – and in need of houses and education? It looks as though artists will have to continue depending on the generosity of private donors. But Government does not even help in the matter. The fear of cancer is greater than the love of some creative expression in an evening in the theatre: tax exemptions are likely to go to cancer donors rather than to theatre patrons.

Where, where, WHERE, do we go from here? Can some reader write in and tell me?

Di Werks’: Arranging for the NDTC Singers Ewan Simpson Acting Musical Director, NDTC

When the invitation to perform as a drummer/percussionist with the NDTC came from the late Professor Nettleford’s lips to my ears, it was accompanied by his signature artistic non‐specificity regarding the scope, duration, rationale or ‘method to the madness’ of my participation. It is no wonder, that in his own inimitable style and supported by no less a mortal than his accomplice of a Musical Director, Marjorie Whylie, he successfully managed to lead me down an unspecified path of involvement with the Company as not only the newest katta stick player in the seminal Kumina, or the most distracting benta player in Gherreh, but as a standby (read surrogate) stage manager, sound or lighting director and in some instances, (very few instances) a singer.

The fact that I very rarely participated as a singer with the company (at least officially) came as a bit of a surprise considering the fact that I, at least in those early years, maintained concurrent membership in the NDTC and the UWI Singers, a group within which I was not only a vocalist and drummer/percussionist, but also a principal musical arranger. I must confess however that I was constantly provided with the unsolicited assurance that I was not dancing, singing, and arranging only because it wasn’t possible for me to do ‘everything at the same time’.

Despite those assurances, my increasing appreciation of the vision Professor had for the artistic direction in which the Company should go, coupled with my own internal musical flame resulted in many of the musical works performed by the Company being worked and re‐ worked in my head. Of course, on the occasions that I had the opportunity, I would also participate in my own re‐wording and reinterpretation of works for the private consumption of my colleague members of the Company and close friends. Though not always fit for public consumption, they created an outlet for my creative energies, a platform for my constantly reconstructive musical and lyrical mind.

Fifteen years on, I made an offer to the Musical and Artistic Directors that in the year of the NDTC’s 50th, which happened to be Jamaica’s 50th as well, I felt it opportune, if not appropriate for me to arrange a suite of songs for the NDTC Singers. A dissenting voice was not heard between (or is it among?) them and so it began…..

What started out as a desire to arrange a suite of festival songs, became a suite of modern songs celebrating life as a Jamaican. Hence ‘Di Werks’, which could be read as ‘di running’s, or ‘di hustle’, or simply ‘so di ting se’.

It was however not an easy task of mutual adaptation to two, or might I say several, different learning and teaching styles. The singers were accustomed to the pre‐established, scored arrangements of Ms. Whylie and had to adapt to my evolutionary (dare I say revolutionary) style of pulling it together on the voices in rehearsal. Needless to say, the resistance was often times impulsive and even involuntary, but I believe I managed to get even the most reluctant to meet me half way. The combination of Phones, Dictaphones, iPhones, iPods and iPads as well as pieces of iPaper were all brought into play with varying levels of effectiveness, oftentimes becoming more of a distraction than a learning aid. I eventually gave in to Ms. Whylie’s supplication to put at least some of it down on paper, and by the time the arrangement was fully taught, it was all scored, including the trap‐set parts that are yet to be performed publicly.

The master orchestral score presented to Ms. Whylie, was the result of several consultations with my great friend and colleague Ian Hurd, who has continued to share with me a vision of notating arrangements of songs done by us and about us Jamaicans. The struggle continues…….and there were several gruelling hours of doing it and re‐doing it, working it and re‐ working it. There were unorthodox moments when the contraltos sang above the sopranos or the tenors sang lower than the basses…though not always intentionally.

In the end my former student now colleague member of the Company, Kevin Moore, did a sensitive job of staging Di Werks, in his own style, but influenced by the sensibility prescribed by the late Professor. The Prof would be proud, not only of the manifestation of Di Werks, but of the fact that I have now accepted the offer made by his successor, Mr. Moncrieffe, to take up the mantle left by our beloved Ms. Whylie on her recent retirement.

I guess the conspiracy was fully in train when she wrote me a most flattering email during my summer visit to the UK, having missed the debut performance of the arrangement due to other national commitments. The salutation read thus:

Dear Arranger par excellence!

Di Werks worked, and we WORKED IT!......

I now have no choice but to carry on from Di Werks and make it Work!

Third NDTC Member as Director of School of Dance Kerry‐Ann Henry – Balletmistress, NDTC

Director (Acting) School of Dance Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts

Jamaica as a Dance Destination There can be no doubt in anyone’s mind that Jamaica is a dance force to be reckoned with.

We know to not only ‘dance ah yaad’ but we know how to ‘dance abroad’, as seen in the plethora of local companies who tour the world and in our home grown talents who like myself have worked in international companies and productions of world acclaim.

The genesis of Dance in Jamaica can be traced from the very first inhabitants of this wonderful island. Taken even further along the continuum of our island’s dance heritage we have deep rooted African cultural retentions in our traditional folk and popular dance cultures as seen in the undulations of the body; the significant emphasis on improvisation and; an undeniable ‘aesthetic of the cool’1. The undeniable sense of occasion and community are clearly identified and practiced.

Jamaica is known for its popular dance culture and attracts international attention as seen in the constant flow of Japanese and other nationalities flooding our island to participate first‐ hand in learning and performing popular dancehall steps. The infamous dancehall queen competition has seen its fair attraction of international entrants. But this is not a new thing.

Dance, as mentioned previously, is deeply rooted in our culture and history. The very rich culture and heritage of dance in Jamaica, and its inclusion in so many distinct areas in our

1

Such principles are associated with characteristics of African/Traditional Dance, Suzanna Sloat (ed.), Caribbean Dance from Abakuá to Zouk (2002),Gainesville: University Press of Florida

social, educational, political, religious and economic spheres, directs a path for Jamaica as a Dance destination.

Implications for Educational, Professional, and Performing Spaces in Jamaica Then 50 years ago the National Dance Theatre Company (NDTC) was formed. One of the missions of the company was to develop dance in Jamaica from a national and cultural perspective. If we take it even further to look at the ethos of the late Professor Rex Nettleford, co‐founder of the company, we see a trend towards investigations and celebrations of identity; Caribbean identity and one’s (individual or entity) place in the Diaspora. From this vision and structure birthed three individuals who later became founders of the School of Dance.

In the 1970s Sheila Barnett, Barbara Requa and Bert Rose opened a school offering classes for company dancers, and training for: choreographers, instructors, and dance educators.

Later, the three formed the Jamaica School of Dance, birthed out of the post‐independent 1970s political movement and strong government policies that focused on cultural change and national unity.

The 1975 philosophy of the School of Dance states that:

The dance, through gesture, movement, content and with specific relation

to history and social patterns, is not only a powerful means of expression and communication, but also an agent and product of the cultural heritage.2

In 1976, the Cultural Training Centre (CTC) was established by the government of Jamaica as a national centre for the arts. The School of Dance combined with the Schools of Music, Drama, and Visual Arts. The Jamaica School of Dance was incorporated with Sheila Barnett as the director; Barbara Requa as the administrator and head of the junior division, and Bert Rose as the senior instructor responsible for the performance elements of the programme.

Barbara Requa would later hold positions of Director of the School of Dance (later) Dean of the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts, and Acting Principal of te Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts.

2

EMC School of Dance archive

In 1995 the CTC was transferred to the Ministry of Education and Culture and renamed Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts. The College developed a unified mission:

To enrich the general aesthetic sensibilities of the Caribbean region through the delivery of quality visual and performing arts education that promotes the development of artists, teachers, research, and the use of appropriate technology.

The distinction between the two missions is the clear definition of cultural heritage and focus, not so readily apparent in the new mission. This created scope and room for debate on intention, focus, programme needs, reviews and philosophies. There were changing opinions and requests for more ballet and modern classes and less traditional folk classes.

The focus on ballet and modern technique increased as persons started to look to working and performing outside of Jamaica. In the same breath the hiring of trained dance educators was not at the desired levels as schools (primary and secondary) were not sold on the need for having trained personnel in this field and often sought to hire less trained and experienced but willing/interested persons and/or other teachers in the school. The focus on dance in education was on preparing students for the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission’s Festival of Performing Arts Dance Competition. This continues today but to a lesser extent.

Now This continued relationship with the NDTC and the Edna Manley College continued through lecturers, performances, graduates, and Directors of the School. There have been reviews and reorganization of access to and content of programs in a response to cultural and economic needs and in driving change and development in the Dance sector.

The School of Dance, along with other departments in the Edna Manley College, have revamped their programmes and have established new ones to not only respond to this change but to drive the much needed development in the human capacity in the educational, professional and performing spaces considering the levels and standards of demands. There has indeed been a continued desire for more trained persons in the education as well as performance sectors as seen in dance groups/programmes located

within schools and within the hotel entertainment industry. There is a proliferation of dance studios and classes. More and more persons are interested in where their teachers have trained and/or perform(ed).

The School of Dance, in collaboration with the Schools of Drama and Music, recently developed its own Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) Degree in Performance and Choreography (4 years) and an Associate of Arts (AA) Degree (2years). In a submission to the University Council of Jamaica, the School of Dance described these developments as being:

fuelled by the school’s mandate to continually provide quality training in all aspects of dance theatre and production (performance, choreography and production), as well as the need to provide young people in Jamaica and the Caribbean region with higher and more globally recognized qualifications.

Career Pathways Graduates are equipped to pursue careers as: professional dancers and choreographers in a variety of organizations and sectors such as: the hotel industry, cruise ships, Musicals, local and international professional dance companies; as teachers; community dance practitioners; dance administrators; dance advocates; and production managers.

Garth Fagan, NDTC alumnus and founder and artistic director of Garth Fagan Dance (based in Rochester, New York), flies the flagship of the Jamaican Dancer as the choreographer for the world acclaimed musical Disney’s ‘The Lion King’. Mr. Fagan, as a part of his contract discussed auditioning in Jamaica for performers for the Musical. Directors of the musical have auditioned in and continue to return to Jamaica to recruit dancers, singers and actors.

Kerry‐Ann Henry, Deborah Powell‐Valentino, David Blake, Jermaine Rowe, Candice Morris and Tovah‐Marie Bembridge were recruited in local auditions. Other Jamaicans dancers who performed in the musical include: Dwayne Barnaby, Marcus James, Marc Hall and Shelley‐ Ann Maxwell. All attended classes at the School of Dance.

Within the popular dance scene we see local talents being recruited to host workshops and classes in dancehall in countries as exotic and far as Russia. Orville Hall, Xpressionz dancers, Kimberly ‘Weezy’ Hyman (past‐student at the School of Dance) and Latonya Styles are some such talents, to name a few.

Future Many traditional folk forms are based on the concept and performance of/in circles. This also is a natural formation and organization within popular dance spaces in Jamaica. As such it is my belief that we have come full circle and that the dancer has to once again increase their focus and identity as a cultural agent. There is also an increased focus on culture within ‘Brand Jamaica’. This has manifested within the School of Dance as seen in the demand for the BFA in Folk and Traditional Studies programme.

Increasing focus on the Creative Industry sector, and its economic scope and relationship to other sectors, indeed offer opportunities and placement of Jamaica as not only a vacation destination but a Dance destination; not just cultural or music but a Dance destination in that Dance is a powerful enough vehicle to attract and to stand on its own, in its own right.

Jamaica can also be positioned as a Dance destination for talent scouts who appreciate and in many instances, demand the unique blend and prowess of the Jamaican dancer. The latter is evident in the continued appreciation of local auditions to recruit performers for the world acclaimed musical Disney’s ‘The Lion King’ and in the recruiting of local dancers with the popular dance arena in leading classes and workshops abroad in dancehall steps, choreography and history. These increasing opportunities require increased access, strong standards, high‐level classes, wide knowledge base, innovation, marketing and entrepreneurship. The latter implying increased focus on arts management, as individuals and as organizations, and the development policies and professional bodies to drive and facilitate this much needed support and development.

The climate is ripe for advanced training and professional studies, particularly in indigenous genres that have a significant sense of identity, unique branding and cultural presence.

There must be increased value placed on cultural identity and folk forms and an increased fervor of the artist as a cultural agent. African heritage and cosmology believe in the unity and connectedness of all elements and that there is no separation. As such, the Caribbean

dancer must embrace versatility, connectedness and innovation through unique blending and must also promote and participate in increasing technical skills: more diverse classes with competence in all dance genres (ballet, modern, jazz, traditional folk forms, popular dances); performing at a higher level; being highly competitive internationally while yet being able to embrace and be skilled at our folk and popular dance forms.

Jamaica as a Dance Destination is an effort that shows much potential but must be a National effort. The School of Dance can and will be a leader in this movement. The development of the BFA in Traditional Folk studies at the School of Dance earmarked for September 2014, exemplifies such responses. However, there are additional needs that require partnerships at many levels. There needs to be increased sensitivity and understanding of the dancer in the profession of dance from both the dancer and the employer. Professional dance bodies and associations are also needed. In the latter there have been initiatives, as seen most recently in a resurgence of efforts in the formation of the Associates of Dance Affiliates of Jamaica (ADAJ), which is planning an official launch and publication of its mandate early next year. There is the need for government, corporate and societal support and development. For example, instituting education policies and reforms whereby only trained dance educators are employed within schools. The Jamaican corporate and social sectors must embrace, accept and pay for dance as a commodity and not just a ‘for leisure’ activity. Increased accessibility to and a plethora and proliferation of professional classes, performances, and education and pedagogy workshops are needed.

And crucially, investment in research and innovation in developing dance career paths need to be explored. Non‐traditional areas such as dance journalism and dance therapy can be promoted. Given the increasing technological age, there are opportunities for individuals and artists to not only increase their marketing potential but also to earn without even leaving their homes. Jamaica as a Dance Destination is real and should be promoted.

FROM THE ARCHIVES “Revisiting the Past, Forging the Future” Compiled by Mark Phinn Archivist, NDTC

In an attempt to fully understand the underlined philosophy of the National Dance Theatre Company (NDTC) of Jamaica, From the Archives, will highlight past articles that investigate and or track the beginnings and intended future of the Company. The following article – “Jamaican Dance Theatre” – taken from dance and dancers shed light on the Company’s humble development and sustained growth and in parts its repertoire, artistic directors, members and defined style et al….

Jamaican Dance Theatre

A Dance Theatre for Island in the Sun

Jamaican Dance Theatre A Dance Theatre for Island in the Sun Rex Nettleford – former Rhodes Scholar at Oxford and now co‐director of Jamaica’s National Dance Theatre, reports on the progress being made on the island

‘The hottest baby to hold,’ that was how the sunlit island of Jamaica was considered in the British Empire; now it is one of newest independent members of the Commonwealth. Not much there to do with theatre dancing you might think. For too long the island has been taught of as a rum‐soaked tourist resort or the home of sprinters (Wint and McKenley of Helsinki days) or cricketers (Headley, Constantine, Valentine and Worrell of Lords test cricket).

It is perhaps significant that both in the fields of athletics and cricket the Jamaican exponents have often been praised for their litheness of limb and for the grace with which they use their bodies in obedience to the inescapable principles of coordination more readily associated with the dancer. More recently, when the Martha Graham Company appeared in London, it was seen that this dancer‐co‐or‐dination belongs to, and is actually cultivated by, Jamaicans, who are not athletes or cricketers for one of Graham’s most eminent artists, Clive Thompson, was praised for his fine presence and sense of style.

Thompson, in fact, joined up with the Graham Company after receiving most of his training in Jamaica from creative dance pioneer, Ivy Baxter, and ballet teacher Madame Soohih, a Jamaican national whose Russian husband taught ballet in Jamaica in the late forties before he died.

Thompson was not the only Jamaican to join the Graham Company for with him in 1961 was Eddy Thomas, who never appeared in England but who was in the United States, Canada and the Caribbean and who is the co‐artistic director of Jamaica’s National Dance Theatre Company.

The kind of training these dancers received in Jamaica form the foundation of a dynamic dance movement which has a history of some 15 years and which has found support from an audience ranging from folk to the more sophisticated. Over the years this audience has been treated to a large number of dance presentations and recitals – in the early days by Ivy Baxter Dance Group and many schools recitals and more recently by artists such as Markova and Dolin, Toumanova, Dunham, Charrat and Miskovitch.

Another feature of the Jamaican dance scene has come with folk operas called ‘pantomimes’ (so called because they have their beginnings in the form of the early English Christmas pantomimes); through summer schools organised by the University of the West Indies which serves the entire English‐speaking Caribbean; through festivals organised on a national scale by the successive governments which in each regime displayed considerable interest of the creative arts in the island. Now after years of experimentation, disappointment and encouragements, levels of excellence in performance and choreography are being realised through the National Dance Theatre Company recently formed by and of which Eddy Thomas and myself are artistic directors.

Thomas, whose early years of training were in Jamaica

under local teachers and at University summer schools, received an award from the Jamaican Government in recognition of the tremendous work he has done as dancer, choreographer, musician and designer. He is all these rolled into one and is, as a result, a leading contributor not only to the vibrant dance theatre but the Jamaican theatre in general. He used his award to study in the United States with the Graham School as base but with opportunity to work with such modern dance artists as Jose Limon, Merce Cunningham, Louis Horst and ending up with a short season in Graham’s Company on Broadway as well as working with Agnes de Mille in Kwamina. His return to Jamaica nearly two years ago made the formation of the National Dance Theatre Company possible. In 18 months the Company has not only managed to present two highly successful seasons at home in Kingston and around the Jamaican countryside, but has also appeared at the Stratford Shakespearean Festival in Ontario, Canada as part of a cultural exchange programme between Jamaica and Canada (early last year the Royal Winnipeg Ballet appeared in Jamaica). For Eddy Thomas this was of particular significance for the works

he created not only won real acclaim for their depth and originality but the costumes he designed gave the programme a professional finish that took most of the North American audience and critics by surprise.

The Company is an amateur one. But the directors insist on a completely professional approach and standards. Everybody who dances has a job at which he works during the day. The secret of the success lies in the dedication and willingness to work hard after working hours on the part of every single one of the 18 performing members of the Company. They hold jobs such as commercial artists, typists, laboratory technicians, civil servants, teachers, and so on. An odd collection it may seem but they bring to the studio a diversity and richness that results in a certain breadth of understanding.

This, on the other hand, could have resulted in a kind of artistic anarchy but the Company members have been most of them dancing together for anything from five to ten years – working at techniques as well as performing in different types of shows.

In 1961, for instance, they appeared in Washington D.C. under the title of The Jamaican Company of Dancers and showed, in their first tour outside the Caribbean, what new dimensions they could achieve when faced with the challenge of a wider and probably more informed theatre public. The critics were encouraging and the dancing was strengthened by the appearances of Clive Thompson and Eddy Thomas who had just finished a Graham season on Broadway.

The present Company – Sheila Barnett, Audley Butler, Joyce Campbell, Shirley Campbell, Bridget Casserly, Maureen Casserly, Yvonne da Costa, Barbara Grant, Mavis Lai, Monica McGowan Rosalie Markes, Barry Moncrieffe, Ronan Critchlow, Bertie Rose, Gertrude Sherwood, Eddy Thomas and myself –

are drawn from the leading dance schools in the island (both classical and creative modern). The Company devoted all their spare time, which for the majority means from 5:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. or later, to the pursuit of their art.

There is no hard and fast rule about the dance ethos of the Company and, far from indulging a blind chauvinism in the wake of Independence, we simply impose on ourselves the unpretentious goal of producing works which will move to the pulse of Jamaica. We try to reflect faithfully the movement patterns of the area and the special kinaesthetic quality that we believe is ours. It is difficult to define even in dance terms but readily shown in the contrapuntal co‐ordination of the ordinary man and woman on the island.

A good deal of emphasis has always been placed in rooting the dance on discipline and on techniques, established in areas such as North America and Europe, now being developed out of the natural movement‐patterns peculiar to its Caribbean neighbours. The pioneer Ivy Baxter studied technique at the Sigurd Leeder School in London and some of the classical ballet teachers offer an optional course for the RAD exams. Under the guidance of Barbara Fonseca, a Royal Ballet School graduate, literally hundreds have sat for and gained RAD certificates over the past seven to eight years. It is against this kind of universal susceptibility to discipline that the National Dance Theatre operates. Its directors are very conscious of the stifling effect exaggerated emphasis on technique can have for any dance movement but they are committed to a judicious balance between maintaining the vitality and imposing the control. The nature of the repertory itself imposes strictures for we are still in our formative stage; the approach is still one of adventure into the unknown and every dance tends to have an element of this discovery. Choreographers for all their predetermined

vocabulary often find themselves hunting, a form within the context of thematic material that is drawn from the collective experience of the Jamaican people.

The repertory at the moment therefore betrays a certain variety of themes and treatment as well as a range of technical competence among the performers. So Herb Whittaker of the Toronto Globe and Mail described the Company:

‘The visitors from Jamaica are greatly in stretching Stratford’s boundaries, for in one programme they contribute as much as three other companies might. They operate as exponents of a primitive folk culture, as an interpretive dance company and as an interesting modern dance aggregation.’

Dances like African Scenario, based on West African traditional customs, and the Afro‐cultist theatre‐piece, Pocomania, together with Afro‐Caribbean folk dances would probably fall into the first category. Into the second fall works like Games of Arms, Eddy Thomas’s satire on the world situation seen through the eyes of Jamaican schoolchildren, and Dialogue for Three dealing with the helplessness of the male in the face of the dominant female force (sociologists refer to Jamaica as a matriarchal society). Also into this second group would come jazz works largely created by Thomas and a third choreographer, Sheila Barnett. Into the third group will fall works such as Thomas’s Legend of Lovers’ Leap based on a moving 19th century Jamaican slave legend and which draws on the dramatic elements in the Graham technique.

In spite of this variety, the Company has its peculiar qualities which betray the elusive unity that underlines the chequered past of an island that was conquered by the Spaniards by the English who settled and governed it with aid of British administrators and planters and African slaves. The latter of the two elements are the two elements which are strongest, though Chinese, East Indians and Lebanese were to come in later and add further diversity and richness to the Jamaican heritage.

Against this back ground the Company is likely to face, in fact already faces, critics who may have decided views on what elements, and in what degree of potency, should be selected from the heritage in order to make the concoction that everyone would love to see evolved as ‘Jamaican dance’. This kind of difference in point of view is likely to turn on more fundamental problems of the nature and purpose of the art and of dance in particular. But too much of this in this present stage could only serve to sap the Company of much needed time so as to create and explore for the further enrichment of the art in terms comprehensible to the people of the island and the Caribbean area. An audience has been built up over the years for dance theatre and a good percentage of it can be said to be fairly discriminating and a hard core of it is downright difficult. But all this gives the Company the kind of challenge it ought to have even at this stage.

The Government through its Ministry of Development and Welfare have made grants to the Company for its seasonal productions as well as for the tour to Canada. Public support is likely to increase financially through that much over‐ worked device of ‘the Friends of the Company’. The Company naturally benefits immensely from that fact that none of the dancers are paid, nor are the choreographers; nor its composers Oswald Russell who teaches at the Jamaica School of Music, nor lighting director George Carter who did a lighting course at the Saddler’s Wells Theatre two years ago, nor the painters, two of whom (Eugene Hyde and Milton Harley) did backdrops for the Company’s last Seasons in Jamaica and Canada.

Despite this, as with any fledging dance company, there are many problems, not the least of them financial ones. As to the future professional status of the Company, it might be possible for something to be worked on lines similar to those in some Latin American countries where performers hold jobs as dance teachers in schools and colleges. The dancers in the Philippines do not fail to hit the levels of excellence in their idiom despite the fact the pursuit of art is fully part‐time for them. Similarly in Jamaica, with a sympathetic environment comprising both audience and officialdom, the vigour and energy of organisers behind the scenes, the enthusiasm and dedication of the dancers themselves, there is hope!

Opportunities for cultural tours abroad will enhance considerably the artistic and performing potential of the Company as well as presenting Jamaica to the world in a fashion that is worthy of her people. They, in artistic terms, are fashioning something unique which is based on a life which is the melody of Europe played upon the rhythm of Africa with latter‐day integrated dissonance of America, its biggest neighbour. It is true what one Canadian critic said:

…dance theatre in Jamaica now is as varied as in pace and international in flavour as the West Indies themselves.

This is in many ways a beginning – with dance it is almost always a beginning – and it is to be hoped that England will be able to see the National Dance Theatre Company in the near future. To the exoticist who merely wants his appetite whetted with writhing primitive bodies the Company might very well prove a disappointment. To those with a genuine interest in dance and the opportunities it gives that remarkable instrument, the human body, to explore the hidden range of its expression, the Company might well prove something more than merely interesting. Much of what we are aiming at, as well as audience reaction to us were summed up by another Canadian critic at Stratford:

“…when the inclusion of the Jamaican Company in the Festival was first announced, there seemed to be a quite widespread tendency to dismiss it as just another group of ethnic dancers.

In the first performance at Stratford, these young people have established themselves as something much more important, a Company of wide background and multiple traditions, producing highly creative work, not only in the dance itself but also in the field of costume and design.”

Nettleford, Rex. “Jamaican Dance Theatre.” dance and dancers [England] 27 December 1963: 30+.

NDTC NEWS NDTC NEWS NDTC NEWS NDTC NEWS

By Marlon Simms

NDTC 50 SPECIAL EVENTS • The Company had several key events to mark its 50th Anniversary beginning with a press launch on Thursday, February 2, 2012. The programme was emceed by the Company’s Chairman Hon. Carlton Davis and Hon. Barbara Gloudon was invited guest speaker. The event was very well supported by the press and following the main presentation the programme closed with excerpts of Oniel Pryce’s Barre Talk, Clive Thompson’s Phases of the Three Moons and Odyssey choreographed by Rex Nettleford. NDTC Facebook 50th Launch Album

• An open workshop featuring Cuba’s Eduardo Rivero‐Walker, Artistic Director of Compania Teatro Dela Danza Del Caribe, Edisnel Rodríguez González and Barry Moncrieffe was held on Sunday, February 19, 2012 at the NDTC Studios.

The Company welcomed participants from School of Dance at the Edna Manley College, Movements Dance Company, L’Acadco – A United Caribbean Dance Force, Vickers Dance Studio and Campion Dance Society.

• On May 28, 2012 the Company presented a lecture demonstration on the Company’s style as taught through Professor Rex Nettleford class to group of young dancers and children at the NDTC Studios. The event was well attended by students from the School of Dance Junior Department, Wolmer’s Dance Troupe, Belmont Park Primary and other educational institutions. The attendees were treated to excerpts of Arsenio Andrade‐Calderon’s Asi Somos, Jeanguy Saintus’ Incantation and Rex Nettleford’s Ritual of the Sunrise. Following the presentation the attendees were invited to participate by demonstrating what they had learnt and a short dance sequence taught by Phillip Earle. NDTC Facebook 50th Lec Dem

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An official church service was held at the UWI Chapel on Sunday March 11, 2012 at 6 pm. Officiating ministers were Rev. Dr. Ralph Hoyt, Msgr. Kenneth Mock Yen and Rev. Dr. Shirley Campbell. Attending the service were former and present members of the Company, well‐wishers, family members and friends of the Company. The service paid tribute to those who have served in the Company, those who continue to serve and those who have passed on. A special prayer was said for the continued efforts at “Renewal and Continuity” of the Company.

• The Company honoured the service and support of present and former members, patrons and sponsors in a special awards ceremony held at the Mona Visitor’s Lodge, UWI on Sunday, October 28, 2012. The Hon. Barbara Gloudon was special guest speaker and spearheading the event was founding member Mrs. Barbara Requa.

NDTC Facebook Albums

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The Company closes the year’s celebration with the Young Choreographers’ Showcase held at the NDTC Studios under the theme “Revisiting the Past, Forging the Future”, on December 16, 2012 at 6:30 p.m. The event features creations of Marlon Simms, Kerry‐Ann Henry, Abeldo Gonzalez‐Fonseca, Kevin Moore, Keita‐ Marie Chamberlain, Natalie Chung, Stefanie Thomas, Yendi Phillipps, NDTC Singers/Musicians under directorship of newly appointed Musical Director Ewan Simpson and excerpt from Rex Nettleford’s Caves End.

SEASON OF DANCE, SPECIAL PERFORMANCES AND TOURS SEASON OF DANCE The annual Morning of Movement and Music was held on Sunday, April 8, 2012 at 6 a.m. and was dedicated to former Principal dancer Madge Broderick who made her transition on April 1, 2012. A repeat performance was held at the Scots Kirk United Church, Duke Street, Kingston on Sunday, April 22, 2012 at 4 pm.

• The Company’s had it annual Season of Dance from July 14‐ 29, 2012 at the Little Theatre to packed houses. [NDTC Facebook 50th Gala Album THE REX NETTLEFORD FOUNDATION • The Company performed with UWI Singers on January 31, 2012 at the Little Theatre for the Rex Nettleford Foundation. Dance‐works performed included Drumscore (Rex Nettleford), …minutes and seconds (Kerry‐Ann Henry and Momo Sanno), Barre Talk (Oniel Pryce), Urban Fissure (Chris Walker) and Gerrehbenta (Rex Nettleford).

COLOUR MUSEUM – EDNA MANLEY COLLEGE • Marlon Simms, Allatunje Connell and Tamara Noel performed Christina Gonzalez’s My Skin, My Kin at School of Dance’s Colour Museum on Thursday, February 16, 2012 at School’s Dance Studio Theatre.

DANCE VIBE 50 –JaRIA • As part of Reggae Month’s schedule activities on February 11, 2012, Tovah‐Marie Bembridge, Mark Phinn, Tamara Noel, Patrick Earle and Chelcia Creary performed Chris Walker’s Urban Fissure at the Louise Bennett Theatre. The event, dubbed Dance Vibe 50, was staged by Jamaica Reggae Industry Association (JaRIA).

LINES DANCE INSTITUTE – CECIL CHARLTON HALL Marlon Simms and Kerry‐Ann Henry performed …minutes and seconds (Chor. Kerry‐Ann Henry and Momo Sanno) at Jihan Palmer‐Cooke’s Lines Dance Institute annual Evening of Excellence at the Cecil Charlton Hall on Saturday, June 16, 2012 in Mandeville. The event which started at 6 p.m. was hosted by former L’Acadco member Aisha Davis and featured various dance groups.

EMANCIPATION PARK The Emancipation Park held “Celebration Time”, a performing arts concert in the park on Tuesday, July 31, 2012 to commemorate the Emancipation Park’s tenth anniversary. Rex Nettleford’s Kumina was performed as it was first done in 2002 at the Park’s official opening ceremony. The evenings’ performance was hosted by Fae Ellington and featured other performances from Eric Donaldson, Michael Sean Harris, To Isis, Andrew Lawrence, Ellan Edwards and the Emancipation Park Band directed by Peter Ashbourne.

JAMAICA DANCE UMBRELLA – PHILIP SHERLOCK CENTRE The Company performed Rivero‐Walker’s Sulkari at the Philip Sherlock Centre – ‘Home of the Creative Imagination’ on Friday, March 2, 2012 at Jamaica Dance Umbrella. Eduardo’s Rivero‐Walker’s master work was accompanied with live singing from the NDTC Singers led by Helen Christian and also featured guest Lead Drummer Deury Cisneros Marzal of Compania Teatro Dela Danza Del Caribe. The dancers include Marisa Benain, Keita‐Marie Chamberlain, Candice Morris, Orlando Barnett, Allatunje Connell and Marlon Simms.

JAMAICA 50 As part of Jamaica’s 50th celebrations the Company was invited to perform at the official launch at the National Stadium in a collaborative work with other dance companies in June 2012. A second invitation was extended to the Company

and Prof. Nettleford’s Gerrehbenta was performed at “Grand Gala” staged at the National Stadium on Saturday, August 6, 2012.

CARRERAS LIMITED – 50TH ANNIVERSARY GALA & SCHOLARSHIP AWARDS BANQUET • As part of Carreras Limited 50th Anniversary Celebration the Company performed Rex Nettleford’s Kumina at the opening of their Scholarship Awards Banquet “Empowering Through Education”, held at the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel on Wednesday, September 5, 2012. The event featured guest speaker the Hon. Philip Paulwell, MP (Minister of Science, Technology, Energy and Mining & Leader of Govt. Business in the House of Representatives) and awarded scholarships tenable at local Tertiary Institutions.

OVERSEAS PERFORMANCES – CANADA, NEW YORK, GRAND CAYMAN AND ENGLAND • The Company enjoyed successful overseas performances in Toronto Ontario, Canada at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre (January 27‐29) presented by the International Association of Blacks in Dance (IABD); the Walt Whitman Theater in Brooklyn New York (March 22‐26) presented by Brooklyn Centre for the Performing Arts at Brooklyn College (BCBC), the Harquail Theatre in Grand Cayman (May 23‐28) presented by the KRI Performing Arts School NDTC Facebook Cayman Albumand in England at the Malvern Theatre in Malvern, Alexandra Theatre in Birmingham NDTC Facebook UK Album Ashcroft Concert Hall in London and The Black‐E in Liverpool (September 12‐30) presented by Kajan’s Woman’s Enterprise who also sponsored the event with the Arts Council of England.

AWARDS AND APPOINTMENTS CARLTON ‘JACKIE’ GUY, BARRY MONCRIEFFE AND FRED HICKLING • A year after NDTC former principal dancer, noted choreographer, historian, archivist and lecturer Jackie Guy was presented with a lifetime achievement in October 2011

by Jamaica’s Deputy High Commissioner to the UK Mrs. Joan Edwards on behalf of the Association of Dance of the African Diaspora in Collaboration with IRIE! Dance Theatre he was conferred with the Member of the British Empire Award (MBE) in the 2012 Queen’s Birthday Honours List. The ceremony was held at the Buckingham Palace on Wednesday, November 21, 2012. This followed closely on the heels of the conferral of Commander of Distinction (CD) by the Governor General of Jamaica Sir Patrick Allen in a ceremony held at King’s House on Monday, October 15, 2012 on NDTC’s Artistic Director Barry Moncrieffe and former Stage Manager Prof. Fred Hickling.

(NB: The Order of Distinction has two ranks: higher class – Commander and lower class Officer. Commanders take place and precedence immediately after Members and Honorary Members of the Order of Jamaica. The motto of the Order is ‘Distinction Through Service’. A member or Honorary Member may be promoted from the rank of Officer to that of Commander. The Honour of the Oder of Distinction is conferred upon Members – Citizens of Jamaica who rendered outstanding and important service to Jamaica; Honorary Members – Distinguished citizens of a country other than Jamaica.

Commanders of the Order of Distinction are entitled to use the postnominal letters: ‘CD’ in the case of Members; ‘CD (Hon)’ in the case of Honorary Members

The insignia of the Order of Distinction (Commander) is a triangular badge with curved sides. In the centre is a black medallion bearing the Arms of Jamaica in gold. The words of the motto of the Order are in black. The badge is suspended from a silk collar riband of black, gold and green by a silver finial of two intertwined letters “J” attached to the uppermost point of the triangle).

MARJORIE WHYLIE AND EWAN SIMPSON • Marjorie Whylie, after more than four decades with the NDTC, has retired from her post as Musical Director and Leader of the NDTC Singers. Miss Whylie’s retirement came shortly after a successful tour of England in September 2012. She has since been appointment as Musical Director Emerita and will assist Ewan Simpson to fulfill his recent appointment as Acting Musical Director.

CAROLE REID • Carole Reid received the Golden Jubilee Award for Kingston from the Governor General Sir Patrick Allen on Tuesday, November 13, 2012 in a ceremony held at King’s House for her Outstanding Contribution for Cultural Development and Musical Heritage.

KERRY‐ANN HENRY, MARLON SIMMS AND MARISA BENAIN • Congratulations to Kerry‐Ann Henry and Marlon Simms for their appointment as Director and Assistant Director, respectively, of the School of Dance at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts in April 2012 and to Marisa Benain for obtaining the post of Director – Cultural Policy and Monitoring in the Ministry of Youth, Sports and Culture in June 2012.

SANDRA MINOTT PHILLIPS, QC • Former principal dancer and attorney‐at‐law Sandra Minott‐Phillips was admitted to practice at the Inner Bar by Chief Justice Zaila McCalla at a ceremony held at the Supreme Court on Tower Street in Kingston on Monday, June 11, 2012. Mrs. Minott‐ Phillips was robed by former Prime Minister P.J. Patterson, QC before thanking family, friends and colleagues for their support over the years.

NATIONAL DANCE THEATRE COMPANY • The Company was given a special award for the development of dance in Jamaica by Dance Xpressionz at their fifth annual Dancers Boom production held at the Louise Bennett Garden Theatre on Saturday April 21, 2012. Marlon Simms was on hand to receive the

plaque on behalf of the Company which preceded Kerry‐Ann Henry’s guest appearance of an excerpt of Clive Thompson’s Phases of the Three Moons.

HIGHLIGHTS DIGICEL FOUNDATION ANNUAL REPORT Digicel Foundation made a courtesy call on the Company a year following their contribution to the project of refurbishing the offices of the NDTC. The Foundation requested a special photo shoot for their annual report (2011‐ 2012 – “Developing Our Nation”). The report featured photographs of dancers and members of the Foundation at the NDTC Studios and of Prof. Nettleford’s work Gerrehbenta shot on the coast of Kingston Harbour with Allatunje Connell, Kerry‐Ann Henry, Mark Phinn, Tamara Noel, Kevin Moore, Keita‐Marie Chamberlain and Marlon Simms.

MELANIE GRAHAM • Former principal dancer Melanie Graham returned to the Company as a special 50th Anniversary guest performer to appear in signature roles in The Crossing and Edna M. Her performance received critical acclaim and an extended feature article appeared in the BUZZ Caribbean Lifestyle Magazine, Vol. 5 #4 2012, on her artistry and exemplary contribution to dance and the NDTC.

GUEST PERFORMERS Karyn Neysmith‐Johnson past member also performed as guest artist in the Company’s 50th anniversary celebration where she appeared in Rex Nettleford’s master‐works The Crossing and Kumina. In addition, the repertoire was further enriched with the inclusion of a dynamic quartet, Siempre Corriende, which supported two of Eduardo Rivero‐Walker’s dancers Delvis Savigne Friñòn and Edisnel Rodrìguez Gonzàlez from Compania Teatro Dela Danza Del Caribe. Lead drummer Deury Cisneros Marzal joined the NDTC’s musicians for Sulkari and Amós Rivero Asosta, dancer, also made a guest appearance.

KEVIN MOORE AND PATRICK EARLE Lead dancer Kevin Moore choreographed the movement for Aston Cooke’s comedy revue “Jamaica Fifty 2 Rahtid” which opened at the Pantry Playhouse on Wednesday August 1, 2012 after working with inner‐city youths in the National Housing Trust groundbreaking Summer Workshop in July 2012 under the theme “Exploring Jamaica’s Culture through the Arts”. Patrick Earle choreographed and staged movements in the 2011‐2012 LTM Pantomime “Anansi & Goat Head Soup” adding to the trend of new‐generation NDTC members as well as past generation who have contributed choreographically to the LTM Pantomimes.

CHRIS WALKER, Assistant Professor of Dance, is the founding Artistic Director of the First Wave Hip Hop Theater Ensemble at UW‐Madison and the co‐founder and artistic director of NuMoRune Collaborative ‐ an ensemble of dancers, choreographers, storytellers and musicians, who come together under a united artistic vision to create collaborative works. In 2012, Walker continued to tour with First Wave, which received the 2010 Wisconsin Governor’s Arts Award, on local, national and international tours, performing annually on Broadway in New York, Mexico, Panama and the U.K. In 2012 they were invited guests at London’s cultural Olympiad and returned as featured guests at the 2012 Contacting the World Festival, an international theater project linking young people's theater groups from around the world to create theater across the boundaries of geography and culture. Walker’s recent awards include the New York Thayer Fellowship, Certificate for Merit from the American Theatre Festival Association, Wisconsin Alumni Research Association – Research Service Grant, Dance County Signature Grant and the Hefty Faculty Support Award in recognition of his teaching, community service and choreographic work, which has been presented nationally and internationally in the Caribbean, North and South America, South East Asia and Europe. An NDTC Scholar, Walker’s research in dance remains grounded in investigating the possibilities of Caribbean vocabulary. His “Urban Fissure” on the NDTC was featured at the 2012 International Association of Blacks in Dance in Toronto, Canada, while the same work was reconstructed for local London dancers for the 2012 ReGenerations Conference “the next generation”, at The Place, London. In June of 2013, Walker will present NuMoRune Collaborative in a full evening concert “A Yard Abroad” at New York Live Arts, NY, with choreography by Walker and dancers from NY, Futurpointe dance in Rochester and Kashedance in Toronto.

TOVAH‐MARIE BEMBRIDGE Tovah‐Marie Bembridge joined the London cast of Walt Disney’s Lion King in July 2012. Other NDTC members who have joined the Lion King musical before Bembridge are Kerry‐Ann Henry, David Blake, Debroah Powell‐Valentino, Jermaine Rowe, Shakee Dobson, Shelley‐Ann Maxwell and Candice Morris.

JERMAINE ROWE After successful appearances in Walt Disney’s Lion King, former NDTC dancer Jermaine Rowe made another successful debut in the ongoing Tony Award Winning production Fela! on Broadway in July 2012.

THE ROPE AND THE CROSS – CANDICE MORRIS & TAMARA NOEL Following the tradition of Liturgical Performances in which Neville Black’s Ave Verum was performed by Rex Nettleford and Yvonne daCosta [then] in a history making church service at Scots Kirk, Kingston, at Easter of 1968. The Company was invited to perform Sheila Barnett’s iconic (1974) dance‐drama The Rope and the Cross by Rev. Easton Lee at Church of the Holy Family in Miami Gardens, Florida in April. The performance featured New‐Generation Principal Dancers Tamara Noel as Mary and Candice Morris as Judith.

CLIVE THOMPSON Senior Choreographer and noted landscape artist Clive Thompson has continued contributing his time and expertise in other areas of the Visual and Performing Arts.

This time he lends his talent to the commissioning of Metal Art Work mounted both at the NDTC’s Studios and the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts while alluding to the fact that more metal art work will be mounted at the home of NDTC at a later date. Nonetheless, the following works below are seen and adored by many:

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Counterclockwise: Chris Walker and Kerry‐Ann Henry in Legacy of the Duke, Marisa Benain and Marlon Simms in Ode, Mark Phinn in Of Sympathy and Love, Rex Nettleford (center), Marlon Simms in Congo Laye, Kerry‐Ann Henry and Allatunje Connel in Ode, Arsenio Andrade and Candice Morris in Dimensions.

BELOW: ‘Dance’ capturing the shapes of dancers, graces the entrance to the School of Dance Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts.

‘Dance’ capturing

NDTC THANKS BOG WALK POLICE OFFICERS • A presentation was made to the police officers at the Bog Walk Police Station who provided much needed support on September 30, 2012 when the Company returned from touring England. Heavy rains which had kept the Company from travelling through the Bog Walk Gorge did not dampen the hospitality of the officers who provided a place of shelter and security while the Company waited overnight for the flood waters to recede. On hand to receive the gift of a microwave, which was one of the station’s specific needs, were District Constable Glenton Mullings, Detective Sergeant Oral Israel, Sergeant Richard Ebanks and Woman Constable Ruth Mullings. The presentation was made by Mr. Barry Moncrieffe and Mrs. Bridget Spaulding.

COURTESY CALL •

Nigeria’s Ambassador to Jamaica, Peter Layi Oyedele, visited with the Company on Monday, November 26, 2012. After meeting with the Artistic Director and viewing the Company’s official class as taught by Prof. Nettleford he was presented with a copy of Prof. Rex Nettleford’s last publication on the Company – Dance Jamaica: Renewal and Continuity: National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica 1962‐

2008.

The Company also welcomed a delegation from Namibia which included Dr. Peingeondjabi Shipoh, The Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Youth, National Service, Sport and Culture on Monday, November 12, 2012. He was also presented with the Company’s historical book and the 50th Anniversary programme brochure as memorabilia of his visit.

ORBITUARY MADGE BRODERICK and MONICA McGOWAN The NDTC once again went into mourning for the lives of two of its alumnae – former Principal Dancer Madge Broderick and Founding Member Monica McGowan.

Broderick who was hailed as a veteran educator passed on in March 2012. Morning of Movement and Music held on Sunday April 8, 2012 was dedicated to her memory. Founding Member Monica McGowan who was a veteran ballet teacher and who is best known for her unparalleled role as Judith in Sheila Barnett’s The Rope and the Cross succumbed to complications due to a stroke in August 2012.

Both women were revered for their longstanding commitment to Education and to the NDTC.

EDUARDO RIVERO‐WALKER Long‐time friend of the NDTC, Choreographer/Mentor/Teacher/Artistic Director of Compania Teatro Dela Danza Del Caribe Eduardo Rivero‐Walker died after a brief battle with cancer in his home in Santiago, Cuba on Thursday, November 1, 2012.

Prior to his death he was one of the featured tutors in the NDTC workshop held at the NDTC’s studios on Sunday, February 19, 2012. He also completed the task of remounting his seminal work Sulkari on the Company as part of the 50th Anniversary repertory offerings prior to his grave illness.

LETTER(S) Addressed: The Administrators and Company

“…I wish to let you all know how pleased I am to have been considered, and humbly receive iti. I do indeed thank all and would like, as well, to thank profoundly the following persons and organisations who contributed and encourage me in my development as an artist.

A tremendous “Thanks” to my family, especially my dear mother, Violet Guy, who died a few months ago.

I would like also to pay homage to the following pioneers who are no longer with us but who live on through their art and were, individually and collectively, my constant inspiration: the Hon. Edna Manley; Ms. Ivy Baxter; Mr. Noel Vaz; the Hon. Louise Bennett‐Coverely; Mr. Trevor Rhone; Mr. Neville Black; Mrs. Sheila Barnett; Ms. Joyce Campbell; and Professor the Hon. Rex Nettleford.

To those still alive, kindly convey if you can, my very special thanks, and I refer to Mr. Eddy Thomas; Dr. Olive Lewin; the University of the West Indies Dance Society; the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission (JCDC); The Social Development Commission; the Jamaica School of Dance; Movements Dance Company; and to my dear friends Marjorie Whylie, Barry Moncrieffe, and Dr. L’Antoinette Stines; but most of all to Alma MockYen CD, my first dance teacher and mentor of FIFTY years who received the award on my behalf.

As a Dancer, Teacher, Choreographer, and more recently as an Archivist and a mentor myself, i am proud that I was trained in Jamaica and have been able to hold brand Jamaica high, as the country’s fantastic athletes are doing.

So here I am, having finally earned not only my Senior Citizen Bus Pass and Rail Card, but have received as well – the Prudential Award for Excellence, Innovation, and Creativity; the “Lifetime Achievement Award” from the Association of Dance of

the African Diaspora; and God willing, I’ll go later this month to Buckingham Palace for the Investiture ceremony to receive my MBE from Her Majesty the Queen. I write you this long ‘Thank You’ letter because the NDTC and the others mentioned have been with me on the journey that takes me there.

I can never thank sufficiently all whose prayers, acts of kindness and encouragement helped me attain my goals, and once again, I sincerely thank the NDTC for remembering me. May you continue to embrace your mission of “Renewal and Continuity” for, at least another 50 years.

With a grateful heart and my prayer that all be blessed” Carlton ‘Jackie’ Guy, MBE ___________________________________ 1 ‘It’ – made reference to award presented by the National Dance Company Theatre (NDTC) in continued celebration of its 50th anniversary held at the Mona Visitor’s Lodge on October 28, 2012.

See also the list of Awardees.

NDTC Easter concert pleases again Published: Wednesday | April 11, 2012

Every Easter morning for 31 years, the National Dance Theatre Company's (NDTC) dancers, singers and orchestra, in collaboration with the Little Theatre Movement, have been giving tremendous pleasure to large audiences at the Little Theatre. The annual event is a concert titled 'Morning of Movement and Music', and Sunday's presentation received the usual enthusiastic applause.

While the concerts have tended to favour movement, on Sunday last, there was much more singing ‐ by the numerically augmented NDTC Singers ‐ than usual. There were some complaints about the change, and no doubt NDTC artistic director Barry Moncrieffe and musical director Marjorie Whylie will meet to discuss the most suitable balance between the two art‐forms.

One aspect of that discussion should be the difference between the concerts remaining spiritual rather than becoming religious.

In the past, many have praised them for being the former, this because of the preponderance of dance.

On the other hand, the more hymns and other Christian sacred songs are sung, the more religion will present itself onstage.

Words are less ambiguous than movement.

Perhaps not unconnected to the opinion of one patron, a musician, that the mood of Sunday's concert was more solemn than usual was the fact that it was dedicated to the memory of the late Madge Broderick, a former NDTC dancer, and that one dance, Milton Sterling's 'He Watcheth', was a tribute to the late Ed Gallimore, whose daughter dances with the company.

But the morning began cheerfully enough, with the Singers in blue (women) and black (the men, behind them) belting out Whylie's one‐word song Alleluia. Then, while they sang the hymn Now Thank We All Our God, the theatre's huge red curtain opened to reveal the NDTC dancers, in black.

Gliding, running, leaping, twirling, mostly with arms extended, the dancers exultantly demonstrated their fitness (in terms of skills, knowledge and attitude) to entertain and uplift the audience. The work, the company's opening dance for years, was choreographed by NDTC member Kevin Moore. His most recent dance, 'Inward Stretch Outward Reach' (2012), which is also celebratory, and more colourful (it features five men in red pants), was staged about half‐an‐hour later.

Three suites of songs The first of the Singers' three suites of songs, each comprising three songs, was titled 'Songs of Praise' and comprised evocative words and music by Whylie. While, generally, there was a minimal amount of movement in this suite, there was more in the second, 'Canticles', which featured a heartfelt solo by Dawn Fuller‐Phillips of 'The Magnificat'.

By the time the Singers presented their third suite, there was quite a bit of movement. The gradual increase in movement might have been a deliberate strategy, but the quality of the singing was uniformly high from start to finish.

The songs in the third suite, Jamaican Spirituals, were Bright Angels, Nuh Touch Me (a caution to Mary by Jesus before his ascension) and Don't You Trouble Jesus. At other times, the Singers, or some of them, appeared more briefly.

Three 2012 dances were premiered on Sunday and, no doubt, they will be brought back and revised for the company's month‐long season in the summer.

Oneil Pryce's 'Jordan River' was the first of these to be staged. A generally leisurely work, with many Tai‐chi‐like movements and much posing, it was danced by seven women, some in blue, others in purple dresses.

The second 2012 dance was 'Requiem' by Marlon Simms. To Andrew Lloyd Webber's Pie Jesu, sung by the Singers led by Faith Livingstone and Fuller‐Phillips, two couples dance within the entire stage area with long, graceful, ground‐covering movements. Their mood cheerful, the men, in white T‐ shirts and blue slacks, and the women, in white tops and black skirts, ended the dance with an applause‐eliciting tableau.

Clive Thompson's 2003 work 'Of Sympathy and Love', based on the biblical story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead, was one of the most interesting choreographically. It was performed by two of the NDTC's best dancers, Mark Phinn (Jesus) and Marlon Simms (Lazarus) and shows Jesus preparing himself mentally and spiritually for the miracle, and then Lazarus rediscovering, almost muscle by muscle, the power of movement.

The final two dances, an excerpt from 'Ritual of the Sunrise' and Psalm 150, both by the NDTC's late artistic director, Rex Nettleford, were the most cheerful of the lot and brought the concert to an upbeat end.

GOLDEN REBIRTH: NDTC’s 50th restores the beauty and joy of dance theatre Published: Sunday, July 29, 2012 TALLAWAH Magazine

By Tyrone Reid

The 2012 Season of Dance of the National Dance Theatre Company is an excellent example of how to make the vintage and the utterly modern co‐exist in harmony. Equal parts dazzling and daring, celebratory and reflective, the presentation finds the venerable company moving into a new chapter (another half‐a‐century, no less) firmly touting – and achieving – its mission of continuity and renewal. In essence, living up to the Nettleford ideal.

This past Friday when I went to take in the show at the Little Theatre, the programme offered seven works, a hugely enjoyable mix of revived classics and fresh mountings, opening with Nettleford’s The Crossing, an impassioned and painful work that comes off as a paean to oppression, struggle and redemption. Making ample use of Negro spirituals and references to slavery and colonialism, it features controlled, graceful movements, including some lovely solo work by that lithe creature Kerry‐Ann Henry, who never fails to dazzle with beauty and precision.

I equally enjoyed the work’s sequencing and contrast of moods (joyous one moment, lugubrious the next), but in the end, The Crossing transcends all that, ultimately offering a display of how to fashion pure art out of suffering and adversity.

Stage legend Melanie Graham was a welcome leading presence in Bert Rose’s Edna M, a moving and poignant story centred on art and memory, and featuring choreography as delicate as the woman herself. Showing us that age ain’t on her page, Graham kept pace wonderfully with the new‐gen performers, particularly a quartet of sinewy male dancers portraying semi‐nude sculptures. Truly provocative stuff. But that’s precisely the thing with the NDTC – especially creative masterminds like Rose and Nettleford and Clive Thompson – it’s about rising above the confines of convention and pushing the boundaries of artistic creativity.

And speaking of Thompson, I found his Ode a thoroughly fresh, freewheelin’ and fun ball of spunk and energy (with a contemporary flair), which lent a change of pace and mood to the evening’s proceedings. Among the highlights: Marley tunes given a groovy jazz‐funk treatment, a frisky‐flirty Marisa Benain, Henry again in all her agile glory, not to mention some subtle erotic undertones.

The crowd‐pleasing Siempre Corriendo by Ramon Alayo is a study in power and athleticism, with a four taut males (locals Marlon Simms/Mark Phinn and Cuban invitees Delvis Savigne Friñon/Edsinol Gonzalez) moving in near‐perfect sync to a menacing operatic soundtrack. Eduardo Rivero’s Sulkari, meantime, is a haunting tribal‐esque affair marked by stunning imagery in spite of the dim lighting and gorgeous costumes, while Barbara Ramos’ lukewarm Valhala features a solo male clad only in passion‐red pants and a riot of fierce curls atop his head.

It virtually goes without saying that any special NDTC performance must conclude with Nettleford’s visceral masterpiece, Gerrehbenta, the most joyous work of the company’s vast repertoire. Spectacular with its kaleidoscope of vivid hues and inspired early‐Jamaican movements, it’s a slice of genuine terpsichorean splendour. I’ve seen it performed year after year, and each time it feels, quite incredibly, like a new experience.

This year, that warm sensation extends to the company’s entire 50th anniversary season, an involving and compelling mélange of the new and the old, reminding viewers of the power and sheer magical joy that is excellent dance theatre.

Do Black Dance Companies Hit a Glass Ceiling?

Anya Wassenberg – Huffington Post (Canada)

"The platforms for black dance are so narrow," states acclaimed Australian independent choreographer Bernadette Walong‐Sene.

It was a sentiment that echoed over and over in the panel discussion I attended at the 2012 International Association of Blacks in Dance (I.A.B.D.) Conference that just ended Sunday, January 30 in Toronto ‐‐ comments that were similar no matter where the locale. Even in 2012, with a collective body of work that's dazzling in every respect from technical and athletic prowess to expression, the playing field for black dancers and choreographers is nothing like level.

From Alvin Ailey in the 1950s to people like Bernadette, who's currently in the process of setting up a company under the name bwsene !nmotion Australia, the answer has been to create opportunity where none is on offer.

Deborah Badoo set up the U.K.'s State of Emergency in 1986. "At that time, there was a growing body of black choreographers who weren't being heard," she says. "It's our mission to change the landscape of dance in the U.K." That includes setting up The Heritage Project to record the history of black dance in Great Britain. A study that interviewed prominent black artists and choreographers just last year confirmed that, while some things have definitely changed during the company's 25‐year existence, some aspects have not.

"There's still a sort of glass ceiling as far as black choreographers are concerned."

The mission of bwsene !nmotion Australia is similar: "To increase the level of support for non‐European traditions in a contemporary dance context," explains Bernadette. Reinforcing the importance of those traditions to the larger Australian culture goes hand in hand with that goal.

She described a frustrating dance environment where there is basically one "official" black dance company and seemingly no room for others when it comes to funding or touring, particularly one whose work doesn't fit into a narrowly defined category of traditional dance. Add to it the fact that work which involves storytelling and social commentary ‐‐ a common theme in the group ‐‐ is often discouraged, especially in academia. "I'm considered outspoken and angry," she admitted, and later in response to a question from the audience as to whether she felt isolated, she answered with a resounding, "Yes!"

Here in Canada, we've got our own flavour of inequality. "Canada has a lot of problems dealing with race," states Charles C. Smith bluntly. A lecturer at the University of Toronto Scarborough with a history of community work, including serving as the first Equity Advisor to the Law Society of Upper Canada, he's also a published poet and author. He was at the conference to talk about The Wind in the Leaves, a multi‐ disciplinary performance project that includes dance among its many components. The lack of recognition

of racial issues came as a surprise when he arrived from New York City in 1980. He pointed out that black Canadian history is largely unknown, particularly the story of slavery in this country. "There still is a major, major barrier to Canada recognizing our contributions. Our stories are foundational to the country we call Canada."

In the meagre overall landscape of arts funding, all the panelists agreed that non‐European based dance companies operate at a distinct disadvantage. "We have massive problems," Charles says.

The dream of dance is a potent one, however, and so strong that the art itself flourishes no matter what the hurdles; the conference's nightly showcase events were ample evidence of that. I caught Saturday's International Showcase, a feast of 12 companies who seemed to cover every permutation of black dance.

While Chicago's Muntu Dance Theatre offers traditional dance with a modern sense of visual display in energetic and elaborately costumed pieces, some, like Cuba's Danza Corpus, Salia ni Seydou of Burkina Faso, and Lula Washington Dance Theater's The Healers take those traditional movements and reworks them into a fresh and dramatic sensibility. Even an excerpt of The Healers impressed the audience with its athleticism driven by an ecstatic response to the drum.

The drum was central to many of the works performed, and in some the time‐honoured movement is only the basic outline of an entirely new interpretation, as in the mesmerizing work of Montreal's Zab Mabougou/Compagnie Danse Nyata Nyata. In bwsene !nmotion's piece, an excerpt from Hover, tradition is transported to an avant‐garde present in a hypnotically theatrical performance.

Bob Marley got an electronica remix in Urban Fissure, performed by the National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica, with a hip shaking swagger and physical flair. Choreographed by Namibian Gregory Maqoma, State of Emergency's Desert Crossings explores the common geological history of the Jurassic Coast in southwest England and Namibia's Skeleton Coast with a decidedly contemporary vocabulary.

In many companies, dance defies any kind of cross‐cultural definition. The Philadelphia Dance Company brought the audience to its feet with the athletically elegant, "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?"

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre's "The Evolution of a Secured Feminine" is a sexy and sophisticated homage to American dance forms set to the classic jazz recordings of the likes of Ella Fitzgerald and Nancy Wilson. Dallas Black Dance Theater and Denver's Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble performed pieces that were both timeless and contemporary, combining physicality and expression in perfect proportion.

With such a wide ranging repertoire even in the one showcase I took in, it's hard to understand a rationale for the lingering reluctance of mainstream society to truly embrace the work of people of colour as an essential element of its own culture ‐‐ not an exception, not as a special category forever locked in a time vault of supposed historical purity. The era of homogenous cultural expression is long gone.

Jamaican ballet packs out New Alexandra Theatre Published: September 24, 2012 ­ Express & Star (Birmingham, UK)

By Deborah Hardiman

A nearly packed house was at the New Alexandra Theatre to see the spectacular National Dance Theatre of Jamaica ballet ensemble in action ‐ along with its singers and drummers.

The troupe, renowned in its own right on the international dance scene, was in town for its 50th anniversary tour having been founded the same time that the Caribbean island got independence.

Right from the start the dancers hit the stage in colourful costumes gyrating to the rhythms of the African drums. Much of the programme featured fabulous routines celebrating traditional folklore, music and dance inter‐woven with west African forms, in keeping with the strong historical links.

The standard of dancing was high with some interesting movement and techniques particularly evident in the intricate Afro‐Cuban routine Sulkari, a study of the man‐woman relationship. Adapted for the troupe's needs 30‐years‐ago it included some difficult lifts, superbly danced by three couples.

Another outstanding performance was the solo Sweet in the Morning by dance captain Marlon Simms based on music by Bobby McFerrin. The whole production was full of exuberance with the dancers giving it their all in fabulous colourful costumes.

The ensemble's singers also gave a great account of themselves, the appreciative audience was amused by a medley of traditional rhymes and swayed to Bob Marley's rarely aired love songs.

Having waited 10 years to finally see them perform, it would have been good to see more lyrical dance content in the show, but it was still a very impressive programme and gave exposure to classical Caribbean culture, often overshadowed by reggae and rap music.

In the words of one lady in the audience at the end of the performance, “It was a brilliant night, but I wanted to see more.”

NDTC dedicates Easter Sunday to Madge Broderick Published: Sunday | April 8, 2012 The National Dance Theatre Company (NDTC) stages its 2012 Easter Sunrise performance, A Morning of Movement and Music, this morning at 6 o'clock, in continuation of its year‐long 50th Anniversary Celebrations.

This annual "act of worship", held in association with The Little Theatre Movement, will be staged at The Little Theatre, Tom Redcam Avenue.

This year's programme is being dedicated to Madge Broderick, veteran educator and former NDTC dancer who passed away recently. The programme follows the company's highly successful performance at the Brooklyn Centre for the Performing Arts, Brooklyn College, New York, in March of this year.

New generation choreographers Marlon Simms, Kevin Moore and Oniel Pryce will present new dance works at the sunrise event, alongside remounts of Clive Thompson's Of Sympathy and Love and Arsenio Andrade‐Calderon's solo work, My Prayer.

The commemorative full‐length work, He Watcheth, choreographed by the late Milton Sterling will also be performed in tribute to Ed Gallimore, who passed away earlier this year.

OTHER PERFORMANCES Additionally, an excerpt from Rex Nettleford's Ritual of the Sunrise, set to the music of David Rudder, will be presented. Marjorie Whylie's The Lord's Prayer and Noel Dexter's Psalm 150 will, as usual, close the act of worship.

Whylie, NDTC's musical director, will lead the NDTC Singers and Orchestra in her own compositions ‐ Mass in A, a setting of Psalm 23 and three songs of praise.

The NDTC, in a release, spoke fondly of Broderick.

"It is with a deep sense of loss that the National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica has learnt of the passing of Madge Broderick, veteran educator and one of its former dancers," the release read.

According to the release, Broderick joined the NDTC in the late 1960s and was one of the dancers who assisted the company in its experiments toward discovery and added texture to its continuing.

"She may perhaps be best remembered as the slinky goddess in Tommy Pinnock's ghetto‐inspired Desperate Silences (1972), but her tall athletic frame highlighted several other works in the repertoire with a special touch of statuesque elegance."

According to the NDTC, Broderick's flair for dancing meant works like Sheila Barnett's Shadows, Bert Rose's The Lord's Prayer done to Rastafarian drumming and the John Jones ballet, Resurrection were better for her involvement.

The NDTC also issued condolences to Broderick's family.

Madge Broderick remembered Tuesday, April 10, 2012

MADGE Broderick, former dancer with the National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica (NDTC) and former St Andrew Preparatory School principal, is fondly remembered as a talented professional.

Broderick passed away on Sunday, April 1 after a brief illness. She was 73 years old.BRODERICK... will be buried on her birthday April 14

Cheryl Rhyman, former dancer with the NDTC, recalled Broderick being one of the "tall girls".

"There were five of us tall girls ‐‐ Noelle Chutkan, Barbara Requa, Yvonne DaCosta, Madge Broderick, and myself. Joyce Campbell would sometimes try to squeeze herself into the group," she said.

"But there was just something about Madge that made her such a wonderful person. She also had a very elegant model walk which we often teased her about it," she reflected.

But for Rhyman, one of Broderick's most endearing qualities was her maturity. She said Broderick was already a professional when she joined the NDTC and, therefore, not one of the "flighty‐flighty girls". This made her worthy of emulation for a young dancer like Rhyman.

"I remember us rooming together while on tour and we shared the stage as part of the chorus in Kumina and Celebrations. We also alternated the lead role, along with Barbara Requa, in The Brothers which was choreographed by Patsy Ricketts," Rhyman said.

Another tall girl, Requa recalled how proud the brilliant educator and school administrator was of the standard she set at the prep school.

"On stage she had great performance skills and brought that with her to the NDTC," Requa said.

For her, Broderick will be remembered for her performance in Nettleford's Court of Jah and Sheila Barnett's Mountain Women.

Broderick's brother, politician Laurie Broderick was lost for words when the Jamaica Observer caught up with him.

However, he composed himself and noted: "She was such a talent. She excelled in the arts and education, and brought a new meaning to early childhood education having been trained at Columbia University in the United States. She was also a great netballer who represented Jamaica alongside the renowned Leila Robinson," he noted, while referring to her as his second mother.

He also remembered his late sister as being the family umpire, who steered down the middle ground in a large family with differing political views.

The family included her brother the late Percy Broderick, agriculture minister during the 1980s.

Madge Broderick will be buried on her birthday, April 14, following a service at the St Robert Bellarmine Roman Catholic Church in Chapleton, Clarendon.

NDTC mourns passing of founding member Published: Tuesday | August 28, 2012

The National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica (NDTC) has announced with deep regret the passing of Monica McGowan, founding member and former principal dancer. She died at her home last Wednesday after a brief illness.

McGowan was one of the 16 founding members of the internationally acclaimed company, which was founded in 1962 by the late Professor the Hon Rex Nettleford and Eddy Thomas.

NDTC artistic director Barry Moncrieffe said McGowan had served the 50‐year‐old organisation with distinction, both on and off the stage.

He said McGowan's gift for dance was evident in the more than 52 works performed with the company. Her depth and range as an artist was palpable in the leading dance roles she played, which included Liza in Legend of Lovers' Leap (Eddy Thomas, 1962); Lucifer Lucifer (Rex Nettleford, 1970); the protagonist in Shadows (Sheila Barnett, 1970); and Mountain Women (Barnett, 1972). She was revered in her role as Judith, the mother of Judas in The Rope and the Cross (Barnett, 1974); as Jamaican heroine Nanny in Ni‐Woman of Destiny (Barnett, 1976) and in Wonder, Love and Raise (Nettleford, 1977).

The late Professor Rex Nettleford in his 1985 book, Dance Jamaica, described the petite‐framed McGowan as "a stylish and intelligent dancer with dramatic power and an impeccable gift for phrasing," and a "highly intelligent artist and performer".

Extensive touring She toured extensively with the NDTC to the United States, Canada, Germany, England, Guyana, Barbados and Trinidad, and also performed in the Little Theatre Movement's Pantomime as well as in productions by the Sohhih School of Dance and the Ivy Baxter Creative Dance Group.

McGowan's early training in the Cecchetti method of Classical Ballet was at the Soohih School.

She also studied with Dance Theatre of Harlem and with Madam Naila in New York, as well as with Caridad Nicholas and Roni Mahler. That, along with her training in modern dance with Ivy Baxter and Neville Black, the Martha Graham School and Lavinia Williams, built the foundation for her role as dance educator at the Jamaica School of Dance where she taught for more than 20 years.

NDTC founding members Barbara Requa and Bert Rose who co‐founded the Jamaica School of Dance with the late Sheila Barnett, and worked and danced alongside McGowan, described her as a highly dedicated dancer and teacher. "Monica was a true professional who lived for the dance.

She was always elegant and sweet and only had kind words to say. She was a good friend and a good human being with an enormous heart," Rose said, adding that she will be dearly missed.

Requa remembers McGowan as "a most dedicated, diligent and meticulous teacher in how she prepared and worked with her students".

"Many students benefited from her commitment to teaching the Cecchetti method of ballet in Jamaica, and she was instrumental in sustaining its success, following through with preparing students for exams until only days before she took ill."

On a personal level, Requa says she was a "wonderful spirit". "She had a great sense of humour that she applied in her teaching methods."

McGowan was a member of the Cechetti Council of America and the Professional Dance Teachers' Association (USA). She trained thousands of children and adults in ballet and modern dance at the Holy Childhood Ballet School where she was artistic director and principal tutor and at the Soohih School of Ballet.

Her spirit of voluntarism was not limited to the NDTC. She was also as an adjudicator for the National Festival Competition, taught summer school dance courses in the Cayman Islands, worked with the Institute of Jamaica and gave more than 20 years of services to the Junior Creative Dance.

In recognition of this, McGowan was the recipient of several accolades for her contribution to dance and dance education, the highest of which was the Institute of Jamaica's Centenary Medal for Dance and Drama in 1979.

In its release, the NDTC said: "The National Dance Theatre Company extends heartfelt sympathy to her sister Micky McGowan and to the rest of her family. The NDTC will pay tribute to its late founding member at the service in celebration of her life, to be held at the Holy Cross Church on September 8."

Tribute to Miss Monica McGowan Nicholeen DeGrasse‐Johnson – Edna Manley College‐Sch. Of Dance Junior Department

It was the American dancer and choreographer Agnes DeMille who said, “To dance is to be out of yourself, larger, more beautiful, more powerful” and this was clearly demonstrated in Miss McGowan’s subtle gestures, regal bearing, dignity and graceful carriage. Though of a petite stature, she was indeed “larger, more beautiful, and more powerful.”

She demonstrated discipline, dedication, gentleness, good memory, and she remained current – she frequently attended international ballet conferences and shared her knowledge with her students and colleagues.

Hair neatly styled in a bun and wrapped with a headband and never without her make‐up, Monica McGowan epitomized at once the quintessential dancer and the meticulous ballet teacher. Miss McGowan served the Junior Department of the School of Dance at the Edna Manley College for almost 30 years; she demonstrated a very fluid classical ballet style, no wonder she became the first Jamaican to sit on the Cecchetti Council of America.

Dancers Enter – Performance: Her students, past and present had this to say: Janae (8 years old): she’s sweet; she’s kind, loving and a nice teacher Robyn (14 years old): an excellent teacher and a role model for all of us and she made me love ballet Charlotte (16 years old): she taught me for 13 years, she’s like family, she taught me how to dance and that's why I want to be a dancer Stephanie (12 years old): I think it’s a privilege to be taught by her and she is an excellent teacher Alicia (adult): she was a wonderful teacher, caring; and had a lot of faith in us and she made me love dancing even more Keita­Marie (adult): she taught me everything I know about the carriage of my arms and legs along with stage presence. This was also seen in her demeanour. She was very encouraging and built my confidence by recommending me to do two ballet exams at one sitting. She was such a lady.

Miss McGowan, you exemplified the delicate balance between professional teacher and artist. Today we salute you not only for your considerable talent and achievements in dance, but for your invaluable contribution to the growth and development of bodies, minds and souls.

MONICA McGOWAN: Remembrance

By Barbara Requa NDTC Founding Member

Family and Friends, good afternoon: It is my pleasure to share with you some memories of Monica McGowan that have provided many hours of friendship and laughter, as we celebrate her life this afternoon. I will speak about her first as a dancer, then as a teacher and finally as a friend.

Monica, the Dancer: I first met Monica in the early 50’s when I joined the Ivy Baxter School of Dance. I am not sure if she came before or after me, but we were there together and spent a number of years as part of the troupe. Monica was a very feisty, no‐nonsense lady – I remember an incident that occurred when the late Rex Nettleford, also a member at that time, in an attempt to attract her attention for whatsoever reason, beckoned to her using his index finger (the way we Jamaicans are want to do). She immediately drew herself up to her imposing 5 ft. stature and haughtily responded – “Don’t you dare crook your finger at me!!!” and walked briskly away. I think Rex was duly chastened and probably forgot what he wanted to say to her. Her years of study with the Baxter group and the Soohih School of Dance, as well as studies abroad with a number of international dance schools, honed her dance skills and adequately prepared her for the next stage of her dancing career.

Monica was one of the sixteen Founding Members of the National Dance Theatre Company, in l962. She has the record of being one of the longest performing dancers in the company – dancing for 37 years; during that period she performed more than 52 works, many of them being leading roles. She was particularly noted for her character roles and was a favourite of Choreographer Sheila Barnett, who used her in many of her works; she is particularly remembered for her outstanding performance as LIZA in Barnett’s signature work, The Rope and the Cross. The late Professor Nettleford in his book – Dance Jamaica (1985) described her as (and I quote) “a stylish and intelligent dancer with dramatic power and an impeccable gift for phrasing, who in the 1970’s emerged as an artist of major stature.” (end of quote).

And so she was!

In a recent event to honour Monica’s years as a teacher at the Junior Department, School of Dance, Edna Manley College, the introduction read (I quote) – ‘Distinctive in her ballet costume, hair neatly styled in a bun and wrapped with a headband, Monica McGowan epitomizes at once the quintessential dancer and the meticulous teacher” (end of quote). This description is a perfect way to introduce Monica the Teacher.

Monica, the Teacher: In the early 1980’s she worked with Judith Pennant (also an NDTC dancer) to introduce the Cechetti method of classical ballet, working with the Junior Department, School of Dance. When Judith left Jamaica in the mid 1980’s, Monica took over the management of the ballet department; she also founded a Cechetti ballet school at the Holy Childhood Prep where she taught Physical Education and Christian Living. Over the years she developed a strong relationship with the Cechetti Dance Association in Florida, USA and was instrumental in bringing down accredited examiners annually, to conduct examinations for both schools. Her relationship with this Association also provided an opportunity to take refresher courses annually and teach classes at a number of schools in Florida, during her summer vacations. I remember her as a diligent, dedicated and caring teacher who took great pains to ensure that her students did well. She had a great ‘sense of humour’ and she applied this to her teaching methods, in order to get the best out of her students. She never missed a class. I can recall with a smile our brief encounters as we passed each other on the corridor of the school – “Hi Monica…what’s up?” I would say. “A little bit of this and a little bit of that” she would reply, gesturing in her usual ‘classical’ style. She would then proceed to share one of her many jokes that seemed to ‘pop up’ out of her head without much urging; and they were very good jokes too.

This repartee continued regularly over the many years we worked together and helped to cheer up my Mondays and Wednesdays immensely. I truly believe that had she not settled on a career as a dancer/teacher she could have been a great ‘stand‐up comedian”.

Over the years Monica has won many awards for services to dance and education that include:

The Institute of Jamaica Centenary Medal The Hall of Fame Award for contribution to Arts and Culture in the field of Dance The NDTC 35th Anniversary Lifetime Achievement Award The Roman Catholic Education Association Award

In 2003 she became the first person from the Caribbean to be invited by the Government of the Ukraine to attend the World Festival of Ballet Stars, as a guest of the Ukraine President.

Monica, the Friend: Monica and I were friends for more than fifty years; it is uncanny that we both followed the same career paths through our lives, as Physical Education teachers, members of the Ivy Baxter Group, the National Dance Theatre Co. and as dance educators at the School of Dance, Edna Manley College. Over these years we developed a wonderful rapport because we shared the same career choices and had the same passion for dance; we also shared a love for gardening. These similarities provided a bond that did not require us to be in each other’s house on a weekly basis.

Whenever we met, it was as if there had been no separation….and the jokes were always a part of the reunion process. I have good memories of visits to her home for ‘high tea’ – not to be missed at any cost. We would be given a tour of the back garden with its wide variety of fruit trees and vegetables; this was followed by a tour of the front garden where we could discuss and compare a variety of flowering plants and shrubs. We would then repair to the verandah to be treated to a

delicious repast of delicacies prepared by her sister Micky and herself….and the jokes would naturally be a part of the afternoons entertainment.

Monica McGowan lived for dance, both as a Performer and more particularly as a Teacher of Dance. She saw dance as the fusion of body, mind and soul and continued to participate in this Art form right up to the time she collapsed while rehearsing her students for an end‐of‐term production at the School of Dance. What more can we say! Yes, Monica, you will be greatly missed, but the memories are positive and refreshingly strong in our minds. Walk good my friend, may you rest in peace and light perpetual shine upon you.

Barbara C. Requa Friday, September 7th, 2012

NDTC Remembers Cuban‐Jamaican Cultural Icon Alicia Glasgow, PR Members of the National Dance Theatre Company (NDTC) and others in the Jamaican dance community continue to mourn the loss of Cuban‐Jamaican Professor of Dance, Eduardo Rivero‐Walker, who passed away in his Havana home after an illness on Wednesday, October 31.

The NDTC’s relationship with Rivero‐Walker spanned more than four decades.

His was a former principal dancer and choreographer with Danza Contemporena which hosted the NDTC on highly successful tours of Havana and Santiago in the 1970s, and later for CARIFESTA in 1978.

Barry Moncrieffe, Artistic Director of the NDTC, explains that since that time, the two companies have enjoyed a close‐knit bond of friendship and cultural exchange. The then Jamaica School of Dance and the NDTC first engaged Rivero‐Walker, who is of Jamaican descent, during the 1970s and he also appeared as a Guest Performer with the Company in 1980.

Only this year, the NDTC again invited Rivero‐Walker to Jamaica to remount his highly acclaimed choreographic work Sulkari, as a special component of its fiftieth anniversary. Additionally, four of his company members performed works as part of the Season of Dance.

“He was a masterful dancer and teacher, a meticulous choreographer and a loving spirit. Eduardo will continue to be an inspiration for generations of dancers, singers, musicians and other artists who were privileged to know and work with him,” the Artistic Director added.

The Cuban‐Jamaican Connection The Cuban‐Jamaican connection in dance theatre is undoubtedly the strongest among our regional counterparts, Moncrieffe opined. It is a link, he declares, that was originally based on a commonality of “truly Caribbean” style and influence, both which successfully melded combinations of African and other modernized cultures of the Americas.

Many dance companies including L’Acadco, Movements Dance Company, Stella Maris Dance Ensemble, Cathy Levy Players and the University Dance Society have been enhanced by the Cuban‐ Jamaican interface in dance through a combination of exchanges, tours, and/or choreography.

Rivero‐Walker was an advocate who actively participated in the vision for regional cooperation and interchange through the arts.

Under his leadership Cuban dancers, Abeldo Gonzalez‐Fonseca and Arsenio Andrade‐Calderon, were released from his Compania Teatro de la Danza del Caribe in Santiago to join the NDTC in 1995.

Both have served the Company with distinction as principal dancers for more than fifteen years and as teachers and choreographers, strengthened the dance programmes of the Edna Manley College for the Visual and Performing Arts and countless other performing groups.

As part of the exchange, NDTC works The Crossing (Rex Nettleford), Steal Away (Bert Rose) and Cry of the Spirit (Gene Carson Cumberbatch) were added to the repertoire of Rivera‐ Walker’s company, Teatro Dela Danza Del Caribe de Santiago.

Bert Rose, worked very closely with Rivero‐Walker. He expressed that, “Eduardo was like a brother to me. He recognized the importance of the work that the NDTC was doing to build a dance theatre company that reflected the mood of the people and that was truly us. It was an automatic bond, as he was doing the same with his company in Cuba.”

Rivero‐Walker’s legacy with the NDTC, will continue to live on through his choreographic works, Rose affirmed.

Over the years, he created four dance‐works for the Company.

“Tribute” was regarded as a gift to his ‘cousins’ in Jamaica from the Cuban people who revered the contemporary Jamaican music of reggae artists such as Bob Marley and Jimmy Cliff. He also choreographed a duet called Romance for Melanie Graham and Barry Moncrieffe; and Ballada de los Abuelos (Ballad of the Grandfathers) danced by Andrade and Gonzalez.

Master work His masterwork Sulkari, however, is perhaps the most significant of his professional contributions to the NDTC.

Theatre historian Wycliffe Bennett once described the powerfully erotic piece as “an essential Africanicity that expects to be judged on the basis of its own aesthetics…and the results are achieved with economy and impeccable taste.”

Sulkari remains a much‐loved work within in the NDTC’s wide repertoire. It was originally mounted in 1980, following more than five years of negotiation with Co‐ Founder and late Artistic Director Professor, the Hon. Rex Nettleford and the Cuban authorities to release it for performance by the Company. It again gained tumultuous applause when performed in the NDTC’s golden anniversary Season this summer.

“Eduardo was a friend to many in the Jamaican and Caribbean dance landscape. We have lost another icon, master, and family member. He will be greatly missed,” stated Bridget Spaulding, Founding Member NDTC.

The NDTC extends condolences to his family, and the extended dance fraternity in Cuba and Jamaica.

NDTC 50TH ANNIVERSARY AWARDS CEREMONY Mona Visitors’ Lodge & Conference Centre UWI Mona Campus October 28, 2012

by Rex Nettleford

LISTS OF AWARDEES – Order of Presentation

1. Current Members 1999 – 2012 Current Members 1999 – 2012 Presenter: Ms. Sandra Shirley Member, Management Committee

Jessie Golding 1999 Keita‐Marie Chamberlain 1999 Helen Christian 2000 Patrick Earle 2002 Tamara Noel 2003 Candice Morris 2003 Marisa Benain 2003 Faith Livingstone 2004 Phillip Earle 2005 Allatunje Connell 2005 Stefanie Thomas 2006 Leighton Jones 2007 Maia Pereira 2007 Jillian Samms 2007 Terry‐Ann Dennison 2008 Orlando Barnett 2008 Dwayne Brown 2008 Paul Newman 2008 Heidi‐Anne Hanson 2008 Shelley‐Ann Maxwell 2005 ‐ 2007 + Choreography Neila Ebanks 1999 ‐ 2002 + Choreography

2. Awardees 15 – 30 Years

3. Awardees 40 ‐50 Years

Awardees 15 – 39 Years Presenter: The Hon. Miss Justice Hilary Phillips, JA Member, Management Committee

Judith Wedderburn 1963 Noelle Chutkan 1964 Jean Summers 1964 Fred Hickling 1965 Patsy Ricketts 1966 Cheryl Ryman 1967 Jackie Guy 1968 Tony Wilson 1970 James Walker 1971 Judith Pennant‐Wuarin 1973 Alison Symes 1975 Denise Robinson 1975 Clive Thompson 1975 Leighton Johnson 1975 Sandra Minott‐Phillps 1978 Arlene Richards 1978 Carl Bliss 1978 Alaine Grant 1979 Jacquie Smith 1979 Wesley Scott 1979 Clyde Cunningham 1980 Gene Carson 1980

4. Companies & Institutions

Eduardo Rivero‐Walker 1980 Kamau Kalfani 1982 Delroy ‘Deroi’ Rose 1983 MoniKa Lawrence 1983 Henry Miller 1984 Wigmoore Francis 1985 Dulcie Bogues 1985 Tony Holness 1986 Dawn Fuller‐Philips 1986 Howard Cooper 1988 Karyn Neysmith‐Johnson 1990 Staci‐Lee Hassan‐Fowles 1991 Carole Orane‐Andrade 1992 Natalie Chung 1993 Kerry‐Ann Henry 1994 Earle Brown 1995 Arsenio Andrade‐Calderon 1995 Abeldo ‘Tokie’ Gonzalez‐Fonseca 1995 Ewan Simpson 1997 Alicia Glasgow 1998 Mark Phinn 1998 Christopher Walker 1998 Marlon Simms 1999 Kevin Moore 2001 Oniel Pryce 2002

Awardees 40 ­ 50 Years Presenter: Dr. Carlton Davis Chairperson, Management Committee on behalf of Hon. Burchell Whiteman

Bridget Spaulding 1962 Bert Rose 1962 Barbara Requa 1962 Audley Butler 1962 Rosalie Markes 1962 Gertrude Sherwood 1962 George Carter 1962 Ronan Critchlow 1962 Paula Johnson Asontua 1962 Barry Moncrieffe 1963 Barbara Kaufman 1963 Maria LaYacona 1964 Marjorie Whylie 1965 Albertina Jefferson 1971 Carole Reid 1973 Melanie Graham 1973 Michael McDonald 1977

Companies & Institutions

Presenter: Dr. Carlton Davis Chairperson, Management Committee

Chase Fund Bank of Nova Scotia National Commercial Bank The University of the West Indies Television Jamaica Ltd. Media Mix Ltd. The Little Theatre Movement NDTC Alumnae & Friends, N.Y. Digicel Foundation Rose & Co. Ltd. Carreras Ltd. Jamaica National Building Society Garth Fagan

Order of Programme

Master of Ceremony ‐ Ms. Norma Brown­Bell

National Anthem

Invocation ‐ Rev. Ralph Hoyt Guest Speaker ‐ Hon. Barbara Gloudon, OJ

Presentation of Awards Presenters: Sandra Shirley The Hon. Miss Justice Hilary Phillips, JA Dr. Carlton Davis

Musical Presentation: Harold Davis, Carole Reid

Cocktails

Vote of Thanks Marlon Simms, NDTC Dance Captain on behalf of Barrington Moncrieffe, CD ­ Artistic Director, NDTC

*NB: Years were based as they appear in the NDTC’s Annual Season Brochure

LIST OF PHOTOGRAPHS

Page(s) 2

NDTC Members in Kumina (1971) foreground Marlon Simms (King) and Keita‐Marie Chamberlain (Queen) – Stuart Lacy Photography 7 NDTC Members in African Scenario (1962); Rex Nettleford and Pansy Hassan Kumina (1971) 8 Pocomania (1963); NDTC Members in The Crossing (1978) – Bryan Robinson Photography 10 Drumscore (1979) Bryan Robinson Photography 11 Blood Canticles (1996) foreground Chelcia Creary – Bryan Robinson Photography 22 NDTC Singers (l‐r) Rhonda Lumsden‐Lue, Kemar Lee, Faith Livingstone, Earle Brown 24 Beryl McBurnie receives plaque from Prof. Rex Nettleford; background Ivy Baxter and Lavinia Williams

(1987) 27 clockwise: Sweet in the Morning (1992) Chor. Leni Wylliams featuring Marlon Simms; Arsenio Andrade Dimensions (2004) Candice Morris and Arsenio Andrade; Mark Phinn in Clive Thompson’s Of Sympathy and Love (2003) and Incantation (2002) Keita‐Marie Chamberlain soloist in Jeanguy Saintus master‐work 28 Milton Sterling and Arlene Richards in Diva (1990) Chor. Clive Thompson 29 The Thin Line (2011) Tamara Noel: Chor. Natalie Chung – Bryan Robinson Photography

32 The Crossing (1978) l‐r Phillip Earle and Paul Newman – Bryan Robinson Photography 33 NDTC Singers in Performance – Bryan Robinson Photography 34 Percussionists Ewan Simpson & Henry Miller in Drumscore (1979) 35 NDTC Singers in Performance (l‐r) Carole Reid, Faith Livingstone, Dulcie Bogues, Jhana Williams 39 African Scenario (1962) 40 Legend of Lovers’ Leap (1962) Sheila Barnett and Eddy Thomas – Garth Morgan Photography 41 Dialogue for Three (1963) Barbara Requa, Eddy Thomas, Sheila Barnett – Garth Morgan Photography

42 43 44 45 47 55 56‐57 58 59 60 62 63 64 67‐69 70 71 72 73 74

Legend of Lovers’ Leap (1962) Garth Morgan Photography Afro‐West Indian Suite (1962) Barbara Requa, Eddy Thomas, Yvonne da Costa, Rex Nettleford Games of Arms (1963) Bridget Spaulding & Bert Rose born aloft in Thomas’s satire on the world situation Juba: Rex Nettleford & Sheila Barnett in an African Caribbean dance arranged by Lavinia Williams of Haiti – Garth Morgan Photography African Scenario (1962) Eddy Thomas, as the chief, leads the male dancers in a war dance – Peter Smith Photography Jackie Guy with God Daughters Allana and Susan NDTC Singers in Performance NDTC Members in a Morning of Music and Movement Performance of Rex Nettleford masterwork The Crossing (1978) Siempre Corriendo (2012) Bryan Robinson Photography featuring Marlon Simms, Edisnel Rodíguez Gonzalez, Mark Phinn and Delvis Savigne Friñón Mark Phinn and Candice Morris in Chris Walker’s Urban Fissure (2004) – Christopher Cushman Photography Kerry‐Ann Henry in Clive Thompson’s Ancestral Images – Bryan Robinson Photography Kumina (1971) Stuart Lacy Photography Madge Broderick, Principal Dancer Monica McGowan, Founding Member/Principal Dancer Sulkari (1980) Edisnel Rodíguez Gonzalez and Eduardo Rivero‐Walker Sulkari (1980) foreground Candice Morris ‐ Bryan Robinson Photography Sulkari (1980) Bryan Robinson Photography NDTC Singers & Musicians featuring Helen Christian in Eduardo Rivero‐Walker Sulkari (1980) Bryan Robinson Photography