NDTCJournal #4 2013

NDTC JOURNAL

Issue#4, 2013

NETTLEFORD FEATURE: THE DANCE AS AN ARTFORM IN THE WEST INDIES

THE ARTIST’S CORNER: “FREE TO WINE FREE TO WUK MY WAIST”: INTERROGATING AND EXPRESSION OF FREEDOM AND RESISTANCE IN BARBADOS POPULAR DANCE CULTURE

SPOTLIGHT Maria LaYacona: 60 Years of Photography in Jamaica

TRIBUTES Remembering Barbara Kaufman

ARTICLES: The Role of Cultural Exchange and Documentation in Bridging the Gap between Chinese and Jamaican Cultures | The Relevance of Cultural and Historical Documentation in Understanding Parallels between Japan and Jamaica | Dancing the National Narratives: Concert Dance in Barbados as an Historical Document | The Role of the Theatre Critic in Creating Cultural and Historical Documents | The Performing Arts as Documents

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NATIONAL DANCE THEATRE COMPANY OF JAMAICA

Barry Moncrieffe, Artistic Director Ewan Simpson, 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, 886-­5148, 631-­5849 ndtc_jamaica@yahoo.com

NDTC JOURNAL is published by the National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica, 4 Tom Redcam Avenue, Kingston 5, Jamaica, West Indies.

(876) 631-5879, 886-5148, 631.5849 ndtc_jamaica@yahoo.ccom

EDITOR Barbara Requa

DESIGN & PRODUCTION Christopher A. Walker Mark Phinn Marlon Simms

All Photographs by Stuart Reeves Unless otherwise stated

©Copyright 2013

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NDTC

JOURNAL ISSUE #4, 2013

FROM THE EDITOR

Barbara Requa .............................................................................................................................03

ARTICLES

The Dance as an Art Form and its Place in the West Indies Rex Nettleford .................................................................................................................. 04

The Role of Cultural Exchange and Documentation in Bridging the Gap between Chinese and Jamaican Cultures Courtney A. Hogarth .......................................................................................................... 17

The Relevance of Cultural and Historical Documentation in Understanding the Parallels between Japan and Jamaica Jhana Willians-­‐Graham ................................................................................................... 21

Dancing the National Narratives: Concert Dance in Barbados as an Historical Document John Hunte ....................................................................................................................... 25

The Role of the Theatre Critic in Creating Cultural and Historical Documents Barbara N. Ellington ............................................................................................................... 34

The Performing Arts as Documents Mark-­‐Shane Scale ............................................................................................................. 37

ARTIST CORNER “free to wine free to wuk my waist”: Interrogating and Expression of Freedom and Resistance in Barbados Popular Dance Culture John Hunte ...................................................................................................................... 43

FROM THE ARCHIVES Revisiting the Past, Forging the Future: Aims and Accomplishments Compiled by Mark Phinn ................................................................................................... 50

COMMENTARIES, NEWS, AND REVIEWS NDTC NEWS Compiled by Marlon Simms ............................................................................................. 58

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SPOTLIGHT Maria LaYacona: 60 Years of Photography in Jamaica (Opening Speech) David Boxer ...................................................................................................................... 62

TALEpiece

TRIBUTE TO BARBARA KAUFMAN (Wardrobe Mistress) Barbara Kaufman Lived ‘On Purpose’ Alicia Glasgow – Public Relations Officer, NDTC .............................................................. 66 Barbara Kaufman, NDTC Wardrobe Mistress Marlon Simms (Dance Captain) ....................................................................................... 68 Tributes ................................................................................................................................. 71

CONTRIBUTORS............................................................................................................................ 73

LIST OF PHOTOGRAPHS ............................................................................................................... 75

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FROM THE EDITOR Barbara Requa

Once again it is my pleasure to introduce the topics under discussion for this, our 4th NDTC Journal, which investigates the “Performing Arts as a Vital Historical and Cultural Document”.

Articles: In this section, our contributors have clearly made a tremendous effort to research, contemplate and present their opinions on this very important topic, introduced by our former AD, Professor Rex Nettleford. His article entitled “The Dance as an Art Form and its Place in the West Indies” continues to provide historical documentation on the Art of Dance – locally and internationally -­‐ together with highlights on the growth and development of the NDTC. This is followed by “The Role of Cultural Exchange and Documentation in Bridging the Gap between Chinese and Jamaican Culture” by Courtney A. Hogarth and “The Relevance of Cultural and Historical Documentation in Understanding the Parallels between Japan and Jamaica” by Jhana Williams-­‐Graham, two articles that explore and present ideas for a sharing and documentation of the three cultures and the benefits that can accrue from such an association.

Barbara Ellington offers a short but very informative discourse entitled “The Role of the Theatre Critic in Creating Cultural and Historical Documents”, reminding us that some responsibilities of the critic include: “helping the public to interpret and reflect on cultural material, and providing Archival material that reflect the popular tastes and norms at a particular point in time”. “Dancing the National Narratives – Concert Dance in Barbados as a Historical Document”, an extensively researched work by John Hunte, investigates “the continued contestation between afro-­‐ centric and euro-­‐centric ideologies and methodologies, using the narratives of two dance theatre groups to delineate the extent to which race, class and gender interface in Barbadian Space”. The final article written by Mark-­‐Shane Scale, challenges us to look at “The Performing Arts as Documents”.

Artist Corner comes alive with the second offering from Mr. Hunt entitled “free to Wine, free to wuk my waist! Interrogating and Expression of Freedom and Resistance in Barbados Popular Dance Culture”. His clearly defined and expressed descriptions of the vocabulary and “Africanist” qualities conjure up visual pictures of the movement, which bears a close similarity to Jamaican Dancehall and other Caribbean Popular forms.

From the Archives: Archivist Mark Phinn continues to keep us up-­‐to-­‐ date with the Aims and Accomplishments of the NDTC; he shares an informative interview between our esteemed AD Emeritus and Mr. Patrick Healy, Director of the Organisation of the American States, published in 1981 and introduced by a ‘stunning’ photograph of the Professor taken with Cuba’s Prima Ballerina Assoluta, Senora Alicia Alonzo.

This Journal closes with Commentaries, News and Reviews, compiled by Ballet Master Marlon Simms, Spotlight, an address given

by Dr. David Boxer in honour of our beloved Master Photographer, Maria LaYacona as she celebrates 60 years of living and working in Jamaica and TALEpiece, dedicated to the life of Barbara Kaufman, Wardrobe Mistress Extraordinaire who made the transition in Barbara Requa – Fouding September, 2013. I invite you to read and enjoy. Break a Leg! Member and Former Principal Dancer NDTC

Founding Member

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THE DANCE AS AN ART FORM AND ITS PLACE IN THE WEST INDIES I.

By Rex Nettleford

I. The Art of Dance: Its Nature, Purpose and Scope Of all the arts, dance is probably most neglected. Although over the past twenty or so years literature on the art form has increased considerably, the proportions reach nothing near the many volumes to be found on such art forms as painting, sculpture, drama and so on.

There are good reasons for this. The Dance remains the most elusive, the most ephemeral, of the arts. With the development of the cinema films will prove an invaluable means of recording the masterpieces of the performing art – as is shown with the works performed by the Bolshoi Ballet, or the Royal Ballet of Britain and, more recently, the monumental works of Martha Graham in “A Dancer’s World” and Appalachian Spring”. Still, the actual experience of a performance in the here-­‐and-­‐now is difficult to catch and record with any degree of accuracy comparable to say literature. The artform therefore continues to elude many of the most intuitive in the audience, including the critics.

This has led to many myths about the dance including the one that it is an exclusively community or popular art that will easier play to the gallery than any of those arts which are assumed to be not only ‘finer’ but more important. This I question – for obvious reasons.

For dance is as old as life itself and is capable of expressing the deepest feelings of the human spirit if not in the intellectual terms, certainly in emotional which I contend is basic to all men. This emotional element in the human makeup probably finds its best expression in so-­‐called primitive man and, even in the sophisticated world, among children. The dance, like the artist whom Henri Bergeon describes, “grasps something that has nothing in common with language, (has) certain rhythms of life and breath that are closer to man than his feelings, being the living law –varying with each individual – of his enthusiasm and despair, his hopes and regrets. As such, it has a range of response

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among audience from the highly sophisticated to the innocent and uninitiated. The dance performer puts across that “something grasped” in a performance of the here-­‐and-­‐now and the impact is instantaneous on an audience which has little chance to be ‘connoisseurs by hearsay’ as they can easily be in their appreciation of painting and music. Rather they must see for themselves to enjoy.

Dance – the basic art: dance – the art for almost everyone! There is some justification for this liability, and at the same time, this asset of Dance. For as the late Louis Horst, that famous authority on pre-­‐classic dance forms writes, “Long before the time of recorded history dance must have been a developed and complex skill. Early man used it to surmount the riddles and tragedies of his daily life. He lived at the mercy of nature forces which we (in our time) have learnt to understand and in some degree to control, and dance was for him a powerful way to conciliate these forces. It was his religion and his poetry and his science. Ritual dances were his insurance of success against natural enemies of hunger, disease and death – fertility dances harvest dances, war dances. He danced to celebrate his joys in triumph or his sorrow in defeat, and believed that his very survival depended on a dance of such strength and agility that it would be worthy of notice by the gods who controlled his destiny”.

This purposefulness behind dance remains today among many peoples of the underdeveloped countries. The yam festivals in West Africa still have their harvest dances.

In many cases, however, the purpose has disappeared while the dance has remained. We all possess that instinct to use movement as a release for deep feelings of gratification and frustration – after all, we still jump for joy and we sometimes go hopping mad! “Tie you belly, kotch you wheel, Sammy dead oh’ gives a picture of a movement development and combination which could be very expressive – for SORROW, that is. Words have in a large measure taken over from movement and one of the pitfalls of Dance in the theatre Is the attempts to be “deep and powerful” in the intellectual sense. A few people like Balanchine, Martha Graham and Anthony Tudor have managed to approach success in this, but they are geniuses. This is not to deprive Movement of its capacity to express deep feeling but I agree with the American choreographer, Agnes deMille, that intellectualism is the realm of ‘thought’ while dance inheres in ‘emotions’; and though there are points of contact between the two, any exclusive claims on the former by the dance is likely to lead into the abyss of the ludicrous and the embarrassing. The point which I have just made may be of interest to those who will clamour for some deep intellectual thought process in the toes and fingers of the dancers.

II. Dance as a Folk Art To those who take the other extreme position that the folk form is the only form of dance that is “true” and that particularly in Jamaica we should present on stage Pocomania,

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Kumina, Maroon dancing, John Canoe and so on as they are done in their natural habitat, then I strongly recommend that those people take a walk to West Kingston for the first, to Moore Town for the second, to Accompong for the third, and in any country town at

Christmas time for the last. The stage is not the place for such things in the raw. Because they exist where they are, and in some cases are taken quite seriously, any attempt to redo them authentically on the stage would prove a fiasco and, for some, in bad taste! This arises out of the nature of folk-­‐dancing and folk-­‐dances. Folk dancing is for participating and not for viewing as theatre dancing is. It is Agnes deMille again in her book “To A Young Dancer” says – “Folk dances have no climax. Because they were meant to be performed and not watched, they seldom produce any emotion in the beholder except nostalgia or pleasant excitement. From folk dances you can learn the beauty and shape individual steps and (indeed) the magic of sequence, but not dramatic sequence (which is very necessary in the theatre). They seldom teach us storytelling, suspense, tragedy, and only rarely, comedy.

Just a few (of these dances) quicken into a round or end with a good thumping stamp.

Mostly they go on and on, continuity being their essence, “like human nature or life”. But if we were ever to attempt going on and on nobody would stay in the theatre and if they stayed, they would not be seen dead in the theatre another time. This would hardly do for dancers and dance theatre. If one wants to make an art of dance, then one will have to be sensible about folk-­‐forms. They are indispensable to the art of dance, let me hasten to add.

The great classical ballet companies insist that their members should learn all the European folk styles as well as ballet and some Spanish dancing; the Russians go one step further and add acrobatics to their dance technique and the Americans insist on Modern

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dance. Living ballerinas have been known to study the dances of the East and of Africa to extend their own range. And I contend that any country with a strong folkdance tradition is likely to produce the most significant and exciting dance art. We can compare Russian and England for example and see the results. But this does not mean that anyone is authentic about anything. Moiseyev brings his creative talents to the folk-­‐dances of the many countries of Soviet Russia into an artistic amalgam with highly trained dancers just as Fokine and his wife used the native dances of the countries they visited in Southwest Asia and Eastern Russia. Nowhere are these transferred wholesale to the stage. Rather, they are distilled and their essence extracted, treated, and projected. When Beryl McBurnie, the Trinidadian high priestess of West Indian dance, presents the rituals of Shango, Rada Plavadoo, she presents them as an artist not as a dweller from the hills of Belmot and Laventille. The Nation Dances of Cariacou must be translated into the language of dance-­‐ theatre for presentation. Otherwise they are best left where they thrive and have their being if authenticity is what we want. True, the end-­‐product must depict a deep knowledge and understanding of the folk forms, the roots, but not the letter. In this Ivy Baxter has made an invaluable contribution to dance in Jamaica where she set out to create dances in the spirit rather than in the letter of Jamaican folkdance and lore.

For though Jamaica’s folklore, as Louise Bennett shows, is rich in stories, ring games and songs, her folkdancing is not richly endowed as , say, in the Eastern Caribbean (Grenada, Trinidad, and the French West Indies). Beryl McBurnie’s “Outlines of the Dances of Trinidad” gives to Trinidad an integrated dance tradition rooted in rituals, (Shango, Rada).

Social Competitive (Bongo, Limbo, Kalenda) as well as in the different ethnic groupings that go to make up Trinidad’s social mosaic. The Nation Dances of the Grenadine negroes were

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transplanted wholesale to Trinidad by these West Indian immigrants and the annual Carnival had proved a storehouse for the preservation of old dances as well as the invention of new ones. She invests the dance with the power of mirroring the kaleidoscopic heritage of her country. Yet there are those (particularly people from the temperate climates) who regard the hip-­‐sway and the pelvic roll as the truly representative movement patterns of this part of the world. Every peasant dance of the Caribbean betrays this. This is a narrow view of the Jamaican and Caribbean countryside. It also gives to the hip-­‐sway and pelvic roll a range of expression which experience show is just not there. The dance in this part of the world goes far beyond this and is capable of greater range of expression.

For Dance, I feel, remains the most eloquently non-­‐partisan of the theatre art-­‐forms. It stretches across the boundaries of race customs and politics and religion linking peoples of the world through a common idea rooted in the sheer power of movement. The Russian – American exchanges, the Anglo-­‐American exchanges, the African invasion of the world’s theatres, the exposure of Canada to Trinidadian and Jamaican dancers, and the recent efforts in the United Kingdom, point to this. Moreover, it would do us well to extend ourselves into the whole Caribbean area, the rest of which shares with Jamaica a certain movement pattern which, for all the variations of style, has the basic element of the tonal complex of the melody of Europe played upon the rhythm of Africa. The world then is our source in a very real sense and the dance can as much bring to Jamaica and the Caribbean something of the outside world as it certainly can take Jamaica and the Caribbean to the outside world.

III. Dance as a “National Art-­‐form” -­‐ The Jamaican Experience (a) A Question of Diverse Roots The dance in Jamaica has depended on no one technique. True Ivy Baxter managed to evolve something which started to look peculiar to us. But much of her work has been based on classical ballet and Jamaican folk mime. In dance terms this remained limited until, partly through her efforts, we were exposed to yet more forms particularly the Modern Dance idiom of the United States, the dance lore of Haitian voo-­‐doo, and the strong Afro-­‐Latin syncopation of Trinidad which has in turn drawn a great deal from Venezuela, Brazil and the Grenadines. It is out of all this that we have managed to evolve something which is more dynamic and, most certainly stronger than ten years ago. We have the advantage of being able to refer to the vocabulary of many different techniques with a view to developing a 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. Sometimes there is probably too much over-­‐emphasis on the gap which exists between Jamaican peasant and the Jamaican middle class sophisticate.

As a peasant of six or seven living in what was then regarded as one of the ‘darkest’ and

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most folksy part of Jamaica, I remember singing big chunks of Handel’s “Messiah”, Haydn’s “Creation” and of course that old favourite “The Lost Chord”. My grandmother and several country aunties loved the anthems and even if they sang them badly, they were exposed to some of the best liturgical music out of a European culture. These same people would participate in Pocomania, and I have had my dose of “groaning and shouting” as well as healing in the balmyard and the obeahman. Anancy stories and ring games were popular with my playmates too and we looked happily around to Ranny Williams and Lee Gordon in ‘sawga’, along with Chief Little Bear complete with his two performing monkeys. Later I was to discover that this was not particularly “Jamaican” – this medicine-­‐selling and side-­‐ show vauderville. Nor was the idea of a travelling stage peculiar to this part of the world either. The question I must ask now is ‘how do we decide?’. For we are faced with the element of choice. Or what is Jamaican and what is non-­‐Jamaican? Above all, where do we go from the ‘boom-­‐boom’, as Derek Walcott, the poet, once asked.

(b) A Question of Training and Discipline It is interesting to note that the art-­‐forms which seem to be saying something today are ones which have not been over-­‐exclusive. Let’s take literature – the novel in particular. Our best Jamaican writers – including the ones who did not risk the pleasure of exile in Britain, are not just folksy reporters but able artists who are contributing to the World of Literature, using all the techniques suggested by the possibilities and limitations of the English Language. Whether it is Jamaicanese or Londonese it is still the English Language which is used even in passages which reject the strongly European oriented “culture” of the tropical hills and valleys of the Caribbean. The dance has been significant in this respect. An exposure to most of the established techniques of the world and to a good many of the styles of dancing has resulted in a certain richness and a wide range of performing skills among our best dancers. They themselves bring to the dance a certain richness and a certain flavour and emotional intensity which is indeed peculiar to us in this part of the world. There is the work of Hazel Johnson with her English classical training which lives in the Royal Academy of Dance training encouraged by Barbara Fonseca and others. Also Anatole Sohih with his strong Russian back-­‐ground and Ivy Baxter with her influence from an early free style German school and her own innate creative facility with Jamaican mime.

Then there are the many ‘American’ teachers like Neville Black (Jamaican born) who taught on summer schools from a background of Humphrey-­‐Weidman and Martha Graham, and of course Lavinia Williams with her strong primitive Afro-­‐Haitian techniques as well as Beryl McBurnie with her deep knowledge and understanding of Trinidad and the Afro-­‐Latin complex in the West Indies. Added to this has been practice in the mimetic qualities of our folksongs and stories as well as dance steps in things like John Canoe and Pocomania.

Behind all this wealth of material, has been a sustained and systematic training programme to prepare the dancer’s body for the work of which it is capable. There is more consciousness that dance has a common bond whether it is on toes, on flat foot, with shoes,

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or barefoot; whether the dancer is from this or that class, or whether he is from country or from town. The advances made have been acknowledged in many ways. Over the past six years it has been the dance which has made the Jamaican musicals move. (This, of course, is not peculiar to Jamaica). Dance studios have increased in number and in their enrolment.

Moreover, so called Creative Dancers are themselves becoming less self-­‐conscious, and more confident, less invertedly snobbish, and a little more tolerant.

(c) A Question of Standards: The National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica A National Dance Theatre Company has been formed in Jamaica drawing on the resources of the best available dance talent which has emerged from the activities of the past ten to fifteen years. As a performing Company working together this Company places emphasis on excellence and further dance development by extending dance for us not only as recreation and therapy which are worthwhile uses, but as an art-­‐form in its own right. As a performing group, the Company provides a vehicle for well trained and talented dancers who wish to perform and create works of excellence. The dancers have been undergoing training for five to twelve years in classical, modern and primitive idioms and are able to give in a night so varied a repertoire that a leading Canadian critic remarked that “in one program they contribute as much as three companies might…”

The repertoire, therefore, betrays a wide range of themes and approaches as can be seen in the primitive and Caribbean folk sections, the interpretive dance sequences and the modern dance creations. If, at the moment, this appears difficult to pin down in terms of

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“style”, it is because the spirit of a complex heritage is difficult to pin down, is elusive, and probably for that reason, all the more powerful. We were indeed impressed by the comments of North Americans on what many called the “aerial quality” of the company rather than the anticipated flat-­‐footed grovelling earthiness traditionally connected with the “folk”. The vibration of the dancers is said to maintain a lyrical volatility even in could be heavy works like Legend of Lovers Leap and African Scenario. The storehouse of Jamaican dance-­‐lore is partly in the 19th century, when the society consolidated and formed itself. Plantation revelries produced among the otherwise miserable slaves dances which they had obviously copied from their English masters, with the important differences that they underscored the music with a complex and, to them, satisfying rhythm. So there is the Quadrille, which has it counterparts in the Spanish and French speaking Caribbean, and which could be the National dance of Jamaica, more robust than the 18th century court dances of which it is a creolised variant, and less “square” than the wheeling, yippeeing American square dance which seems to share a common heritage. This European influence persisted among the John Canoe masqueraders who according to travel writers of the earlier period, were complete with powdered wigs and Georgian dress, but cut capers and went through antics which betrayed African origins in the dancing. The religious upstirrings which followed Emancipation in 1838 produced Christianity and missionaries but also Revivalism and Shepherds. The spectacle and colour of the Pocomania ceremonies are enhanced by the variety of rhythms, counterpoint movements that come from trampling feet contracting diaphragms and expanding larynges. The religious and other ceremonies of the Kumina (Afro) people in Jamaica also provide material for dance-­‐theatre. The repertoire of the National Dance Theatre Company transcends the limits of Jamaica in its attempt to attain to universal appeal, and Games of Arms deals satirically with the world situation and the cold war. It is set purposefully in a schoolyard and (a folk custom) is utilised; the dance-­‐characters are those universally known “monsters” called children. Dialogue for Three is a trio on the theme of male helplessness before the female force. In a matriarchal society, such as Jamaica’s, this will have special significance but the theme is not territorially restricted. Creations in the Jazz idiom also utilised a form of music and dance which is decidedly international. The contrasting works appeared last Season. They were Eddy Thomas’ And it Came to Pass, a dance chronicle based on the Nativity, and my own Two Drums for Babylon which dealt with the Jamaican alienated cargo cult, the Ras Tafari.

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In spite of the variety, the Company has its peculiar qualities which betray the elusive unity that underlies the chequered past of an island that was conquered from the Spaniards by the English who settled and governed it with the aid of British administrators and planters and African slaves. These latter 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 background the company is likely to face and in fact already faces, critics who may have decided views on what elements, an in what degree of potency, should be selected from the heritage in order to make the concoction that everyone would love to see evolve 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 art and of dance in particular. But too much of this at the 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 this all gives the Company the kind of challenge it ought to have even at this stage.

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The Government through its Ministry of development and Welfare has made grants to the Company for its seasonal productions as well as for the tour of Canada and the United Kingdom. Public support is likely to increase financially through that much overworked device of ‘the friends of the …..’ The Company naturally benefits immensely from the fact that none of the dancers are paid, nor are the choreographers; nor is composer Oswald Russell who taught once at the Jamaica School of Music, nor lighting director George Carter who did a lighting course at the Sadler’s Wells Theatre a few year ago, nor the painters two of whom (Eugene Hyde and Milton Harley) did backdrops for the Company’s shows in Jamaica and Canada. Opportunities for cultural tours to Canada (1963), the Bahamas (1965) the United Kingdom (1965) and West Germany (1966) have enhanced 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 the latter-­‐day integrated dissonance of America, its biggest neighbour. It is true what one Canadian critic said: “dance theatre in Jamaica in now is as varied in pace and international in flavour as the West Indies themselves. 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 to that remarkable instrument, the human body, to explore the hidden range of its expression, the Company might well prove to be something more than merely interesting”. Much of what we are aiming at as well as audience reaction to us was 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 and multiple traditions, producing highly creative work, not only in the dance itself but also in the field of costume and design”. Peter Williams on seeing the Jamaican Company at the Commonwealth Arts Festival had this to say: “it is all very well to get people moving in local ethnic patterns but to get them moving in works based on the concepts of modern dance, which also have a thematic content concerned with emotional

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and social problems very real in the life of this island people, that is something far more important. The dancers are well trained”, he went on to say “some could take their place in any of the world’s important companies”. The dancers, more so now than before, subject their instruments – the body – to the most rigid discipline.

For every dancer must “know that his mind quickens his body and his body enlivens his mind, and he glories in the responsive obedience of the one to the other.” He must have a capacity for freedom; for he lives under the law of discipline in technique in order to inherit the freedom in artistry which is grace. When a dancer is out on the stage, he is on his own and no choreographer (who might like to think he is the creative agent in Creative dancing) has a ghost of a chance. All we can ask for is that the dancer will transmit to an audience which deserves it, an aesthetically satisfying and emotionally exciting structural relationships between the elements of space, dynamics and rhythm. For those of us who want the movement pattern of Jamaica and Jamaicans to be faithfully reflected in this art-­‐ form we will expect the dancer to make his art move to the pulse of Jamaica. That’s as far as we need go in nationalistic terms.

IV. The Dancer, His Critic and His Future The dancer in turn expects recognition if he is good and advice as to how he can improve if he has not quite made it. If he is really bad, he should not have exhibited. And this takes me around to critics. Dance criticism is not an easy job. As Edwin Denby, the American writer on dance once said “A dance critic’s education includes dance experience, musical and pictorial experience; a sense of what art is about, and what people are really like. But all these advantages are not enough unless they meet with an unusual literary gift and discipline”. When the critic in our community has none of these, one can see that the art is the poorer for it. The critic can hardly pretend to be right (and this he need not be) or illuminating (which he must be) unless he has a profound knowledge, not just an idea. The ignorance of critics on the dance could easily be corrected had it not been for the amateur situation in the arts in Jamaica – a situation in which the critics will end up being the “most amateur”; if they are not careful. Criticism over the years have convinced me more and more of the need for the kind of critic who is clear and precise in his criticism; for the critic who can be influential in raising the level of dance production in this community by this constructive advice; for the critic who is enlightening on general questions of theatre dancing, its heritage, and the significance of the modern developments; for the critic who is able to awaken an interest for dancing among intelligent people who are not dance enthusiasts themselves. There is indeed the danger that in the years to come dancers will tend to become as smug as the critics. The dancers have a conscience, I hope, and reviews cannot replace one’s own conscience. Moreover, because their instruments, are their bodies, dancers can know and usually admit when they are really not good. The critic will

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earn respect who continues to betray a basic sympathy for the art-­‐form and not a hostile attitude. This can only lead to their progressive irrelevance to the scene of activities.

This is not to suggest that all is well with the dance. There is a wide field that lies ahead to be conquered and to be conquered on our own terms and not in terms of England, America or Africa though certainly NOT without their influence. Creative dancing is indeed sometimes used as an excuse to be esoteric or even to ‘dance down’ to an audience. The dancers and choreographers responsible usually receive their well-­‐earned fate. This is not an argument against theatre dance. The possibilities that lie before us ARE numerous and inexhaustible. For as long as life goes on the dance goes on, whether it is in Trinidad, Jamaica, Guyana, America or Europe. As in any other art-­‐form, the imposition of discipline is vital for the attainment of levels of excellence. This discipline can only serve to develop what Louis Horst again calls “the inner sensitivity to everyone of the body’s parts, to the power of its whole, and to the space in which it carves designs”. All this, indeed, to the end that the body and the human personality can be freed and the range of communication widened and extended. But most of all to discover and to discover in terms true to the experience of artists involved. For dance is the art of discovery.

NB: Above article written in 1965

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Bass singer Leighton Jones in Ewan Simpson”s Reggae Suite – REBEL MUSIC 2013 16

The Role of Cultural Exchange and Documentation in Bridging the Gap Between Chinese and Jamaican Cultures

By Courtney A. Hogarth, PhD

The broad pursuit of Art demands a profound investigation into self. For Art is that tool through which we seek to express something of an inner-­‐intelligence. This innate understanding of self, with all the complexity implied, may eventually lead to an understanding of others. All of this shall be an approach to some sort of intelligent living in which there is truly no ‘other’. For that deep comprehension of self, being the pivotal axis from which we perceive the world, would generate such abundant empathy that our knowledge of others would not seem some insurmountable or unnecessary task.

I am attempting to posit that humanity is one, underlined with the individual, manifested in the many. This is seldom what we are told. We are taught to be separate individuals, to be different, nationalistic and independent, to do all those things necessary to tear ourselves one from the other, and eventually to be mutually antagonistic. Here, there is no suggestion on the writer’s part that we be homogenized, Christianized or Americanized. For only the truly local shall be international, despite insignificant differences in language, race or creed.

We have to see this, not theoretically, but actually, clearly. In the realm of Art, be it performing, visual or otherwise, there are no borders, for Art reflects and affects those emotions that are common to all humanity. Despite the fact that I address culture in its broadest sense, I would immediately speak specifically to the subject of Art.

I have said elsewhere that “Jamaica and China are new and old, alike and different, intersected at strange angles, intertwined somewhere in recent memory, have known each other yet never met.” At the time there was little further elucidation of this statement, for it expressed sufficiently. That moment of contact for Jamaica and China some one hundred and fifty years previously, marked a significant juncture in the history of our shared civilization. It was at this time that we touched each other. To the unaccustomed eye it would seem that this ‘touching’ was a one-­‐way affair. Yet, it is important to recognize that no culture may touch another and remain untouched itself. Since that time much has transpired in the world, including the establishment of those so-­‐called politically independent states – China, in 1949, under a communist creed of Mao Zedong’s interpretation; and Jamaica with its independence from Britain in 1962, ending a period described by centuries of servitude. Subsequent to this saw the establishment of diplomatic relations between Jamaica and China, in 1972.

If spaces manifest in our togetherness, perchance such spaces are filled with some mutual dread, misunderstanding and mistrust. Already there is the intimation to such if we address ourselves to questions of ‘gaps’ in culture. To the average Jamaican the Chinese perhaps remain an inscrutable lot, defined by a strange language and even stranger mores.

Those Chinese who are second, third or fourth generation in Jamaica, no doubt define themselves in Jamaican terms with faint blood-­‐memories of a distant land that did not fully

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nourish their immediate forefathers. The stories, herein buried, are varied and colourful, tinged with pain and humour.

When we speak of Chinese or Jamaican cultures, the complexity involved in defining exactly what these are cannot be underestimated. ‘Chinese Culture’, for example, speaks to a gargantuan organism – ancient, shapeless, complex beyond definition, the understanding of which shall demand extended time, patience and an open mind. The reverse is not dissimilar.

Within recent memory, all exchanges between our two countries, at the state level, have been mostly one-­‐directional, i.e. from China to Jamaica. I would not suggest that this speaks to some sort of cultural hegemony on China’s part, particularly in earlier days. Jamaica’s inability to reciprocate by sending her cultural representatives to China has long been due to economic restraints. With the establishment of a Jamaican Embassy in Beijing in 2005, then resident Ambassador, Wayne McCook, sought to promote such exchanges. This resulted in the visit and photographic exhibition by Ray Chen, a concert by Ziggy Marley, exhibitions by Jamaican and Chinese artists, as well as vigourous attempts to ensure that Jamaica assumed visibility in the Chinese gaze. Jamaica even gained the status of an approved destination for Chinese tourists in 2006. Throughout these forty years of formal relations, Jamaica became most visible to the Chinese in 2008 during the Beijing Olympics.

For prior to this, and presently, it is not uncommon for the Chinese to believe that Jamaica is in Africa.

As recently as 2012, when Jamaica and China celebrated 40 years of diplomatic relations, we were able to have only one individual in the person of Steven Woodham, acclaimed violinist, represent Jamaica in Beijing. Again, there were economic concerns. Yet, that Beijing event revealed, in one evening, a willingness on the part of China to absorb and grow: consider a Chinese choir singing Louise Bennett’s ‘Dis Long Time Gal’.

With the establishment of the Confucius Institute at the University of the West Indies in 2009, I have also witnessed Jamaicans gaining fluency in Chinese Mandarin. The most recent visit of a Shaolin Kung Fu Performing Troupe to Jamaica, in August 2013, saw one Jamaican moderating fluently in Chinese. Perchance we witness manifestations of a changing world with proximities being lessened as technology sweeps us along in its tidal wave.

My foregoing words describe only faint attempts at cultural exchange, ill-­‐defined, lopsided, and happening in fits and starts. For serious, sustained understanding to blossom between the peoples of Jamaica and China, there will have to be, firstly, that willingness to admit relevance, and secondly, action from governmental and non-­‐governmental cultural institutions. Admission of relevance will need to take into account what the results of exchanges involving visual and performing artists, writers, athletes, students and the like, will mean for both countries. It will also have to embody respect and understanding on both sides, for this describes the sine qua non of mutual co-­‐operation.

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Is there anything that Jamaica can learn from China? What can China learn from Jamaica?

What will the accumulation/assimilation of such knowledge mean for both nations? This has nothing to do with those scholarships offered to Jamaican students to pursue studies in Chinese institutions of higher learning (now on an annual basis). The keen Jamaican student will grasp the relevance of either a Chinese education or an education gained in China in the context of his/her worldview, applied to questions of daily living in whatever continental locale. However, this individual would be required to possess some knowledge of self. Here again, the question of self-­‐knowledge in its many manifestations, arise. It is not uncommon to see cultural traditions in dance, language, painting and the like, being documented by foreign individuals/organizations. Quite often, it takes an outside eye to spot the wealth of others as lived out in the above-­‐mentioned cultural forms. We will preserve for posterity only those things we deem valuable. All around, in Jamaica, I see treasures being ignored, withering, forgotten with an admitted excuse of penury. This is the ultimate poverty!

We will have to engage in studied introspection to grasp import of those treasures arising, naturally, from land and people. For we are apt to throw out those things we deem old or useless, sometimes for mere meat or light entertainment, especially when easily accessible American television paints pictures of a laid-­‐back life in which the only goal is “to break it big”. After living in China for many years I was surprised to discover, in 2007, that a traditional Jamaican wake (Nine Night) was nothing like I remembered it from childhood.

That rich undertone of the Black Spiritual in gentle cadence of song, reflecting some sure knowledge of pain, sung with sensitivity, had given way to a vulgar, metallic clashing of instruments responded to by gyrating mobs and rather bad singing. I mention this episode because I failed to see the evolution into the present form.

It is not only in Jamaica that such drastic changes are happening. For in the last thirty years China herself has undergone massive change. Similarly, I lament the loss of certain cultural expressions in China, within my own memory. Admittedly, societies change, for culture does not imply that which is static or calcified. Surely our future branches sprout from our past roots. If we tend only to the branches, the entire tree shall wither and die.

This documentation we examine must mean a recording, in whatever medium, of those expressed forms defining our cultures – artistic, political, scholarly, religious and the like.

For here the breath of that word ‘culture’ assumes shape and significance. China, with her five thousand or so years of unbroken memory, has undoubtedly, lost much in that long river of history. Today, she tries to record faithfully those expressed forms deemed important. She also tries to support and enrich those institutions that are the living preserve of cultural expression – museums, galleries, libraries, old residences, and so forth.

The average visitor to China may acquire considerable knowledge of the past. This is important. What is even more important is that this knowledge of the past continues to inform the present.

China has grown abundantly in economic wealth, and with this growth has come a measure of self-­‐confidence that hitherto she lacked. This new-­‐found self-­‐confidence has meant a deepening faith in the worth and efficacy of her own cultural forms. In truth, the wealth of

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nations cannot be defined solely in monetary terms. True wealth springs from that innermost fountain whence all deeply creative individuals draw. We will have to, in Jamaica, recognize and embrace this.

At this juncture it would be prudent to point out that cultural exchange and documentation will only mean the enriching of individual nations, herein identified. But the precursor to all of this must be that recognition, arising from knowledge of self, as to the import of what one possesses. Otherwise there shall be no documentation for the present or posterity, and similarly cultural exchanges will be problematic. Perhaps I am not thinking so much of bridging some gap. The enrichment of individual cultures is what I deem most important and elevate above all else. The natural line of progression, therefore, shall be a sure self-­‐ knowledge, recognition of one’s wealth (not monetary), the desire to preserve for posterity (which is now), and the willingness to share and grow. This line of progression must be taken by individual nations. In this, education, formal and non-­‐formal, will have to play a pivotal role.

A country such as Jamaica with its less than five hundred years of cultural memory faces an immediate and mammoth task. Our society is fraught with problems that hamper development at the very primary level. From the vantage point I occupy, we are yet in the throes of self-­‐definition, changing, yes, but lacking in that necessary patience which introspection demands. Our inability to grow financially will continue to stunt the blossoming of anything cultural, until we find more creative ways in which to advance.

There must be the innate recognition that all things grow and take shape together. It would be useless to speak here about broad culture without addressing ourselves to the culture of violence, dependence, laziness and all other negative attributes, hampering growth, which exist in Jamaica today. I suggest we examine these as they are, honestly, squarely, without trying to brush them under some rug or whitewash with empty excuses.

In this conference of humanity, we must endeavour to meet each other as individuals, complete in every significant particular. We will have to protect those who are bearers of our creative heritage – our artists, poets, dancers, musicians, writers and composers. We must also protect our languages, our myths, and our environment. While we try to achieve all these things we must endeavour to share and to learn. Here we shall build relationships, exchanges; we shall document, search and find. Here, we shall be the richer for having shared, the wiser for using that which is ancient for today’s use, and find therein that knowledge of self is inestimable. We shall also find that those individual cultures to which we tend do not belong to us, individually, but to all of humanity.

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The Relevance of Cultural and Historical Documentation in Understanding the Parallels Between Japan and Jamaica

By Jhana Willians-­‐Graham

The bilateral relationship between Japan and Jamaica continues to be nourished in part by the cultural and historical understanding that exists between them. For almost five decades, cooperation between the Land of the Rising Sun and the Land of Wood and Water has steadily increased awareness of the cultural and historical parallels between the two.

In a relatively short time, these countries have managed to develop a deeper understanding of the more popularly celebrated aspects of each other’s culture and history. Dance, music, and the graphic arts are often the most celebrated, and a great deal of financial and human resources have been invested in their propagation. Having resided in Japan for the past 2 years, I have come to the realization that while the two countries do have some exposure to each other’s culture, a gap exists because of insufficient documentation of some of the more concrete parallels between the countries; parallels which, in my opinion, would lead to an even more mutually beneficial relationship. If these similarities were explored, documented and shared, there could be a wealth of new ideas and opportunities that could directly contribute to economic and social development.

The media in both countries have played a critical role in promoting cultural awareness. In Japan, Sekai Ittemitara Honto wa Konna Toko Datta on Fuji TV is well known for airing shows that explore the culture and history of foreign countries -­‐ they had a month-­‐long feature on Jamaica in September 2012 -­‐ while, in Jamaica, popular programs such as Entertainment Report on Television Jamaica have showcased different aspects of cultural exchange between Japan and Jamaica. Cultural ties between the two countries have also been promoted in other ways. In 2013, the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission (JCDC) signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the One Love Jamaica Festival Committee in Japan to stage an elimination round for the 2013 JCDC World Reggae Dance Championship. The Attack Dem Squad competed at the One Love Jamaica Festival in Tokyo, and won the 2013 JCDC World Reggae Dance Championship in Jamaica. The One Love Jamaica Festival is usually held in May, and promotes Jamaican music and culture in Japan. These are but a few examples that show that there is some level of awareness and exposure in both countries. However, more exploration may result in a greater understanding of some tangible similarities that exist between the two. It is my view that if these similarities were systematically documented, periodically updated, and made readily available to people in both countries, they could be productively utilized to inform and create change. Let’s take a brief look at a few of these similarities, a possible method of documentation, several reasons why they should be documented, and the relevance of this kind of documentation.

Cultural and Historical Similarities Between Japan and Jamaica

Let’s start with the drum. The drum is a versatile instrument with a long history. Although it is one of the oldest types of musical instruments, it has remained relevant for many individuals and groups as a fundamental aspect of cultural expression. Though a variety of

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drums are used in both countries, the passion of the instrumentalists, as well as their ability to use the instrument as a powerful communicative tool, are noticeable similarities.

In Japan, Taiko drums are associated with the ritual Bon Odori celebrations during August.

At this festival, the drums are played while community members sing, dance, celebrate, and pay respect to their ancestors. Ritual drumming is also popular in Jamaica. The Nyabinghi style is a popular example of the practice of ritual drumming which also has a heavy emphasis on community involvement.

Another under-­‐explored area of similarity is music. Much of the music from both countries has European influences. While the Jamaican mento is a fusion of European and African folk dance music, the Japanese will tell you that the music that is composed in Japan is often dominated by the following sounds from the music scale: ‘do’ ‘re’ ‘mi’ ‘so’ ‘la’ ‘do’. Some musicians from Japan believe that the people feel connected to compositions that are of English and Scottish origin because they think that those compositions are also dominated by these notes. Among the frequently heard European influenced tunes in Japan is the Scottish poem Auld Lang Syne. In Jamaica, this piece is typically heard during celebrations ringing in the New Year, whereas in Japan it is played at the end of most graduation ceremonies, as well as when most stores are closing each day. Another shared European tune is from the British patriotic song I Vow to Thee, My Country set to the music of Gustav Theodore Holst’s Jupiter from his orchestral suite The Planets. While Jamaicans hold this tune dear because it is the melody line of I Pledge My Heart; their National School Song for schools, the Japanese hold it dear for other reasons. The tune became extremely popular in 2003 when Ayaka Hirahara put Japanese lyrics to it. The song is loved across generations because of the sentiments of love, loyalty and unity that it echoes.

Dance theatre is also very important to both countries. Traditionally, the combination of live music and dance is used to represent and preserve different aspects of culture and history. Some dance forms that are popularly used in this way are Odori and Yosakoi in

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Japan, and Kumina and Dinki Mini in Jamaica. These forms are now being choreographed and presented on professional stages, and traces of these traditional dances are also evident in modern dance moves in both countries. The evolution of this art form in Japan and Jamaica is another parallel that is worth exploring.

Merging Performing Arts Industries Towards A Better Documentation System

These are just a few examples of cultural and historical similarities that exist between the two nations. If these similarities were documented, they could help to create an appreciation of how the performance arts are viewed in both countries. The actual documentation process may be tricky. The fact is that there are several drawbacks, the language barrier being the most paramount. However, a collaborative effort between the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts in Jamaica and one of the major performing arts institutions in Japan would certainly aid in the creation and preservation of a successful documentation system. Ideally, this relationship should be structured around international relations, international business, and foreign language acquisition, and should creatively challenge and motivate students to organize events that will educate and entertain. The program should promote language and cultural exchange between the two countries. It could go the added step of tasking students enrolled in the program with producing and updating official documents, advocating for the similarities to be included in the cultural policies of both countries, hosting expositions, and organizing lectures with the main aim of promoting cultural and historical awareness between the nations.

Furthermore, student involvement in cultural exhibitions with the support of the embassies of both countries would lead to greater cultural sensitization in local communities. In essence, the proposed program would be an even more tangible and reciprocal way of enhancing the already fruitful bilateral relationship. Additionally, any documentation produced should include information on the history and the culture of the

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countries, and should be consistently updated to reflect relevant and interesting realities that will motivate people to engage in networking, creative thinking, and risk taking.

New information, when used productively, opens doors to creativity and innovativeness, and often leads to the creation of businesses. Businesses contribute significantly to the growth of economies, improved Human Development Indices, and the reduction of poverty.

As Japan progressively embraces globalization, the concept of world theatre becomes increasingly attractive as a revenue source. Can you imagine Jamaican theatre consistently on show in Japan? In the case of Jamaica, as the music industry becomes more diversified and local artistes tap into new markets, the country could create a brand new world beat that fuses reggae or dancehall with J-­‐Pop. J-­‐Pop is Japan’s contemporary music and some J-­‐ pop acts already show evidence of dancehall and reggae influences. It is a multi-­‐billion dollar industry that has already fused with hip-­‐hop and a few other genres, so the door is wide open for a more structured fusion with Jamaican musical genres.

Collaboration between performing arts schools in Japan and Jamaica would see increases in the opportunities for guest lecturers, the need for organizers and facilitators with bilingual ability as well as more students with international exchange experience. These examples show how more awareness could lead to a reduction in the unemployment rates, an increase in more creative and interesting jobs and exchange opportunities, as well as general economic growth in both countries. The reality is that if a creative documentation system is put in place to sufficiently and systematically record and showcase the parallels that exist between Japan and Jamaica, both nations can benefit substantially and sustainably from a greater international understanding and economic growth. As cultural capacity increases, support for creative documentation would strengthen the sustainability of such initiatives and propagate a more meaningful exchange between the two cultures, leading to potentially immeasurable gains (economic, social, political) for both countries.

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Dancing the National Narratives: Concert Dance in Barbados as a Historical Document

By John Hunte

The development of concert dance in the 1960s and 1970s in Barbados reveals the continued contestation between afro-­‐centric and euro-­‐centric ideologies and methodologies in a space that privileges the latter. This article discusses the formation of the Barbados Dance Theatre Company (BDTC) (1968 -­‐ ) and its juxtaposition with the Yoruba Foundation (1974 -­‐1979). The modern dance teaching of Barbados’s first Artistic Director of BDTC, Mary Stevens revolutionized concert dance1 as Barbados looked towards political independence in 1966. Other dance expressions included: masquerade practices to tuk music from pre-­‐emancipation, landship (a social organization and indigenous cultural form that was formally established in the 1860s), and 20th century manifestations of ‘wukking up’2 and social dancing (including classic, latin, and top 40s dancing). In the subsequent formation of the BDTC also emerged discourses on classism, gender identity and racism that prompted other prolific and varied dance expressions of concepts of Barbadian national identity in the 1970s, beginning with Yoruba Foundation.

The narratives of these two dance theatre groups highlight the various stereotypical differences as well as suggest commonalities that impacted on each group and their participants. I will attempt to delineate the extent to which race, class and gender interface in Barbadian space with respect to how dance practices evolved and are produced. Gilroy, “(considers) the global spread of black people … through the flows of people, ideas, money, objects, music,” and by inference, dance (“The Black Atlantic”). The ways that groups are formed systematically reinforce the capitalist, patriarchal norms that are found within the social fabric of Barbados and are manifested in how the emerging dance groups were privileged. Here, dance appears to take on several meanings. It can act as a celebration of and as a tool of liberation. Presentations can also serve to disturb the space, to reinforce, resist and preserve one’s identity against forces designed to assimilate.

Significant strides to develop concert dance (as an art-­‐form) occurred in communities across the Caribbean in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s3 (Ahye, Baxter, Nettleford). Such an

1 Nationally, the dominant perception is that concert dance and dance training is a ‘female’ space. In the early

20th century, sending coloured girls to learn ballet also appeared to be an attempt to diffuse elitist and racist accusations of indecency targeted at them. Then, from the 1930s onward, black middle-­‐class women ballet teachers and producers like Joyce Stuart and Madam Ifill created opportunities for coloured women to perform on local stages. From 1948 formal ballet training for white girls and, through the elite schools system, for coloured girls began in Barbados.

2 … defined as "dancing suggestively or erotically, with vigorous gyrations of the waist and hips" (Allsop 613).

Since “much Caribbean movement is centred on the pelvis, particularly in dances revealing more African retentions”, ‘wukking up’ also emerges as a contested expression of freedom and an identifier of blackness and Barbadian-­‐ness in contemporary popular culture (Carty Folk Dances of Jamaica 88).

3 In Jamaica, Trinidad and throughout the Caribbean, concert dance was developed strategically using indigenous dance as one of its resources to create national narratives in other countries. Caribbean dance studies of other countries have provided comparative analyses to support such a case for

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assessment has been important to acknowledge and appreciate strategies that form the neo-­colonial constructs of cultural identities in Barbados. These constructs have simultaneously rendered and contradicted Barbados as a wholesome society by providing “a direct and conscious interference” to colonial conditioning in Barbadian society (Brathwaite, Contradictory Omens 63). This rendering furthers Jane Desmond’s theory beyond North American spaces to include the class, gender and race dynamics at play in Barbados under the system of slavery and colonialism.

Mary Stevens’s arrival in Barbados in 1958 provided a signature moment in the development of concert dance in Barbados. An American wife of an Englishman working on assignment to the Ministry of Housing and Lands, Stevens introduced to Barbadians modern dance, a free, expressive style of dancing started in the early 20th century that broke with the traditional ballet4 and cabaret forms. Stevens began to teach modern dance after determining that there was no existent culture besides the Landship and ballet5.

Steven’s began to teach classes at Diocesan House, opposite St Michael’s Cathedral, in Bridgetown.

These moments were timely, for in ten years, the groundwork was laid for the formation of BDTC in 19686, two years after Barbados’s independence. This connection advanced Rex Nettleford’s vision to establish dance as a creative and cultural outlet throughout the Caribbean. BDTC also received national support, “an annual subsidy of $6,000” in its early development and, until 1979, was the official national dance representative (Stuart). The company used modern dance as a modality to explore themes that were deemed “of interest” to Barbados. This mode of exploration changed the way dance was perceived and presented in Barbados (Harewood, “Dance in Barbados”). BDTCs dance centre also emerged as a strong dance development institution with its emphasis on rigorous training.

This searching for national expressions of consciousness seemed to embody that quest for national expressions of freedom. However, cultural groups, including the Barbados Theatre Workshop, the Barbados Festival Choir, and the BDTC did not satisfy the tastes of the

Barbados. e.g. Molly Ahye’s account of Beryl McBurnie’s contribution to dance in Trinidad in Cradle of the Caribbean Dance, and Ivy Baxter’s account of dance in Jamaica, in Arts of an Island.

4 These traditional forms tend to reinforce European colonial postures and customs that Barbadians were previously exposed to (Bryson).

5 The Steven’s home in the white and upper-­‐class civil service and expatriate community of the Garrison Savannah became a nexus. It is here that Rex Nettleford taught a weekend workshop at the Stevens’s home in the 1960s to a variety of dancers of varying class and racial backgrounds.

6 As its first artistic director, Stevens set out aims and objectives for the BDTC with the assistance of Rex Nettleford, before she left with her family in 1970. The founding membership was upper and middle-­‐class Barbadian women and expatriates (including wives of diplomats or Barbadians). In their efforts to develop dance in Barbados they were able to elicit some support from various political and economic sectors. The prominence of BDTC has declined in the decades of the 1980s, 1990s and in the millennium. Still, the BDTC and its centre’s legacy prevail.

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majority of Barbadians (Harewood). Others7 would not agree that the BDTC represented all Barbadians. Some other groups would complain that some of their dancers, after training at BDTCs Dance Centre, could no longer fit their group’s dynamics, and somehow presumed that dance training inculcated middle-­‐class aesthetics. Some BDTC members wrestled against internalized processes of class and racialization. Ballet and modern continued to be cast as elite, female, and for feminizing men when compared with Afro-­‐Caribbean dance8.

As such, consensus about what iconic idioms represented and reinforced Barbadian identity in the immediate post-­‐independence period became a pre-­‐occupation. Resistance to formal dance education and training had become pervasive since the 1970s due to class, race and orientation concerns. Juxtaposed against these official groups were organizations that sought to re-­‐present blackness, including the movement of Black Night in the 1960s which evolved into the National Theatre Workshop and emerged as the afro-­‐centric Yoruba Foundation in 1974. Here, the efforts of Yoruba Foundation emerged as a leader of a revisionist agenda, to shift Barbadian pre-­‐occupation with colonial legacy and reflect the history and contemporary reality of African-­‐heritage people which constituted the majority of the Barbadian population.

“Yoruba Foundation was involved in presenting African and Barbadian folk dance and in searching for African continuities in Barbadian life, and depicting them through dance…”

(Cave). Along with “the National Theatre Workshop”, Yoruba was located on the formerly elite Fontabelle Main Road and embracing the working-­‐class inner-­‐city districts of Emmerton and New Orleans. Yoruba Foundation brought in African dance instructors from Nigeria in order to teach their dancers “(West) African movement and the director of Yoruba, Elombe Mottley researched Barbadian folk traditions” (Harewood, “Dance in Barbados 270, 272). In fact, Mottley was a central stimulus and inspiration for Yoruba, privileging his middle-­‐class status and access, progressive US college education and pan-­‐ africanist vision to create this space of exploration.

Until its demise in 1979, Yoruba Foundation’s philosophy attracted persons specifically seeking to explore Barbados’s African cultural heritage. “Yoruba Yard offered staff to teach dance styles and traditions but also taught about drums, Landship, Bajan Folk, traditional Caribbean folk and Traditional African Dance forms (Hinds).” West-­‐African dance teachers and drummers worked alongside teachers of modern dance in an effort to teach Yoruba members and students about the dance, music and culture of the “Afro-­‐Barbadian”9. Future groups were created to engage further in this exploration of forms and claim to represent national identity. Also, in this post-­‐independence period, national cultural institutions were initiated to showcase both the creativity of the dancers and choreographers as well as

7 Other groups formed in relation to BDTC in the 1970s, in part, to respond to the “lack of authenticity” found

in the BDTCs elite profile and thematic presentation, claiming to be more culturally representative and relevant in terms of class and race.

8 Homophobia was evident, as witnessed by the relative small number of men remaining in dance after the initial interest in the late 1960s.

9 Such philosophy presumed an environment that provoked a call to reconstruct/resurrect the ‘African’ presence.

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public and private sector’s role in shaping taste. For instance the National Independence Festival of the Creative Arts (NIFCA) in 1973 and Crop Over in 1974, (adopted and managed by National Cultural Foundation (NCF) formed since 1983) were devised in response to the need to facilitate and implement initiatives designed to promote, nurture and develop national expressions of culture.

The juxtaposition between BDTC and Yoruba Foundation demonstrates that embodied race, class and gender dynamics are predicated on what Harewood identifies as discourses of decency and what Cooper terms as “slackness hiding from Culture” (Harewood, “Dance in Barbados”) (Cooper, Noises in the Blood 142). Here, the dancing body seems to invoke a mutual incompatibility between mainstream European-­‐derived western privileged practices and African-­‐heritage community-­‐based concerns that causes creative tension, often expressed in national discourses (Cooper Noises in the Blood 148). “Notions of national and racial identity interact with conceptions of gender in the works of the early modern dancers” (Manning 154). In Barbados then, modern dance attempted to subvert the European race and upper-­‐class assumptions and by “undermining the voyeuristic gaze … subverting the eroticization of the female dancer,” validate the female dancing body (Manning 154). Future research would examine the importance of intimate and familial relationships, and the culture of care employed by this group of women in the development of BDTC in its formative years.

BDTC and Yoruba Foundation seemed to neatly straddle various cultural dynamics. BDTC is perceived as white, middle-­‐class and almost exclusively female in location, company profile and technique training, while Yoruba Yard evoked a black, working-­‐class aesthetic, with a larger male: female ratio found in the group. Also, the stigma of homosexuality targeted towards men who trained in ballet and modern did not stain the men at Yoruba Yard doing African and Afro-­‐Caribbean dance.

However, complicating the notion that all blacks who attended Yoruba Centre were poor were the people from the middle-­‐class who also sent their children to classes there10. Many emerging black middle-­‐class politicians and intellectuals made a decision to affiliate with and support Yoruba in coded defiance of the status quo attached to doing so. As such, Yoruba became symbolic of an emerging socio-­‐political, intellectual Africanist agenda, synonymous with a black awareness in the immediate post-­‐independent Barbados period.

What Yoruba Foundation’s approach did provide was avenues for inner-­‐city, working-­‐class and Afro-­‐centric focussed youth to learn and contribute to cultural expression in Barbados.

Some of these members would go on to become community development officers and cultural activists11.

10 As a teenaged-­‐son of a university lecturer, I attended Yoruba Foundation in the months before its final

demise in 1979.

11 Even in this decade, 30 years after Yoruba was dissolved in 1979, these persons are still involved in the

struggle to maintain an indigenous and Afro-­‐Barbadian presence in Barbados. Practitioners such as Ife Wilkinson learned and honed his skills as a cultural activist, dancer, drummer, and lead stilt-­‐walker and stilt-­‐ dancer at Yoruba. Community officers such as Sade Leon and Danny Hinds, and intellectuals such as Nancy Fergusson-­‐Jacobs also emerged as activists in this period.

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Part of the discourse targeted at BDTC accused the company of failing to find a balance between the European and African aesthetics that exists in the rendering of Barbadian identity in presentations. Still, the subvention to the BDTC as well as the number of times the BDTC was selected to represent Barbados at local festivals and international events can certainly be read as the government being supportive of BDTCs vision of Barbadian identity up until 1978. This perception seemed to affect the BDTC dancers and how they, respected for their talent, were critiqued because of the perception of modern dance as a privileged practice.

This charge was addressed as part of a 1979 "Report on Cultural Formation in Barbados with Proposals for a Plan for National Cultural Development," by Edward Kamau Brathwaite. He surmised that, "the main dance activities in Barbados in the twentieth century centred around the teaching of classical ballet, on the one hand, and night club 'limbo' dancing, geared mainly to the tourist trade, on the other" (Brathwaite, “Report” 26).

In the first instance, he seems to conflate all formal dance teaching under the rubric of ‘classical ballet’. Also, he appeared to implicate the government of the day of perpetuating an upper-­‐class and white racist agenda, a charge that would be addressed as policies change from the Creole Cultural Policy Model12 to the Plural Society Model13 in the late 1970s (Burke). As Harewood suggests then, what prevails is the government’s central role in nation-­‐building and the ways in which the political elite could assign value to certain groups and practices and not to others (“Dance in Barbados” 282).

This examination of concert dance in the 1960s and 1970s in Barbados reinforces creolization theories. Nettleford’s notion of Caribbean dance-­‐theatre is relevant here, “… distinctive in content, style and technical potential …draw(ing) heavily on the African memory in its rhythmic contours, and depending on the colonial power, reflect(ing) the influences of the European …” (Caribbean Cultural Identity 27-­‐29). Tracing the development of concert dance has provided a way to track the dynamics involved in applying and negotiating identities using dance as a signifier. Examining this moment in dance in Barbados has attempted to expose the codes behind some of these embodied practices.

Modern dance companies, heralded by BDTC and juxtaposed against Yoruba Foundation, were joined by community groups formed to create work that sought to embody other more afro-­‐centric and/or indigenous expressions of Barbadian identity. Whether in deference to BDTC policy and profile or burdened with a passion to fashion their own platform, groups were intent on creating “a Barbadian style of movement, expressing, through dance”, “a Barbadian national identity”, with a “focus on children and the youth”,

12 “A Creole Cultural Policy Model privileged urban elites at the expense of the masses and espoused middle-­‐

class values such as respectability, collective work, thrift and industry (Thomas 2004 65) (Burke 73).

13 The Plural Society Model sought to redress the failings of the previous regime by widening the policy scope

and reach and relied on human resource development, education, and community empowerment for its orientation (Burke 73).

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and the “intent also in ensuring that their dancers were good citizens with strong social consciences” (Harewood, “Dance in Barbados” 271). As outlined, these practices have demonstrated an appreciation of the ways dance was consumed by and produced for the preservation of various Barbadian identities. Homogenized when under the gaze of international bodies, Freeman, still contends that “the Caribbean is a site for exploring juxtapositions between “traditional” and “global” processes, practices and artifacts” (High Tech and High Heels 6).

Subsumed in this article is also a material rendering of the shifts of national cultural policy and how this created an environment that led to the formation of the various dance groups.

Discourses that targeted BDTC as representing a local elite perspective give way to broader yet under-­‐researched expression of Barbadian afro-­‐centric cultural and political dynamics that highlight what Burke might call a shift to the Plural-­‐Society Model as Barbados developed in the late 1970s early 1980s.

These tensions between afro-­‐centric and euro-­‐centric aesthetics reinforce Nettleford’s claim that an examination of dance in each island reveals similarities that exist all over the Caribbean14. Further study of evidence of indigenous (locally derived) dance forms in Barbados such as the landship and wukking up is necessary to further disabuse the assumption that Barbados is a carbon copy of England.

Nettleford’s notions for dance, modified in the case of Barbados, reveal another dimension.

There is a greater awareness of the distinctiveness of dance in Barbados. As the various decades of dance unfolded, community groups and privately-­‐owned dance academies continue to evolve and interconnect, some of them gaining strength by affiliating with other regional and international institutions (Harewood, “Dance in Barbados”). These groups narratives would also such reveal how the majority of Barbadian citizens, descendants of the enslaved, would sometimes validate the status quo in their practices, but oftentimes complicate what it meant to be Barbadian in order to instinctively preserve kernels of their identity.

Bibliography Books Allsop Richard, ed. Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage. Kingston, Jamaica: UWI Press, 1996. Print.

Banham, Martin, ed. The Cambridge Guide to Theatre. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Web. Beckles, Hilary McD. A History of Barbados: From Amerindian Settlement to Caribbean Single Market. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Print.

Brathwaite, Edward Kamau. Contradictory Omens: Cultural Diversity and Integration in the Caribbean. Mona, Jamaica: Savacou Publications, 1985 (1974). Print.

Carty, Hilary. Folk Dances of Jamaica: An Insight. London: Dance Books, 1988. Print.

Cohan, Robert. The Dance Workshop: A Guide to the Fundamentals of Movement. New York: Simon & Schuster. 1986. Print.

Cooper, Carolyn. Noises in the Blood: Orality, Gender and the Vulgar Body of Jamaican Popular Culture. London and Basingstoke: Macmillan Caribbean Ltd. 1993 Print.

14 It also echoes Deborah Thomas’s sentiment that “emotional resonance of nationality was sometimes

inspired by performances of the cultural practices (and) developed … during slavery and in the post-­‐ emancipation period” (Modern Blackness).

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Nettleford, Rex. Caribbean Cultural Identity: The Case of Jamaica. New York: Markus Wiener Publishing, 2003. Print.

Nettleford, Rex. Inward Stretch, Outward Reach: A Voice from the Caribbean. New York: Caribbean Diaspora Press Inc., 1995.

Print.

Sloat, Susanna, ed. Caribbean Dance From Abakua to Zouk: How Movement Shapes Identity. Gainsville: University of Florida Press, 2002. Print.

Sloat, Susanna, ed. Making Caribbean: Continuity and Creativity in Island Cultures. Gainsville: University of Florida Press, 2010.

Print.

Thomas, Deborah. Modern Blackness: Nationalism, Globalization, and the Politics of Culture in Jamaica. Kingston: UWI Press, 2004. Print.

Thompson, Alvin O. Confronting Slavery: Breaking Through the Corridors of Silence. Bridgetown: Thompson Business Services Inc., 2010. Print.

Articles Burrowes, Marcia. “Culture at Risk: Whose Engine?” The Barbados Landship: The Ship that never goes out to Sea. Barbados, Pinelands Creative Workshop, 2007. Web. Burrowes, Marcia. "The Cloaking of a Heritage: The Barbados Landship." Contesting Freedom: Control and Resistance in the Post-­Emancipation Caribbean. Eds. Gad Heuman and David Trotman Oxford: MacMillan Caribbean, 2005. Print.

Butler, Judith. “Introduction.” Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex”. New York and London: Routlege, 1993. Print.

Butler, Judith. “Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire.” The Cultural Studies Reader 2nd Edition. Ed. Simon During. London: Routledge, 1999. 340-­‐353. Print.

Butler, Judith. “Subversive Bodily Acts.” The Cultural Studies Reader 3rd Edition. Ed. Simon During. London; Routledge. 2007 [1993]. 371-­‐382. Print.

Callison, Darcy. “Definition: Dance.” International Encyclopedia of Men and Masculinities Eds. Michael Flood, Judith Kegan Gardiner, Bob Pease, and Keith Pringle. London and New York: Routledge, 2007. Print.

Cave, Rosita. “The History and Changing Focus of Dance in Barbados.” Unpublished Research Paper: Cave Hill: UWI, 1979.

Print.

Handler, Jerome S., and Charlotte J. Frisbee. “Aspects of Slave Life in Barbados: Music and its Cultural Context.” Caribbean Studies Vol. 11, No. 4. Puerto Rico: Institute of Caribbean Studies, January 1972. Print.

Harewood, Susan, and John Hunte. “Dance in Barbados: Reclaiming, Preserving and Creating National Identities.” Making Caribbean Dance: Continuity and Creativity in Island Cultures. Ed. Susanna Sloat. Gainsville: University of Florida. 2010. Print.

Hoyte, Andre. “The Story of Crop Over.” Crop Over Festival Public Relations Leaflet. Bridgetown: National Cultural Foundation, 2007. Print.

Hunte, John. “Free to wine, free to wuk da waist: Interrogation an Expression of Freedom in Barbados Popular Culture.” unpublished, 2006. Print.

Hunte, Keith. “A Historical Perspective.” unpublished, 2009 Print.

Marshall, Trevor “A Ship on Land?” Insight Guide Barbados. Bridgetown: APA Publications, 1990. Print.

National Cultural Policy of Barbados. Bridgetown: Barbados Ministry of Community Development and Culture, 2010. Print.

Nauright, John, and Douglas Booth. “Embodied Identities: Sport and Race in South Africa.” Contours: A Journal of the African Diaspora 1 (1). Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2003. 16-­‐36. Rpt. in Beyond C.L.R. James: Shifting Boundaries of Race and Ethnicity and Sport. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2012: Web. Nettleford, Rex. “Cultural Resistance in Caribbean Society.” Inward Stretch, Outward Reach: A Voice from the Caribbean. New York: Caribbean Diaspora Press Inc., 1995. Print.

Nettleford, Rex. “Battle for Space.” Inward Stretch, Outward Reach: A Voice from the Caribbean. New York: Caribbean Diaspora Press Inc., 1995. Print.

Nettleford, Rex. “Dance and Survival: Cultural Resistance in Caribbean Society.” Dance Jamaica: Cultural Definition and Artistic Discovery: The National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica 1962-­1983. New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1985. Print.

Nettleford, Rex. “The Dance as an Art-­‐form.” Caribbean Quarterly Vol. 14 Nos. 1 & 2. Mona: Extra Mural Department of the University College of the West Indies. March – June 1968. 127 – 135. Print.

Richards, Mike. “The BDTC and Barbados Cultural Development.” Twenty-­one Years of Dance in Barbados: The Development of the Barbados Dance Theatre Company. Barbados: Lighthouse Communications, 1989. Print.

Risner, Doug. “When Boys Dance: Cultural Resistance and Male Privilege in Dance Education.” Dance in a World of Change: Reflections on Globalization and Cultural Difference. Ed. Sherry B. Shapiro. Champain: Human Kinetics, 2008. Web. Stanley-­‐Niaah, Sonja. “Dance Divas, Queens and Kings: Dance and Culture in Jamaican Dancehall.” Making Caribbean Dance: Continuity and Creativity in Island Cultures Ed. Susanna Sloat. Gainsville:University of Florida Press, 2010. Print.

Szwed, John F., and Morton Marks. "The Afro-­‐American Transformation of European Set Dances and Dance Suites." Dance Research Journal 20 (1). Birmingham, AL: Congress on Research on Dance, 1988. Print.

Thomas, Deborah. “Democratizing Dance: Institutional Transformation and Hegemonic Re-­‐Ordering in Postcolonial Jamaica.”

Cultural Anthropology: Journal of the Society of Cultural Anthropology Volume 7 No. 4. Arlington: American Anthropological Association, 2002. Print.

Walcott-­‐Woodvine, Louise, unpublished. 1988. Print.

Williams, Raymond. “Culture” Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. London: Fontana Press, 1983 (1976). Print.

Journals Bim Magazine Bridgetown Young Men's Progressive Club. 1945–1961. Print.

FILM, TV, DVD, Music BAJAN Magazine. Bridgetown. Print.

Bim Magazine. Bridgetown: Young Men's Progressive Club, 1945–1961. Print.

Piggott-­‐Persaud, Jaimin. History of Dance in Barbados. Bridgetown: CBC.

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Interviews

Case Study Interviews Stuart, Adzil. Personal Interview. January 2009 Hinds, Danny “Diallo”. Personal Interview. August 2008.

Carson, Gene. Personal Interview. July 2008.

King, Philip. Personal Interview. July 2008.

Research Interviews Hinds, Keith. Telephone Interview. April 2010.

Kennedy-­‐Harper, Velma. Telephone Interview. March 2010.

Tempro-­‐Walcott, Therese. Telephone Interview. June 2008.

Wilkinson-­‐Neilands, Rosemary. Telephone Interviews. December 2011.

Seeley, Virginia. Telephone Interview. October 2011.

Stevens, Mary, Personal Interview. December 2011.

Trotman, Tyrone. Telephone Interviews. April 2010.

Watson, Karl. Telephone Interviews. March 2010.

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Helen Christian (contralto) in Regga Suite – REBEL MUSIC (2013)

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The Role of the Theatre Critic in Creating Cultural and Historical Documents

by Barbara N. Ellington

The theatre critic is a uniquely important creature, tasked with pleasing everyone – a near impossible feat but often achievable. Critics have to view a stage play like everyone else, have emotions and feelings like everyone else….even suspend their disbelief like everyone else but when they put pen to paper in subjective honesty, the fate of the rest of the play’s run and every dollar that has been invested in its production, could very well depend on what they have written. Who wants to be in that role?

Theatre critics are also the ones who help to chronicle the events in society at particular times in history. They often do so with objectivity that stems from their training in understanding the arts. This training allows them the ability to dissect all elements of a work and decide whether it was good or bad. But critique is not arrived at easily; critics have to pick apart the script, analyze the lighting, the costumes, the directing, the production, the music, the movement, the acting and set design as they assess the elements of the production.

Critics help the audience hold up a ‘mirror’ to society and create an important nexus between the producers of cultural material and the viewing public. Critics are the ones who help us to interpret and reflect on popular culture at given times in our history. This affords us the ability to go to a newspaper like The Gleaner’s archives and read what critics like Michael Reckord might have said about Ralph Holness’ ‘roots’ plays or Basil Dawkins’ dramas decades ago when they were produced. This will give people an idea of what popular tastes and norms were at that point in time. On the international stage, we can also look at what English, American or other international critics were talking about scores of years ago, to get a glimpse of what was occupying the attention of the society at that time.

Therefore, critics by the very nature of what they are expected to do, must have a knowledge of the historic period in which a play is set, understand the language, landscape, culture of the region, often minute nuances in spoken word, and body language in order to say whether the production is authentic in its portrayal of events. Critics must be able to convince the reader that they know their subjects matter.

Theatre productions when done well, are expensive and time consuming. According to Kristin Bernstein, freelance writer and actor, whose views are extensively quoted in this essay, “critics are often spoken about as if they were a race apart – but, to an extent, every theatre goer is a critic, they are just not in the position to pass judgement on a work.”

Bernstein continues…“Some audience members speak their opinions, some publish them; some pass through criticism and create material for the rest of us to criticise. The better we do it, the greater our chance of turning a transient pleasure into a permanent possession.”

From Bernstein’s observations, obviously critics take their job seriously. Not everyone will

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attain Siskel and Ebert status but critics do realise that when readers rely on their utterances before spending their hard-­‐earned money, they better get it accurate.

Critiquing is a thankless job and critics ought to, at all times take their role seriously. As another writer puts it, “when a critic reviews a play, the entire production team should feel uplifted and energised enough to do better next time.” If the review is bad, hopefully, elements of the play can be improved for the rest of the run. If it is good, the entire production team should be focused on attaining that level of excellence for the run.

For the production team, directors and actors should first of all trust that the critic’s views are honest and constructive. Bernstein argues that the critic means to lift them up and not tear them down. “They should bear in mind that the critic also gauges his thoughts based on the reactions of the audience that surrounds him when he watched the play. He also represents their views. He would have heard them comment during intermission whether they would recommend that others actually rake out hard earned money to go see it too.

So, when you get to that point where you pass judgement on a play’s view-­‐ability, be very careful.”

Finally, critics are like teachers in a classroom whose words are like manna to the hungry souls of their drama students. In a class many years ago at Temple University, Philadelphia in Pennsylvania, I took a course that involved my preparing a paper each week after viewing a different genre of play. The lecturer who was an influential theatre critic came across a ‘supreme yet respected authority’ opening our eyes to new dimensions we had overlooked. In discussing our work, his insights illuminated aspects of the costumes, set design, lighting, movement, scripts that we had missed. He captured all the elements in each week’s production, in a whole new way. That experience has led me to be an automatic critic of everything I watch, even a movie on TV, So lasting is the impression left by critics.

Critics are, however, not to be feared as if they had the ability to breathe life into their audience. Some might view themselves as superior but in spite of the kind of power they wield with their pens, they should maintain some level of modesty and humility. After all, their words can and often seal the fate of the production team’s offerings. It is important for critics to bear in mind that very often writers/actors/directors’ works are their sole income source. Entire families depend on them and they do deserve to be treated with respect.

Conversely, when critics do their work, it is the norm for the persons involved to take it personally rather than constructively. They read a review the morning after opening night and go ballistic if they don’t hear what they want to. The balance must be maintained, critics must not be so mushy and mild in order to satisfy the desires of the actors and all involved. It is not their job to be a cheerleader who keep breads on the table. Critics should also not be so harsh, that you make the collaborators’ rue their choice of career or chances of future survival.

“That doesn’t mean you have to be any kinder in your reviews, but it does hold you

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accountable. You mustn't soften your criticism of an artist’s work just because you’re likely to run into the people at the next opening, but I think it does make you less likely to go for ad hominem stuff about how dimwitted or funny-­‐looking someone is. Some people are always going to take criticism personally, but it shouldn’t actually be personal.”

Persons who wish to be theatre critics are ideally already employed to a newspaper but great actors are also able to do this job. If you love to write and have excellent writing skills, that is a super asset. The most important thing is that you have to be willing to spend long hours at the theatre....often at your own expense.

Theatre critic Robert Hurwitt thinks the most important thing is the ability to write well. The next most important thing is to be an open receptor of what you’re seeing, because one of the most essential parts of being a critic is to be a good reporter. Get the names right, get the facts right. Anyone who’s reviewing any kind of art has to have a relationship with that art form. You can tell the difference in music critique between someone who plays music and someone who doesn’t. With an art as collaborative as theatre with its long, deep history, it’s important for the critic to have some practical understanding of what goes into it.”

Brownstone further notes that theatre criticism the best job in the world if you love theatre, writing or both? Committing weekends and nights to seeing shows without end isn't always easy.

This essay contains some edited/paraphrased information from “Critical Discourse -­The Role of the Theatre Critic” by Kristin Brownstone who is a freelance writer, marketing consultant and actor based in the Santa Cruz region. See: http://www.theatrebayarea.org/editorial/Critical-­Discourse

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The Performing Arts as Documents

By Mark-­‐Shane Scale

What comes to mind when you think of the term “document”? Paper and ink? While this is traditionally the case, researchers are now extending the idea of documents beyond just paper and ink. For some, the idea of documents even includes the electronic screen as well as databases.15 Notwithstanding the inclusion of websites and even databases as documents, one researcher, Chaya Litvack, PhD student at the University of Toronto is doing research that may help us see documents in a totally different light. Litvack proposes the ‘revolutionary’ idea of considering the performing arts as documents. In this paper, we look at the information science literature on documents and then return to Litvack’s key argument about how performing arts function as documents.

What is Information?

Before entering into a discussion of what constitutes a document, it is perhaps useful to begin with the concept of information. Buckland (1991), in analysing the concept of information, notes that there are varying perspectives about what information is. He states that information can be defined as a process, whereby a person’s knowledge changes as a result of being told something, or through a process of communicating or an action of being told. Under this idea, the performing arts can fit neatly as an information process. Buckland (1991), however, notes that information science also seeks to deal with information as a thing or as something tangible. This emphasis on information as something tangible is perhaps responsible for the rise of the concept of ‘document’.

How has document been defined in the past?

Arguments have been advanced to use the term document to define all informative things.

Buckland (1991) cites Otlet (1934) as declaring that the term document should include all ‘natural objects, artefacts, objects bearing traces of human activities’, including objects such as models that represent ideas and works of arts as well as text (p. 805).

On the other hand, Buckland (1997), in his paper entitled ‘What is a document’, traces other varying definitions of documents. Among the definitions Buckland found is the International Institute for Intellectual Cooperation’s definition of documents as being any information source ‘in material form’ that can be used for study or referred to (p. 805).

Buckland also found that Briet, on the other hand, defined a document as something physical or symbolic that can be preserved and treated as a record intended to ‘represent, reconstruct or to demonstrate’ evidence of a physical or conceptual phenomenon (p. 806).

15 Researchers categorizing documents have generally included both electronic screens as well as paper.

Document sources have been defined in the information science literature as information from written, electronic or printed text (Leckie, Pettigrew & Sylvain, 1996) and including ‘information systems’ (Hertzum et al., 2002, p. 584). For Schamber (1996), the “archetypal concept of “document” or “book” …is insufficient to deal with a multitude of media formats, particularly diverse formats such as journals, indexes, catalogs, internet discussion groups, business and educational software, and games” (p. 669).

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From this concept, Briet offers the following criteria for establishing an object as a document:

• Materiality – being a physical object or sign • Intentionality – the object/sign is intended to be treated as evidence or to be studied or referred to, and as such is processed and perceived of as such.

Buckland also found that Ranganathan gives a more pragmatic perspective on documents, declaring that a document is embodied ‘micro-­‐thought’ on a flat physical surface that can be transported across space and preserved through time (p. 807). Buckland also found that Dufrenne defined a document as a ‘signifying object’ whose function is to disperse knowledge (p. 807).

Table 1 Summary of Buckland’s findings on varying definitions of ‘document’ in early documentation literature

Definition of document

Source

‘all natural objects, artefacts, objects bearing traces of human Otlet (1934) activities, including objects such as models to represent ideas and works of arts as well as text’

International Institute for Intellectual ‘Any source of information, in material form, capable of being used Cooperation [1937?] for reference or study or as an authority’

Briet (1951)

‘Any physical/symbolic sign, preserved or recorded, intended to represent, reconstruct or demonstrate a physical or conceptual phenomenon’

Ranganathan (1963)

‘Embodied micro-­thought on a flat surface fit for physical handling transport across space and preservation through time’

Dufrenne (1973)

‘Signifying object that functions to disperse knowledge’

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Frohman (2008) on the other hand argues that the term document can be extended to anything a researcher may be interested in, as long as adequate arguments are provided to show how a thing functions as a document.

In short, the literature on information and documents shows that information scientists and scholarship have grappled with the issues of what can be called a document, as well as what can be considered informative.

Events as information

Using Frohman’s perspective, it is quite possible that the performing arts can be argued to have attributes that resemble documents. According to Byström (2005), documents usually contain facts, which include names, numbers, statements and events, and/or statements, which can be factual or opinionated or interpretative (Byström, 2005). In particular, Byström’s (2002) information typology classifies events as being a type of information belonging under the class of facts. Hence, live performing arts, while not being documents can be contained or recorded in documents as an event, which is a further sub type of information. Further, performing arts like drama can also contain the same types of information that documents do including opinionated or interpretative statements.

Litvack’s extension of documents to the performing arts

At the Canadian Association of Information Science (CAIS) 2013 conference, Litvack, as presenter and winner of the award for best student paper at CAIS, discussed how performing arts can be considered documents. In her online abstract, Litvack discusses the various conceptual definitions of documents from a number of information science scholars and compares these with the literature on performance art studies. Further, in her exploration of the information science literature, Litvack points out that events are considered informative and as a type of information, in particular information as a process.

Litvack further goes on to point out that information science scholarship has also identified that events are documentary practices that lead to the creation of documents.

In her presentation, Litvack, using performance arts scholarship in comparison to information science definitions of what constitutes a document, argued that dance too could qualify as a set of documentary practices, where the body acts as a ‘recording machine’ and ‘ceremonies become ephemeral records’ and ‘a living archive of experience’ or events. Litvack also referred to performers as ‘breathing documents’ and performances as ‘living archives’.

One can further see validity in Litvack’s argument when considering certain genres of the performing arts. Ironically, it could also be argued that some performance arts are based on documentation and may in fact be representations of documents about events. For example, Pickering (2010), in discussing documentary drama, makes mention that the most effective documentary drama not only documents events, ‘thereby becoming a valid document in itself, but has often been based on careful research using documentary sources such as diaries, letters, contemporary accounts, court records and transcripts’ (p.

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152). The same can further be said for documentary theatre that also attempts representation of real events (Moore & Vachaver, 1999).

Litvack further argues that:

scholars who work within the discipline of performance studies rarely seek definitions for terms such as “document” or “documentation.” Instead, they characterize performance documents according to their perceived use and function in the historiography of performance art.

Litvack continues that:

Scholars in the field of performance studies consistently address ephemerality, presence, duration, and liveness in relation to documentation of performance events. They do not divorce descriptions of documentation from concerns related to the temporality of events. Moreover, as Jose Esteban Munoz (1996) writes, “performance studies, as a modality of inquiry, can surpass […] the limits of epistemology and open new ground by focusing on what acts and objects do in a social matrix rather than what they might possibly mean” (p. 12).

In this regard, Litvack’s argument is valid if we also examine performance art based on its function. If performance art is functionally used for communicating and dispersing knowledge, it can indeed function as a document. The argument that performance art can be used to disperse knowledge, which is one of the functions of documents, is substantiated in Guingané (2010). Guingané (2010) discusses how social intervention drama forums have been used in West African countries to increase people’s awareness of social issues.

Hence, performance art can be used in a similar way to document, by informing or bringing about changes in the knowledge of the audience that experiences the performance.

Conclusion

In conclusion, performing arts can be considered documents as they meet the criteria of information as a communicative process, whereby the change in a person’s knowledge occurs during a process of the exchange of meaning during a live event. Hence, despite not being material objects or things, performing arts function as documents when they inform or bring about changes in the knowledge of the audience that experiences the performance.

Further, while performing arts may not be documents per se themselves, like information systems, they may represent documents or the information in documents, and as such thereby act as documentary. Further, the performing arts by the very nature of being events also function as a type of information. Because the performing arts can so be used as documents to change an audience’s knowledge or to represent information in documents or as a sub-­‐type of information by itself, just maybe we need to consider the performing arts in our expanding understanding of the concept of document. In the future, we may need to ask the question when is performing arts not a document?

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Reference

Buckland, M. K. (1991). Information as thing. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 42(5), 351-­‐360.

Buckland, M. K. (1997). What is a ‘document’'? Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 48(9), 804-­‐809.

Byström, K. (2002). Information and information sources in tasks of varying complexity. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 53(7), 581-­‐591. doi: 10.1002/asi.10064 Byström, K. (2005). Information Activities in Work Tasks. In K. Fisher, S. Erdelez & L. McKechnie (Eds.), Theories of information behavior (pp. 174-­‐178). Medford, N J: ASIST. Frohmann, B. (2008). Revisiting ‘what is a document?’ Journal of Documentation, 65(2), 291 -­‐303.

Guingané, J.-­‐P. D. (2010).The role of art in reducing poverty. Museum International, 62(3), 9–12. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-­‐0033.2010.01736.x Litvack, Chaya. (2013, June 6). “The Temporalities of Performance Art Documentation.” CAIS – ACSI 2013: Victoria, British Columbia http://www.cais-­‐acsi.ca/proceedings/2013/Litvack_submission_42.pdf Moore, F. L. & Varchaver, M. (1999). Documentary theater. Dictionary of the performing arts .Illinois: Contemporary Books.

Pickering, K. (2010). Documentary drama. Key concepts in drama and performance. 2nd ed. New York: Palgrave Macmillian.

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“free to wine free to wuk my waist”: Interrogating an Expression of Freedom and Resistance in Barbados Popular Dance Culture

by John Hunte

In this article, I attempt to extrapolate the dance, ‘wukking up’ from traditional and conventional terminologies and meanings. I describe the dance and discuss its contestation in contemporary space and in its skewed historical narrative. ‘Wukking-­‐up’ has long been described as vulgar and has not been seriously defended. What is ‘wukking up’ anyway, and why does it persist in Barbados popular culture? Focusing on ‘wukking up’ may reveal perspectives that form part of a larger discussion through an analysis of class, racialization, and gender. I seek to show that ‘wukking up’ has commonalities with other African and Caribbean dances, and how its current perception is a result of factors unique to Barbados.

‘Wukking up’ focuses on coordinating rotatory, percussive, and vibratory actions on the hip and pelvic region, coordinated to give the pelvic girdle relatively free mobility that synchronizes with musical rhythms. This motion is often construed with actions commonly associated with sexual activity. Circumstances shape how ‘wukking up’ is perceived.

wuk up; wukkin(g) up vb phr (Bdos, etc) [Af – Derog] See WORK UP Where did Bajans learn to wuk-­‐up so bad? … When they hear a sweet calypso or tuk band, [they] lose all control of their waist-­‐-­‐-­‐AdV (93.06.25, p. 9) (Allsop 613).

Already in this definition is a particular bias in perception and judgement associated with mental or emotional deviance, or “losing control”.

Work 25.9 work up vb phr (]Bdos, Guyn, USVI) [A]F/IF] (see separate entry) 5.9.1 work up yourself; work yourself up vb phr (CarA) [AF] (i) To get yourself into a temper. It ain[‘t] no good working up yourself over children rudeness dese days.-­‐-­‐-­‐ (Guyn) Also IF BrE. (ii) WORK UP YOURSELF only = WORK UP (as separate entry) (Allsop 611).

Meanwhile, the ‘wukking-­‐up’ body as a contested space may reveal other meanings.

Unravelling what ‘wukking up’ symbolizes may broaden our choices and perceptions about its appropriateness.

I believe that ‘wukking up’ speaks to “epic memor[ies] … deliver[ing] the pathos, feeling and the experience without literally telling the story” (Asante 149). Resonating on a spiritual dimension, ‘epic memory’ is one of seven aesthetic senses proposed by Kariamu Welsh Asante that formulate part of an African ethos, including “polyrhythm, poly-­‐ centrality, curvilinear, dimensional, repetition and holistic,” all formed to examine narratives in ways that contradict discourses of erasure and marginalisation found in certain written texts (144).

These memory flows indicate “roots” and “routes”, a retention that flows deep within Barbadians as a cultural acknowledgement of notions of ‘Africa’ that occur in their lived

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experiences (Clifford). If perceptions of its manifestation appear harsh and radical, this may indicate unique Barbadian historical information. While dance is an amoral activity in itself, notions of immorality reflect the gaze of who is “seeing” (Geertz). Readings of the dancing body serve as texts for analysis.

Calypsonians in contemporary society, led by Gabby in songs like ‘Wuk Up,’ have privileged this dance as a trajectory of freedom and resistance. Especially during Crop Over Season in Barbados, musicians have pushed ‘wukking up’ as a national expression. Other songs include: Kimberly Inniss Free, Natalee and Shontelle, Colours, songs by L’il Rick and Alison Hinds among others. This positioning contests traditional notions that critique ‘wukking up’ as marginal, as fluid, and as indecent in Barbadian practice. Even when the dance is seen as an important official Barbadian signifier, these discourses around ‘wukking up’ challenge national perceptions of decency.

Ironically, ‘wukking up’ is celebrated in the Bajan dance hall arena. Recent terminology, that defines the variations of movement, also reflects the violence associated with dance hall aesthetics. In popular culture, ‘wuk-­‐up’, ‘jerk waist’, ‘juk’, ‘pooch-­‐back’, ‘spin-­‐pooch’, are all euphemisms for what Barbadians do with their hips, legs, backs and pelvis when they improvise to calypso and “tuk” music. These terms are considered vulgar as the words and meaning identify pelvic movement with violent implications. They also indicate the dancers’ prowess and dexterity within the social dance arena.

‘Skin out’ refers to the action of bending your knees and tilting forward your upper body, while slowing the speed of the action in a flexed position to emphasize the buttocks. ‘Juck’ or ‘jerk waist’ refers to percussive frontal pelvic motion. Its emphasis and range of motion varies depending on body level. ‘Shots’ connote the violent nature of the action and, like a gun discharging bullets, indicates vigorous movement. Although not as benign as ‘juck’, it does not reach the intensity of ‘stab’. ‘Stab’ describes a vigorous forward motion, as in an attack, with the hope of achieving an unusual body position (‘break’, where to body freezes in a jocular stance) or contact with another person, usually to the mid-­‐section or pelvic region. ‘Slow whine’ or ‘whining down’ refers to the slowed down effect of the ‘wukking-­‐up’ exercise.

Various meanings can be evoked depending on how the body is positioned. A certain reserve is suggested when the feet and hips are placed in parallel position with the knees slightly bent and the upper body slightly flexed forward. A more abandoned feeling: the knees further bent, or legs and knees in wide turned-­‐out positions and with the body bent forward or backward and with exaggerated gyrations, can give way to erotic interpretation.

These readings of the body in motion have further implications when bodies are in contact, which puts the dance and the dancers at greater risk of accusations of indecency. Whereas the upright upheld stance emulates those of acceptable societal standing, a lower and more horizontal body alignment and position suggest that the performer is by relative comparison coarse and worthless, a possible rationalization for the use of the term “wutless” (Allsop 612).

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While the dance of African and African-­‐heritage peoples has evolved through time in many parts on the African continent and in the Diaspora, certain characteristics in African and Afro-­‐Caribbean dance remain. As such, ‘wukking up’ emerges as a dominant African retention in Barbados as it possesses resonant qualities. These include: earth-­‐bound movement and a low center of gravity, bent arms, poly-­‐rhythmic isolations, synchronicity in movement and music, contrast, coolness, and movement that is centered on the Pelvis (Carty Folk Dances of Jamaica). Hilary Carty verifies that “much Caribbean movement is centered on the pelvis, particularly in dances revealing more African retentions” (Carty 88).

Caribbean dance forms, including ‘wukking up’ and the Landship, are found in both religious and secular settings (Burrowes). In traditional communities, these activities have specific boundaries to age, time, and occasions socially constructed. The following observations compare with how some nation dances operate in other communities throughout the world. In Barbadian communities, young people are generally considered cute when ‘wukking up’. Children are sometimes even encouraged by older community members. Around the age of puberty, depending on the status of the community, women are seen as expressing their sexuality through their dance and young men dance to show their masculine prowess. The ability to ‘wuk up good’ becomes a signifier in seeking out life partners. After child-­‐bearing it no longer seems appropriate for people to engage in that activity. Older people who dance are frowned upon unless they dance on very special occasions, and then usually in age cohorts.

‘Wukking up’, although clouded in racial, class and gendered discourse, seems to defy being looked down on. Further, ‘wukking up’ persists in Barbados in spite of biases towards it.

The dance carries the burden of being associated with deviant behaviour with black-­‐racial, poor and working class registers. An argument about whether ‘wukking up’ is appropriate suggests that it remains on the margins of respectability. How ‘wukking up’ is perceived, even by the ways members in our society contain their dancing within these codes, demonstrates the extent to which ‘wukking up’ is regulated by society. Ironically, Barbadians understand where ‘wukking up’ is and is not acceptable; this ‘silence’ is a signal of national compliance. Further, even amongst Barbadian descendants of the formerly enslaved, there is an “otherness” about ‘wukking up’, complicating its existence as a signifier of blackness. These polarized norms of expression, contested in the streets and in certain groups in society, resonate with observations from the period of enslavement.

Dr. George Pinckard’s 1796 account describes a group of enslaved persons dancing on a Barbadian plantation. “The dance consists of stamping of the feet, twistings of the body, and a number of strange indecent attitudes” (Handler & Frisbee). He references “severe bodily action” with a degree of bewilderment, suggesting a certain type of admiration, if not respect, for the intense level of energy that the dancing bodies display (Pinckard). On reconstruction, Pinckard appears to be describing ‘wukking up’.

As opposed to European dances where arms and feet are the primary movers for locomotion, the dancing bodies Pinckard witnessed moved by shuffling. The primary movement in the hips, waist and back, and the propelling feet to shuffle and the use of the arms caused the dancing body to travel in ways unfamiliar to European observers. Using

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the word “writhe” to describe how the dancing body moves while turning invokes metaphors of snake action (Pinckard). Hence, Pinckard’s analysis seems to begrudgingly acknowledge ‘wukking up’s’ energy, vigour, and trance-­‐like quality, and his aversion to it.

That the dancers’ ecstatic experience shone through the veils of prejudice is evident in this text.

Beyond Pinckard’s depiction, dance emerges as one people’s celebration, identity, retention, and resistance. Its expression is an organic response to live rhythms. When people meet, dance takes on that human wholesome component that connected their epic memories, histories and their identities. Nettleford suggests that “dance is as old as life itself and is capable of expressing the deepest feelings of the human spirit if not in intellectual terms, certainly in emotional terms which … [is] basic to all men” (“The Dance as an Art Form” 127).

I believe that ‘wukking up’ as an expression of freedom and resistance stands up boldly and virulently to the myth that Barbadian colonizers were successful in yoking ‘Africanness’ out of Black people, and that any present-­‐day African and Afro-­‐Barbadian expression is simply an imitation of dances from other cultures. As John F. Szwed and Morton Marks remarked, “the chief problem in working with Afro-­‐American folk dances is their lack of visual or written documentation” (Afro-­American Transformations of European Set Dances and Dance Suites). Our dance, non-­‐verbal and oral narratives deserve more attention.

Common criticisms that discredit evidence of dances like ‘wukking up’ from current West African realities need to be put into context. For example, Congolese traditional dancers seem to move their hips in similar ways to people I see dance in Barbados. Other shifts in the dynamics of how dance is presented may also take into account changes in rhythm, clothing of the body among others. These changes affect how ‘wukking up’ is embodied.

The way that hips moved as well as the connection of the feet to the ground seems to have remained constant.

Reflected in the evolution of a Barbadian dance is how systematic policy attempted to disconnect African heritage peoples from aspects of their religious, social and cultural origins, thereby affecting their practices. It is important to acknowledge and reveal prejudices that marginalize expressions of the African dancing body. Exploring, reconstructing, restorating and reclaiming broader meanings of ‘wukking up’ may proffer other rational options to showcase our dance heritage.

In summary, while Barbadian society remains racially and socio-­‐economically biased, ‘wukking up’ is presented as an expression of freedom and resistance in popular culture, with retentions that reverberate with other Afro-­‐Caribbean derived dances (Brathwaite 29). Concepts of immorality shade readings of the body, and then the body in motion as texts. These readings are less about the dance and more about how society, on personal and corporate levels, rationalizes the race, class and gender inequalities that persist in Barbadian contemporary space. ‘Wukking up’ seems to represent an expression that celebrates a manifestation of the African presence in the Caribbean against notions that seek to marginalize it and persisting despite efforts to discredit its existence. As a counter

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hegemony in the contemporary dance hall space, ‘wukking up’ prevails, set to continually defy any attempt to erase it. And, as a cultural phenomenon, ‘wukking up’ will continue to change, affected but not defeated, by the interplay of dynamics that it also reflects.

This topic was presented first at UWI Cave Hill Barbados, Humanities’ Conference “Trajectories of Freedom: Caribbean Societies Past and Present” in May and then at the Caribbean Studies Association Conference, Bahia, Brazil in June 2007.

Bibliography

Alleyne, Mervyn “A Linguistic Perspective on the Caribbean” Caribbean Contours Sidney Mintz and Sally Price (eds) Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press 1985 Alleyne, Mervyn Cuthbert, Marlene and M. W. Pidgeon Language and Communication Bridgetown Cedar Press 1981 Allsop Richard (ed.) Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage Kingston UWIPress 1996 Asante, Kariamu Welsh “Commonalities in African Dance: An Aesthetic Foundation” in Ann Dils and Ann Cooper Albright (eds) in Moving History/Dancing Cultures: A Dance History Reader Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press 2001 Baldwin Elaine et al Introducing Cultural Studies London Pearson Education Ltd 2004 Brathwaite, Edward (KAMAU) Contradictory Omens: Cultural Diversity and Integration in the Caribbean Mona, Jamaica Savacou Publications (1974) 1985 Clifford, James “Travelling Cultures” in Lawrence Grossberg et al. Cultural Studies London Routledge 1992 Baxter, Ivy The Arts of an Island: the Development of the Culture and of the Folk and Creative Arts in Jamaica 1494-­‐1962 (Independence) New Jersey The Scarecrow Press, Inc. 1970 Bolland, O. Nigel. “Creolization and Creole Societies: A Cultural Nationalist View of Caribbean Social History” in Nigel Bolland’s Struggles for Freedom: Essays on Slavery, Colonialism, and Culture in the Caribbean and Central America Belize City: Theangelis Press Ltd. 1997 Beckles, Hilary “Black Masculinity in Caribbean Slavery” in Rhoda E. Rheddock (ed) Interrogating Caribbean Masculinities: Theoretical and Empirical Analyses Kingston, Jamaica: UWI Press 2004 Beckles, Hilary McD. “Crop Over Fetes and Festivals in Caribbean Slavery” In the Shadow of the Plantation Alvin Thompson (ed.)

Kingston Ian Randle 2002 Best, Curwen Culture @ the Cutting Edge: Tracking Caribbean Popular Music Bridgetown: UWI Press 2004 Brathwaite, Edward (KAMAU) Contradictory Omens: Cultural Diversity and Integration in the Caribbean Mona: Savacou Publications 1974 Burrowes Marcia, “Culture at Risk: Whose Engine?” The Barbados Landship: The Ship that never goes out to Sea (website) Barbados: Pinelands Creative Workshop 2007 http://pinelandsbarbados.org/landship/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=22&Itemid=37 Burrowes Marcia, "The Cloaking of a Heritage: The Barbados Landship": in Gad Heuman and David Trotman, (eds) Contesting Freedom: Control and Resistance in the Post-­‐Emancipation Caribbean Oxford: MacMillan Caribbean 2005 Carty, Hilary Folk Dances of Jamaica: An Insight London: Dance Books 1988 Clifford, James “Travelling Cultures” in Lawrence Grossberg et al. Cultural Studies London Routledge 1992 “free to wine free to wuk da waist” Desmond, Jane (ed.) Meaning in Motion: New Cultural Studies of Dance Durham: Duke University Press 1997 Dixon Gottschild, Brenda The Dancing Body: From Coon to Cool New York Palgrave; MacMillan 2003 Downes, Aviston “Boys of the Empire: Elite Eduation and the Construction of Hegemonic Masculinity in Barbados, 1875-­‐1920” in Rhoda E. Rheddock (ed) Interrogating Caribbean Masculinities: Theoretical and Empirical Analyses Kingston, Jamaica: UWI Press 2004 Geertz, Clifford The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays New York: Basic Books 1973 Print Grossberg, Lawrence “The Space of Culture, The Power of Space”, Iain Chambers and Lidia Curti (eds) The Post-­‐Colonial Question: Common Skies Divided Horizons London: Routledge 1996 Handler, Jerome S. and Charlotte J. Frisbee “Aspects of Slave Life in Barbados: Music and its Cultural Context” Caribbean Studies Vol 11, No. 4 Puerto Rico: Institute of Caribbean Studies Jan.1972 Hoyte, Andre “The Story of Crop Over” Crop Over Festival Bridgetown: NCF

Massey, Doreen Space, Place and Gender Minneapolis, MN University of Minnesota Press (1994) 2001 Nettleford, Rex Inward Stretch, Outward Reach: A Voice from the Caribbean New York: Caribbean Diaspora Press Inc. 1995 Nettleford, Rex “The Dance as an Art-­‐form, Caribbean Quarterly Vol. 14 Nos. 1 & 2 March – June 1968 Mona (127 – 135) Pinckard, George Notes on the West Indies London: Longmans 1873 Spencer, Flora – “Crop Over: An Old Barbadian Plantation Festival” Bridgetown: Commonwealth Caribbean Resource Centre 7 pages pamphlet, bibliography, 1974.

Rabinow, Paul “Space, Power and Knowledge: Interview with Michel Foucault.”, Simon During (ed) The Cultural Studies Reader London: Routledge

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Szwed, John F. and Morton Marks. 1988. "The Afro-­‐American Transformation of European Set Dances and Dance Suites", Dance Research Journal 20, no. 1 (29-­‐36) Religions of the World: African and African-­‐American Religions Philadelphia: Schlessinger Media 1998 (video)

Songs Burke, Natalie and Shontell Colours Carter, Gabby Wuk Up 2000 Hinds, Alison Love Inniss, Kimberly Free 2005

NDTC Singer Conrod Hall (bass) in Performance

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FROM THE ARCHIVES Revisiting the Past, Forging the Future: Aims and Accomplishments Compiled by Mark Phinn

For over five decades, the National Dance Theatre Company (NDTC) of Jamaica has been making a seminal contribution to the cultural landscape of Jamaica and the wider Caribbean. Its presentation in dance and music of Jamaican and Caribbean realities – itself a synthesis of English-­‐speaking Americas and Europe interacting with an Afro-­‐Caribbean and African base – made it immensely popular in Jamaica and internationally. The amalgamation of dance and music further adds authenticity to ‘dance-­‐theatre’, as it provides a vehicle for serious artist(s) interested in honing their skills in the art of composition.

Co-­‐founded in 1962, the year of Jamaica’s Independence, by Rex Nettleford and Eddy Thomas, the NDTC to date stands resolute in its projected objectives which are designed:

-­‐ To provide a vehicle for well-­trained dancers and other dance theatre artist, such as choreographers, composers, and musicians, who want to participate in the creation of works of excellence rooted in Jamaican and Caribbean cultural realities; -­‐ To help create an informed Jamaican audience critically responsive to works of excellence in the theatre arts; -­‐ To experiment with various dance forms and techniques; -­‐ To develop a style and form that faithfully reflect Caribbean movement patterns; -­‐ To encourage research into the indigenous dance and music forms of Jamaica as well as the Caribbean.

Each objective has had evidence of success. Besides gaining an international reputation for dance performance through its many tours, the National Dance Company over five decades of continuous work by its highly skilled and dedicated members has spawned not only a distinctive style of Caribbean dance-­‐theatre but also a training system and a national School as well as a framework for community activities, which since the 1960s, has become an indispensable source for research into dance and folklore. In a wider sense more has been achieved. The inter-­‐American Foundation, based in Washington, D.C., funded NDTC’s project in the institutionalisation of the Jamaica School of Dance (now School of Dance) and facilitated the development of the curriculum for the diploma programme as well as the core course of Caribbean studies at the Cultural Training Centre in Kingston. In recognition of this the Ford Foundation, based in New York, funded the documentation of the Company’s work in the book Dance Jamaica: Cultural Definition and Artistic Discovery: the National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica 1962-­1983.

The seasonal activities of the Company include the staging of the much anticipated Easter Morning of Movement and Music at Sunrise Presentation, conceptualised in 1981 in celebration of the life of Founding Member and Vocal Soloist Joyce Lalor. This is followed by an annual Season of Dance featuring the Company’s wide-­‐ranging repertoire which includes the world premiere of dance-­‐works at the resident theatre, the Little Theatre. Not

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to be ignored are the occasional subsidiary special performances interlaced with frequent international tours that provide much needed exposure as well as lecture demonstrations and classes for training young aspiring members which acts as a feeder to the Company.

But what specific qualities have made the National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica succeed?

Besides the insightful leadership of the Company since its inception in 1962 – which sought the smooth transition of leadership from co-­‐founders Eddy Thomas (1962-­‐67) and Rex Nettleford (1962-­‐2010) through to current artistic director Barry Moncrieffe, the following interview discusses further the Aims and Accomplishments of the National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica. The interview was done by E. Patrick Healy (Director of the Organisation of American States General Secretariat Office in Jamaica in 1981) and was published in Americas, August 1981.

A WORD WITH

REX NETTLEFORD

Jamaica’s Dancemaster

How does the NDTC express the life, religion, and culture of the people of the Caribbean, and how do you, as its Artistic Director, identify the forms of dance that reflect this culture? Are they recognizable to most of the audiences?

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RN: Some answers to those questions came to us forcibly at the first CARIFESTA in 1972 in Guyana. We had toured the Caribbean before and we had been well received, but at that particular set of performances it came across to us that the NDTC was at last getting a vocabulary, something of a grammar that in fact spoke to the cultural realities of the Caribbean region in the field of movement. We had discovered similar responses since, in Trinidad and Barbados, in Cuba and Jamaica itself, and in other parts of the world – among Jamaicans living in Britain, Toronto, and New York. Most recently, in New York, some 80 per cent of the audience were West Indians and U.S. blacks, and the response to the company was just fantastic. There is a good reason for this. Over the past eighteen or so years much more study has been done – some rather clinical – on the source of movement and cultural expression in the region. Far more people now have knowledge of Caribbean culture than before. Too, over the past fifteen years the entire Caribbean has become much more conscious of its cultural potential.

In our case, in developing what is essentially a new art form we consciously relate it to our everyday experience, and to the ancestral experience of the country. Religion is a very important source, on which many of the dances have been based.

I understand the religious connection – that, for example, Kumina or Pocomania movements are literally taken from ceremonies that exist or have existed in Jamaica. But where do other movement come from?

RN: Lots of these movements said to be social commentary do in fact come from a situation. How would you, if you had to, dance out that social situation? How you take the body language of the Caribbean into account. People in the Caribbean do move with a languorous gait, the ripple of the back, and so on, and all these habits, peculiarities, and features of movement become part of the foundation for building a vocabulary, so that although people may not have seen the movement before – it may have come out of the imagination of the particular choreographer or set of dancers – it nevertheless reflects actual life experience.

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The Latin American dance companies I have seen are mostly modelled on European forms.

But are there others that reflect their own national experience, as does the NDTC?

RN: Oh yes the Indian experience has been very strong in many Latin American countries, as seen in the highly stylized Ballet Folklorico of Mexico. And there are many other folk companies with strong Indian roots and themes that result in a certain style of movement. This is being experimented with in Brazil, in Mexico, in Guatemala, all over the Americas. Then there are dance companies that have been greatly influenced by the modern dance movement in the United States, as well as by European classical ballet tradition, and Spanish flamenco and folk dancing, forms that were introduced by the Spanish settlers into Latin America.

The interesting thing that happens there is that, as in Jamaica, there is a crossfertilization process going on all the time, a symbiotic effect between what is found in the new country and what is brought from the old country. In Jamaica’s case it is a mix of what was brought from different civilizations across the waters – from Africa, India, and Europe – that produces a new form, a new synthesis. In this sense, Latin America is no different from the rest of the Caribbean. Even in classical ballet, in Venezuela for example, although they stick to a strict European classical technique and style of presentation, they sometimes come out with works that draw heavily on the Vene-­‐Hispanic and on the Indo-­‐Hispanic experience.

And this is really what culture is all about, the constant continuing crossfertilization of different elements.

How does dance compare to art and drama in its ability to reflect cultural expression?

RN: Dance is more immediate, and of course it transcends language barriers and national boundaries because it is movement. It is the human body that is the instrument of

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expression, and in the human body, whether it is white, black, yellow brown, or whatever, there are two arms, two legs, and so on. In design, shape, and space certain things are predictable. Frequently some people already regard dance as the divertissement of the arts that is meant to make pretty pictures and abstract pictures. If you root in certain social realities or cultural realities of a particular society, some people will say it obscures the intent of the dance. Now there is a lot of controversy on that particular view. The point is to be able to carve designs in space that are of immediate meaning to people in general, though they may come from specific sources of influence.

Now that the company is nearing its twentieth anniversary, is it becoming more professional?

Do the dancers dance better than they used to?

RN: Yes, in one sense, though some people would probably say no in another. A dance company is like a whole cycle of life telescoped into a few years. The NDTC is now seeing its second generation of dancers, people which in fact have been trained by earlier dancers.

They are good technicians, in that their limbs can probably do more, and they are far more flexible dancers than most of us were when we were their age – say eighteen or nineteen – but it takes time to become an artist. Also, another thing is happening: increasing urbanization. Many of the younger kids are very urban oriented (reggae itself is essentially an urban folk expression). Many of them know very little about rural Caribbean. Even if they come from small towns it’s a different sensibility. So one has to bring them back to roots, as it were, by dancing some of the older stuff. I don’t regard it necessarily as a dilemma, I regard it as the dialectic of the creative process. It gives us wonderful opportunities for texture and for finding new ‘words,” if you like, new elements.

Is the company now reflecting the cultural expression of the region more accurately – or is it instead becoming more international?

RN: Of course it has become international. One has to be extremely careful that it remains faithful to its aims – trying to create an art form that reflects the feeling and moods of our own people, rather than simply pandering to what we think others expect of us.

Many dance companies go astray from international exposure when they give what they feel the metropolitan centres want and lose much of their essence. Since the NDTC tours only once or twice a year, there is no real danger of becoming too international. We are an amateur company, in the sense that nobody gets paid. A number of people are of the view that we should go professional, but we are professional in standards. Whether we can go commercial is another matter, because that naturally depends on the facilities for maintaining such a professional group, and the material resources are simply not there.

Everyone in the company works extremely hard and receives no financial gain for that work.

How does a country of only two million people come up with as many first-­class, unpaid dancers as countries of a hundred million people that pay theirs?

RN: I can only make some guesses, based partly on my involvement and partly on my personal feeling, having been brought up in a society with a long tradition of voluntary work involving the general community. I think one of the things that got into the ethos of

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the company from the very beginning was that we were doing it as a contribution to the building of a nation. Once the nation is built, people may not feel that they need to make that sacrifice. Maybe in the future this will not continue, but this comes out of a tradition that has been replicated in several areas. You take cricket. We feel very proud to have a Jamaican on the old Test Cricket team, and so on. Some of our fellows did go to Australia and play professional cricket, because things have changed, but this occurred only after a long period of amateur playing. In fact, even in our political system a great deal of voluntary work is given through governmental committees called statutory boards.

Yes, but those people work only now and then; your dancers rehears nearly every day – a taxing-­six hours a week.

RN: All I’m saying is that we drew on those things that were in the society. The company succeeded, nationally and internationally. People felt it was prestigious to join. Also, dance instills tremendous discipline, and it has been a route for a lot of people that they are doing something for their country. The leadership is also very important, for if the leadership were paid and people felt they were being used we would have difficulties. The example has to be set; one cannot make rules and not obey them.

The Jamaica School of Dance came from the National Dance Company in a non-­traditional way – after the company was formed.

RN: Not really. We always had a school, we always had used other studios. All the company members taught classes at the Eddy Thomas Dance Workshop. Thomas had been a co-­‐director of the company, too, so there was no school set up to compete with his workshop. If it had not existed, a school would have been set up sooner.

The Jamaica School of Dance is producing many more qualified dancers now than ten or fifteen years ago. Isn’t it going to be rather hard to get into the NDTC now?

RN: It does not quite work that way. Because it is not professional, a number of people do not pursue a dance career after taking classes.

Migration also causes a number of people to leave. So there is room for all the good people.

Is there any thought of having a second company of paid professionals who would perform all or most of the year? Might not the NDTC make more money and become more famous from more tours?

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RN: People have always had ideas about this, but it is easier said than done. One night stands and what have you are not a good thing for a company; it’s too much of a physical drag, and it’s a very expensive operation. But I’m more interested in another thing. When you have your own vocabulary well stated and devised and your grammar totally honed and highly refined, then, of course, you can have a proliferation of companies that speak the language, as they now do with European classical ballet. When you are at a stage of building, or nurturing, you don’t transplant the plant too much. I think the responsibility of the NDTC still is to be a laboratory, and, along with the school, now this can happen. Later on, a proliferation of companies will no doubt come and then it will be desirable – but only when we are strong enough.

I know you saw the film The Turning Point, I know you’ve seen A Chorus Line, and we all know many stories about famous figures in dance. All these media treatments create in the outsider a feeling that to be a dancer is not to be a regular human being.

RN: So it is with all artists who are dedicated. In fact, any professional who is seriously dedicated tends not to be “like a regular human being.” There are businessmen who are married to the office, and so on. With the dancer, whose art requires sustained concentration, there is less time for one’s personal life.

Even in Jamaica this is so. There are many people who have given up their other hobbies to dedicate all their spare time to the dance. If you find something that you really love, you spend your time on that.

Precisely because we are not a professional company, the NDTC of Jamaica has benefitted from the variety of lifestyles that come into the company. Again those lifestyles need to be channelled, for the people are very human. In fact, when we travel abroad, people are really surprised at how human the dancers are, and that they can talk about a wide range of subjects because there is a wide range of interests. So this is another difference and it comes over on stage. There is an exuberance. But there is a kind of human thing that a number of people have mentioned. They don’t quite know what it is. They are dancing because they love to dance.

Basically, the NDTC has not been in Latin America much. Are you optimistic that people throughout the Americas will have a chance to see the company in the next few years?

RN: We had something of an invitation from Venezuela, but we have never been able to pull it off because it’s a very expensive thing. We have been to Mexico twice. I have

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connections with Costa Rica, and the new Costa Rican National Ballet is very anxious to establish relations with us. I also have had connections with the new Arts Council of Panama, but again we have not been able to follow through because it is so expensive. It has to be done on a government to government basis. A past president of Costa Rica saw our company and invited us there, but, unfortunately, we did not take up the offer.

However, we are known in some parts of Latin America, and hope to visit it more.

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NDTC NEWS NDTC NEWS NDTC NEWS NDTC NEWS NDTC NEWS NDTC

Compiled by Marlon Simms

SEASON OF DANCE, SPECIAL PERFORMANCES •

•

BOJ LUNCH HOUR CONCERT The NDTC Musicians were one of the featured performers in the Bank of Jamaica (BOJ) lunch hour concert series. The event, dubbed “The Rhythm of the NDTC”, was held the BOJ Auditorium on Friday, September 27, 2013 at 12:30 pm. Led by the Musical Director, Ewan Simpson, the presentation comprised of music from selected works of the NDTC and original compositions and arrangements by Mr. Simpson.

REX NETTLEFORD ARTS CONFERENCE The Company performed Rex Nettleford’s Dis Poem at the Rex Nettleford Arts Conference on Friday, October 18, 2013 at 7pm. This was preceded by a lecture demonstration on Thursday, October 17, 2013 on preservation of the NDTC style using Labanotation led by Dance Captain Marlon Simms with the support of Ewan Simpson – Musical Director, drummers Henry Miller, Jesse Golding and Billy Lawrence and dancers Mark Phinn, Paul Newman, Sophia McKain and Kristina Graham.

•

HOSTING COMPANIA PERIFERIA FROM COLOMBIA

In collaboration with the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts the Company hosted Compania Periferia from Colombia from November 7 to 14, 2013 for a series of workshops, lecture demonstrations and performances. Kerry-­‐ Ann Henry, Kamar Tucker and Neisha-­‐yen Jones joined the cast of Lobadys Perez’s masterwork “Eternity and a Day” for a performance at the School of Dance Studio Theatre on Wednesday, November 13, 2013 at 7 pm. Chris Walker’s Urban Fissure

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featuring the cast of Kerry-­‐Ann Henry, Tamara Noel, Kristina Graham, Mark Phinn and Paul Newman, also performed on the show.

• STATE VISIT OF THE HAITIAN PRESIDENT On the state visit of the Haitian president Michel Joseph Martelly to Jamaica on October 13-­‐15, 2013 the Company performed an excerpt of Jeanguy Saintus’ Incantation at the Pegasus Hotel on Thursday, October 14, 2013 at a special concert hosted in his honour.

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CIVIL SERVICE WEEK Keita-­‐Marie Chamberlain and Marlon Simms performed a duet choreographed by Simms for the launch of the Civil Service Week held at the Bank of Jamaica Auditorium on Friday, October 15, 2013.

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MEMORIAL SERVICE FOR NELSON MANDELA In tribute to Nelson Mandela Tamara Noel performed a solo excerpt from Interconnetion choreographed by Bert Rose at the memorial service held at the University Chapel, Mona on Thursday, December 12, 2013 at 2 p.m.

“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion.

People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite” – Madiba

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KHULCHA THEATRE – CECIL CHARLTON HALL As part of Khulcha Theatre School of Dance 25th Anniversary Concert the Company performed Milton Sterling’s He Watcheth at Cecile Charlton Hall on Saturday, December 14, 2013. Performing members included Tamara Noel, Terry-­‐Ann Dennison, Jillian Samms and Kristina Graham.

AWARD(S)

• THE HONOURABLE MISS JUSTICE HILARY ANN PHILLIPS Former NDTC dancer and Committee Member The Honourable Miss Justice Hilary Ann Phillips QC was awarded the Order of Distinction in the rank of Commander

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(CD) for her distinguished and dedicated service to the legal profession and to the judiciary. The Ceremony of Investiture and presentation of National Honours and Awards was held at King’s House, Kingston on National Heroes Day, Monday, October 21, 2013 at 9 a.m.

HIGHLIGHTS

• PHOTO EXHIBITION – MARIA LAYACONA: 60 YEARS OF PHOTOGRAPHY IN JAMAICA Veteran Company photographer Maria LaYacona opened her exhibition on Thursday, October 31, 2013 at the Hi-­‐Qo Art and Framing Gallery at 24 Waterloo Road, Kingston. Speaker at the opening was celebrated curator and long-­‐time friend David Boxer. The exhibition, which included photographs of the NDTC, continued until November 9, 2013.

• TUFF GONG RECORDING The plan to do a high quality recording of musical works in the current NDTC repertoire is well underway. The musician’s pilot recording session was held at the Tuff Gong studios in November 2013. The session was an eye opener for both the Tuff Gong Team (who seemed pleasantly surprised at the quality of musicianship and creative works of the Company) and for the NDTC team of musicians who had never collaborated on such a unique project. Post production conversations as well as further negotiations are underway. NDTC Musicians who participated in this recording session included: Tafane Buschaecab, Jerome Carby, Steve Golding, Jesse Golding, Nicolas Groskopf, Billy Lawrence, Henry Miller and Ewan Simpson – Musical Director.

• THE MUSIC OF THE NDTC The Company staged its first music concert at the Studios of the NDTC on Sunday, December 15, 2013 at 6pm featuring the NDTC Singers and Musicians. The concert paid tribute to Marjorie Whylie Musical Director Emerita for her many years of service to the Company.

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Friendship Association.

CAROLE REID Celebrated Soprano Carole Reid was a featured performer at the Music Through the Ages VI concert held at the UWI (Mona) Chapel on Sunday, September 29, 2013 at 5:30 pm. The event was held under the distinguished patronage of His Excellency The Most Honourable Sir Patrick L. Allen, Governor-­‐General of Jamaica and was hosted by the Jamaica America

OBITUARY

• BARBARA KAUFMAN Barbara Kaufman who served as the Company’s Wardrobe Mistress for more than four decades died on September 20, 2013 at the Kingston Public Hospital after a brief illness. The Company performed an hour-­‐long tribute to celebrate her life and her exemplary work at the funeral service, which was held at the Holy Cross Catholic Church in Half Way Tree, Kingston on Saturday, October 5, 2013 at 10:30 am.

• KENNETH JOSEPH MOCK YEN Reverend Monsignor Kenneth Joseph Mock Yen, who danced briefly with the Company and remained a long-­‐time friend died on September 2, 2013 after a long period of illness. The Mass of Christian burial was held at the Cathedral of the Most Holy Trinity, North Street, Kingston on Friday, September 27, 2013 at 2 p.m. Mark Phinn represented the Company in paying tribute in dance. He performed a solo except of Clive Thompson’s Of Sympathy and Love.

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Maria LaYacona: 60 Years of Photography in Jamaica

by David Boxer

Welcome We are all gathered here because we are friends of Maria’s, or perhaps some of us are more than friends, we are also lovers of photography, that marvellous invention (series of inventions really) that have changed the way we see the world and image what we see; or perhaps we simply love Jamaica and intuit that in these hands and through the eyes and lenses of this extraordinary photographer, Jamaica has had no finer pictorial and visual chronicler for the entire second half of the last century and the first decade of this century.

Only last night with the help of Mr. (or is it Miss Google) and that of Cathy and Jaquie, Maria’s great helpmates in this presentation of her third one-­‐person exhibition, I was able to sort out some things that had been troubling me for some time.

For years Maria has always said that she first came to Jamaica in 1955 to cover for Henry Luce’s Time/Life complex the first Australian tour of the West Indies. She fell in love with cricket and with Jamaica and decided to stay. Last night I watched a rare ten minute film about Maria on YouTube, and she repeats that claim. I checked Mr. Google and Indeed that tour did begin in March of 1955 – Fifty eight years ago.

But this exhibition is supposed to mark sixty years of association with Jamaica...what accounts for this discrepancy?

Well, it turns out that Maria’s first visit to Jamaica was actually in 1953 when she accompanied a group of dentists who came here to use and presumably to teach, according to Maria’s sixty year old memories, the technique of hypnotism, before performing dental surgery... she fell in love with the island and returned in 1954, to explore the possibility of moving here permanently and making Jamaica her home. There must have been something in the air, for it was just about the same time that the great Polish artist Mikhel Leszynsky came on a boat and decided to make Jamaica his home. Leszynsky changed his name to Lester and is famous now as Montego Bay’s greatest painter Michael Lester. Maria held fast to her Italian name...LaYacona. Now sixty years later, that name has become a thoroughly Jamaican name, a name synonymous with photographic excellence.

Believe it or not, this is only Maria LaYacona’s third one-­‐person show ever and we have to thank Susanne for arranging it.

The first in the early seventies was devoted to her Dance photography, the second, which I had the good fortune to organise and curate for the National Gallery, was devoted to her

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portraiture. That was held in 1993. This third show is a mini retrospective that celebrates 60 years of her association with Jamaica. In this exhibition some 64 works paint with a quick broad brush, a synopsis, the essentials of Maria’s career in Jamaica.

As I stated in my foreword to Maria’s book Jamaica Portraits 1955-­1998, the centre piece of her career is the remarkable body of work documenting the life of the National Dance Theatre Company between the years 1964 and 1992, during which she was the official photographer..... after her official retirement in 1992 she was an occasional guest photographer. She was a devoted chronicler of the company and sustained a close relationship and true friendship with Rex Nettleford which lasted right up until Rex’s death in 2010. Several publications utilise her NDTC photographs but the very first published in 1969, Roots and Rhythms, which has become a classic, is solely her work. I treasure the rare copy which Rex and herself presented me with on my fiftieth birthday...

Just an aside....Maria is very distrustful of the computer and the internet, but Maria it can be a useful tool. By courtesy of Mr Google, I could see that there were four used copies of Roots and Rhythms available today through Amazon. And they are reasonably priced, one of them which is available at $88, U.S. is actually signed by Rex Nettleford.

Some enterprising person in this audience needs to acquire that book and have Maria Sign it as well: you need to have this to go along with the NDTC image that you are going to purchase in this exhibition. That’s how true collectors operate! For in this exhibition there are several NDTC images including vintage images such as the famous one of Rex in that wonderfully extended movement rivalling the most graceful of birds.... You all know the image.

And turning to another aspect of Jamaican Theatre-­‐life there is a rare vintage print of a famous image from 1965 in the exhibition of Louise Bennett and Ranny Williams, and that image is matched by an equally famous image of Louise alone.

Also in this exhibition is a full array of portraits: a whole section, captures iconic artists who have helped define Jamaica’s cultural panorama – Manley, Pottinger, Daley, Woody Joseph, Cecil Baugh, Everald Brown, Colin Garland, while another section is taken from her famous and much exhibited series from Port Royal, which includes one of her true masterpieces the prize winning Lillian Nelson, photographed in 1986. This is the epitome of the environmental portrait: the humble bedroom, the bed, the cupboard, the dresser, the photographs surrounding the dresser, the poster of Haile Selasie on the wall, the white open-­‐toed shoes at the foot of the dresser; all contribute to the final image with equal measure to the reflection of Miss Nelson in the Dresser’s mirror. It is as good an image as any Walker Evan’s Depression era photograph documenting America’s Rural poor. Walker Evans is of course one of the truly great master’s of American photography: Maria LaYacona is one of our true Masters!

These environmental portraits of Maria’s, which give her second book Jamaica Portraits 1955-­1998 its special character, have come to symbolise Maria’s “style” and several apart

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from Lillian Nelson of Port Royal have become virtual icons. Repeated use, and the choice for covers of publications have made famous, images like her very first portrait of a Market woman, her Mavis Bank Shopkeeper, her young Water carriers, the Green Hill youngsters on their go-­‐cart, and my absolute favourite Hilda Lewis the female farmer which graces the cover of Jamaica Portraits. They have become or are becoming icons because they are memorable, and they are memorable because their creator is a superb technician in full command of the intricacies of composition, and lighting with a full understanding of the abstracting principles and the sheer visual power of Black and White photography, and of good black and white chemical printing. Rex Nettleford that master wordsmith says it so much better when he speaks of Maria’s (quote) “aesthetic energy, artistic savvy and delicately nuanced sensibility, (her) sense of design and of that characteristic spirituality for which Maria LaYacona, the consummate artist is known.” Consummate artist indeed.

The several environmental portraits in the exhibition, form an interesting counterpoise to the formal studio shots among the group of six portraits of Prime Ministers and the portrait of Chief minister Norman Manley. Norman Manley’s portrait, like Busta’s is technically an environmental portrait, but it has been formalised by the sitter himself who dictated the process. It was taken several weeks before the January 1955 election which gave him the premiership of pre-­‐independence Jamaica.

The photographs of the Cousins, Busta and Norman have been paired because they document an interesting moment in Maria’s life, we figure sometime in late 1954.... She was moving between Jamaica and New York – still associated with Life Magazine. The election was coming up and Bustamante and Norman were both approached with requests for photographs. As Maria put it the contrast was incredible. She got five minutes with Norman and was only able to get off a couple of images of him sitting behind his desk. She got two days with Bustamante, and these were spent at his “Retreat” in St. Thomas where she shot dozens of images of the Chief: the Chief with Gladys, later to become Lady B; the chief with workers on the farm; the chief with his prized animals; the Chief with Maria herself, the Chief walking on the road greeting the country-­‐folk. I prize in my collection an image of the Chief bending to shake the hand of a toddler while the little girl’s mother smiles proudly... Unfortunately, Norman won the election, Unfortunately for Maria that is – I remember my own parents being absolutely ecstatic, I was nine years old at the time and had no opinion and no vote – Norman won the election, but had Bustamante won...things may have been very different for Maria’s career. Life Magazine had been standing by to run a full picture story of Maria’s two days at “Retreat” – her reputation as a photojournalist would have been sealed. Perhaps, she would have changed her mind about living in Jamaica.

Maria permanently moved to Jamaica in 1955 and In Jamaica she had to forge out a niche for herself. Initially there was a virtual shut-­‐out by the local photographers who ensured that she didn’t get any work. So at first she actually made a living running a boarding house.

But she was gradually accepted and began to get a healthy slice of the available commercial and portrait work, and became a full time professional photographer. Always however her life as a photographer was defined not by her commercial activity but by her independent artistic work and her very serious work with Jamaica’s premier dance theatre.

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The third major area of Maria’s oeuvre as an artistic photographer is that of Nature and the landscape. Maria’s third book Jamaica Reverie, explores that side of her creativity and in the exhibition, some of the images from that book, as well as a few that were not published, speak to her deep and abiding love for the environment, this “textured, exciting” Rock, that she has chosen as her home.

Ralph Thompson’s poetic introduction to Jamaica Reverie sets the mood for an evening’s sojourn with Maria’s images:

Maria, seeing eye to eye With the camera crouches Behind a tripod waiting for a cloud to pass, A bough to sway, an inner voice To whisper NOW Then clicks to life this book of photographs Entitled Jamaica Reverie, and I, Flipping images in black and white Which took her years to capture and compose, hold an island in my hand.

... the black diagonal of a mountain range Across an oblong sky Two lizards kissing A Standpipe dripping, a single tear The perpendicular of a coconut tree taking a detour bulging to the left before rediscovering straightness...

Several of the images from Jamaica Reverie are included in the show including at least two that I spotted where the principal raison d’etre is the ubiquitous Jamaican Goat: As Ralph says in his poem:

And then the goats.

Maria is in love with goats

Enjoy the goats and the entire exhibition!

Opening Remarks/Speech Hi-­Qo Gallery Thursday, October 31, 2013

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Barbara Kaufman lived ‘On Purpose’ NDTC Mourns the Passing of Wardrobe Mistress

Alicia Glasgow – PRO, NDTC

The Wardrobe Mistress is one of the most central roles in any dance or theatre company, Barry Moncrieffe, artistic director of the National Dance Theatre Company (NDTC), asserts, adding, “She is a pillar on which the success of a company stands.”

As the NDTC family mourns the loss of its long-­‐standing Wardrobe Mistress, Barbara Kaufman, its past and current members offer praise and highest respect for her unwavering and dedicated service of over 48 years.

Miss Kaufman died at the Kingston Public Hospital on Friday, September 20, after a brief illness. She was 79.

Affectionately called ‘Babs’, Barbara was an “incredible woman who was critical to the early success and longevity of our 51-­‐year-­‐old company. Her role in the company was unique, but very difficult, and yet, she performed it with utmost pride, protection and with a higher sense of purpose,” Moncrieffe declared.

Kaufman joined the NDTC in the mid-­‐1960s as assistant to founding member, Shirley Campbell. Shortly after, she assumed and maintained the role of Wardrobe Mistress until her death.

A ‘silent partner’ not seen on stage, Kaufman was charged with safeguarding the tangible elements and artefacts of the NDTC’s rich history: costumes, props and décor, amounting to thousands of pieces used in the company’s repertoire.

As a former dancer with the Eddy Thomas Dance Workshop, performing in the 1962 production, Roots and Rhythms, she had an intimate understanding of, and passion for, the centrality of, wardrobe to the success of theatrical performances.

Kaufman not only served as Wardrobe Mistress for the NDTC, but also performed a similar function for the Little Theatre Movement’s annual pantomime.

She developed her craft into a fine art, and was renowned for her innovative, systematic and meticulous approach to the role, for which she volunteered. Kaufman executed her responsibilities with clear, efficient and effective structures; a skill set, company members say, is attributable to her professional experience in the civil service.

The Wardrobe Mistress extraordinaire catalogued, organised, stored, preserved and protected the extensive NDTC wardrobe with supreme care and efficiency; many of the costumes used as far back as the 1960s remain in storage. Her famous notebooks provided

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records to support her in-­‐depth and intimate knowledge of all the costumes for the hundreds of works in the repertoire.

In his 1983 book, Dance Jamaica, NDTC co-­‐founder and late artistic director, Professor the Honourable Rex Nettleford, affirmed that Kaufman “built a wardrobe management system unmatched in current Jamaican theatre operations,” adding that, “she has had to make difficult and ingenious decisions to find substitutes in critical moments or to make do when serious financial limitations were placed on ambitious design plans”.

In recognition of her work in theatre arts, Kaufman was awarded the prestigious Centenary Medal by the Institute of Jamaica.

“Barbara never missed a detail of costume. You could ask her for the pin attached to the pants you wore for a dance 10 years prior and she could tell you where it was, or what happened to it,” founding member and choreographer Bert Rose reminisced.

Rose’s sentiments were echoed by retired NDTC musical director Marjorie Whylie, who recalls that when the NDTC embarked on a long, multi-­‐city tour in Germany, the members of staff at one particular theatre were amazed at how quickly the petite Kaufman was able to assemble and pack the costumes following the show.

Kaufman’s work was so integral to the work of the NDTC that she participated in a record number of international tours since the 1960s.

NDTC founding member Barbara Requa has fond memories of Kaufman and describes her as a warm personality.

“There is no way to explain the mind-­‐blowing amount of work she did behind the scenes to ensure that generations of dancers, singers and musicians looked their best.”

Jacqui Smith, former principal dancer, had a special relationship inside and outside of the NDTC space.

“Auntie Babs gave 150 million per cent to whatever role she was committed. In her wardrobe life, she managed with pride, loyalty and dedication. She safeguarded those costumes with her life. In her personal life, she was godmother to both of my children and was extremely supportive of us all. She wouldn't hesitate to be honest and tell you how it is.

That is how she lived.”

Current dancer Keita-­‐Marie Chamberlain has been understudying and assisting Kaufman since 2010.

“I did not even realise that Auntie Babs was almost 80 years old. She was so full of energy, full of life, extremely independent and always on the go,” she said.

Chamberlain shared stories of Kaufman’s proactivity.

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“Her backstage room in the theatre was adjacent to the wings so she could quickly react to whatever mishap happened on stage. I have seen Auntie Babs quickly sew, tape and pin performers into ripped costumes on the spot to ensure that one would not miss their next entrance.”

Dance Captain Marlon Simms reiterated that the nurturing mother figure, in her own indomitable style, bonded with the young people and was often moved by witnessing their growth and artistic development.

“Auntie Babs did not have biological children. We were her children; and, therefore, the loss is very hard for the NDTC and LTM families. She will be deeply missed, but never forgotten.”

Barbara Kaufman, NDTC Wardrobe Mistress

by Marlon Simms

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man (or woman) in his (or her time) plays many parts”. This quote from Shakespeare is quite apt in coming to terms with the many roles we play and how they translate into the roles we play in theatre. Barbara Kaufman, though her role was never on the main stage, played the coveted role as the Company’s revered Wardrobe Mistress. She easily stole the hearts of the audience whenever the Company appeared adorned in the fine costumes she guarded with great passion and commitment. And at the end of the performance she could have easily claimed the curtain call as her own but she didn’t. She knew in her heart it was about the Company and it was no secret that she loved the Company and her role dearly.

It was through this love that Barbara Kaufman, whom we affectionately call Aunty Babs, was able to touch the lives of many. She influenced others in a special way that left an indelible mark on that person, their theatre craft, and the way they lived their life. One could have overlooked this woman of small stature and underestimate her strength and vigour but with an approaching performance of the Company she could quickly change that perception. In her indomitable style you quickly learned the important role she played in how you presented yourself on the world stage. Her role was, in fact, one on which your performance hinged and therefore it was not be taken for granted. She was a serious professional and her role in theatre should not be taken lightly.

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Auntie Babs took on this central and worthy task of Wardrobe Mistress with great dignity, and in her forty-­‐eight years with the Company, she distinguished herself as the creator of a wardrobe management system, which, at the time, was unmatched in the Caribbean. She was scientific about her fine art. Auntie Babs single-­‐handedly implemented a structure of documenting, storing and preserving the NDTC’s extensive wardrobe. The bonds, memories and relationships she developed with those who wore the costumes she treasured and cared for, and the wider NDTC and LTM families is a legacy all on its own. It is a legacy that must be remembered and continued with the greatest respect.

Your entry into the Company was not reserved to your first class with Professor or your first performance with the Company. It also included your first meeting with Barbara Kaufman. Without her, you wouldn’t be truly complete for any performance. A senior Company member would either whisk you away to meet her or you were asked in a hushed tone if you had met Auntie Babs. It was a right of passage. She was very cognizant of the important role that she played and you had to understand, appreciate and support her role.

Some members can remember meeting her for the first time. She would have heard of you earlier and observed you in class or rehearsals. And on approaching her, she would look at you closely and tilt her head back with an undisclosed understanding. She would then close her eyes into a slit as though she was going through the filing cabinet of her mind to put your name among all the others who had preceded you.

In that moment she wasn’t trying to determine your background, but was quickly rummaging through the costume room to see what exactly would be your perfect fit. In seconds, you could only assume that she knew your height, weight and the measurement of your shoulders, waist and hips.

Soon, your name would be entered into her famous notebook that she carefully used to document every piece of costume that made its way on to the Company’s stage. At some point we all marvelled at this book and her serious approach to documenting everything.

For anyone who was fortunate enough to glimpse the contents of this prized possession, would see the name of the dance, each dancer, costumes worn, the props used in the work and the additional pieces of costumes that may not have been used. In that book, is the history of the Company, a complex documentation of the culture of dance costume and the memories of those who lived to perform.

Her work could not have been easy. She was at the theatre early in the mornings to sort through costumes for those that needed ironing, washing, mending or replacing. She had to know the costumes that spanned fifty-­‐one years, which amounted to more than two hundred works. Now take a moment and imagine that each dancer wears an average of four pieces per dance. Dances could range from solos to full company works involving fifty persons. And try to imagine Auntie Babs sorting through the costume room for a set of costumes worn in 1972. She had to have had an intimate knowledge and memory of what was worn in that piece and her remarkable feat was finding it.

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And still, on meeting her you would not know that this woman was capable of such a demanding task and that she kept such copious records that forty-­‐something years later, she could walk into the room and show the right one. Through her efforts, she not only added to the history but also created her own legacy that we will guard and advance with the same honour that she did.

Apart from completing her difficult task of managing costumes with dedication and precision; she exhibited great care for members of the Company. No one can deny the fact that she had a big heart capable of recoiling when hurt or upset and opening up to the company of those who genuinely love, respect, adore and honour her. She would often surprise you with how caring she was despite her fiery temper and quick assertive wit, when things didn’t go as they should. In no time however, she would quite easily become your aunt, mother, Godmother to your children, advisor, friend and advocate.

She had a special place in her heart for anything or anyone that was defenceless. In her usual trek from the theatre to the NDTC Studios, the family of puppies that were birthed at the theatre would follow her. They would be wagging their tails as she spoke to them or as she gathered their food from our Sunday lunch following the rehearsal. One was never lucky to meet the one she had at home but rest assured, that meal was packed away for her beloved pet.

One often wonders where Auntie Babs found the energy to do the things she did. She handled her own affairs with the independence that belied her age. You could depend on her to be present whenever she was needed. And she would be firing from all pistons. She was always busy preparing, searching, hanging, organizing, answering questions and responding to requests. At the end of the day, she would find the time to relax with her favourite ice cold beverage, Guinness.

There are so many things we will miss about Auntie Babs. We will miss her laughter following one of her witty comments that you could not even muster a reply to no matter how hard you tried. We will miss her lack of interest while you scampered to cover your ‘wares’ in the dressing room while she was doing her usual costume checks and rounds.

We will miss her quick response to a crisis backstage whether it was a quick change or to reconstruct a costume with her magical pins. We will miss the lessons of respect for costumes that she taught in her own way. One can recall when she would watch you search for your costume until you were sweating with frustration and fatigue. Then she would present it to you at the moment of giving up with the warning that you must hang up your costume after use and not leave them carelessly about backstage.

We will miss how she watched the performance from the wings with love in her heart and would be moved to tears if she witnessed excellence. We will miss her solid advice and no nonsense and impassioned opinion about matters of life and the way things should rightly be. We will miss travelling with her to new performance spaces across the world where she would leave experienced theatre members in awe of her remarkable wardrobe skills.

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We will miss how she stood for the vision of the Company wholehearted and how she taught us to respect tradition, culture, process, structure and excellence. But most of all, we will miss how she clothed us, not in costumes for the stage, but in love, every day before we entered the stage of life.

Though we miss her, we have cause to celebrate. Her commitment to the Company was unquestionable. Her contribution to developing a wardrobe system that spanned many years was ground-­‐breaking and unmatched in dance theatre. She loved the dance as much as she loved the people who wore what she painstakingly prepared for them. You kept us looking good Auntie Babs, and feeling even better. For that we are truly grateful. Thanks for sharing your life with us.

Tribute/NDTC Holy Cross United Church Saturday, October 5, 2013

Tributes

Carole Orane Andrade Kumina and white rum...and, yes the ever ready safety pins right over her heart...as we danced, so did she.

Chelcia Creary We took to each other like me and my own grandma! Miss u auntie.

Ewan D.A. Simpson I will still celebrate every show and some rehearsals with a bottle of Guinness for you and one for me....like we used to do...

Deborah Powell T’was a pleasure to have met you my sweet lady and an honour to have bonded with your strong spirit. Rest in peace my love…

Jhana Williams LOOOOVE Auntie Babs!!! She always took special care of me, always finding a head tie for me when I forgot mine. Gave me extra rum for Kumina. Fun memories!!!!

Cheryl Ryman Aahh Miss Babs – what a totally professional lady. She made multitasking seem so easy.

How did she manage to have everything? All the multiple costumes and props always ready – darned, zips reinstated and working, pressed, taken in, let out, “holding a fresh”, pressed as necessary – always in the right place at the right time – rushing from stage right to stage left armed and ready to either deliver and assist in a rapid-­‐costume change or quick fix or receiving wildly flown pieces of costumes and props or ALL of the above! Your demeanour rarely changed from “unruffled” except when taken away by your favourite dance or dancer or specifically provoked. We were privileged to have had you at our backs and side and in our lives... you will be missed but you will be like a beacon for those who follow...

Andrea Dee Losing special people like Auntie Babs brings sad feelings, but the memories always bring a smile. There’s was the welcome when on the first day and the firm eye to keep you in line in the dressing room. It was all good. Love ya Auntie Babs! Rest in peace! Rex is waiting for his Wardrobe Mistress for the heavenly company.

Natalie Jus Lyme Chung It is so hard to say goodbye to such a great person who for years, worked passionately and tirelessly to make us performers look great! I will always love you Aunty Babs and you will be missed! Keep soaring and say hi to the rest of the fam! We will keep your memories alive! We promise!

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Melanie Graham Barbara, thanks for all you did – you will be missed.

Mark Ramsay Auntie Babs I know you have your sewing kit and your dance gear. Walk good and keep Auntie Verona in line for me. Love you.

Edna Osbourne I am truly, truly saddened to hear of Barbara’s passing. Mea culpa I kept saying at each visit that I must invite her to lunch or tea – how patronizing it sounds! But the time went, and so did I. May she rest in peace.

Chris Walker I write to offer my condolences on the passing of Auntie Babs who as we all know, was a woman of strength, great vigor and an unforgettable character. I heard that true to her character, Auntie Babs went out fighting. As we move forward, however slowly, let us take up the baton, recognize the shoulders on which we stand and continue to do this great work that the organization is known for.

More importantly, let us continue to build and strengthen our relationships as brothers and sisters, an act the NDTC founders did not take lightly.

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CONTRIBUTORS

“The Role of Cultural Exchange and Documentation in Bridging the Gap between Chinese and Jamaican Cultures”

Courtney A. Hogarth holds a doctoral degree in Classical Chinese Painting from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, China. Towards the end of last century Hogarth journeyed to China, inspired by a deep and abiding interest in Chinese Language, Philosophy and Culture. Both his visual and textual creations have, in turn, been inspired by this culture, underpinned by an unassailable Jamaican awareness. Hogarth is interested in the human condition, celebration of life and questioning our journey as a nomadic race in that unending quest to find love and belonging.

“The Relevance of Cultural and Historical Documentation in Understanding the Parallels between Japan and Jamaica”

Jhana Williams-­Graham is a member of the National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica. She is a cultural ambassador, and an educator with the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Programme. Mrs. Graham is the founder of the Genki Culture series in Niigata, where she resides. Genki Culture is a grassroots internationalization program that seeks to strengthen bonds between the local and international community in Niigata. Contact: genkiculture@gmail.com

“Dancing the National Narratives: Concert Dance in Barbados as an Historical Document”

“free to wine free to wuk my waist: Interrogating Expression of Freedom and Resistance in Barbados Popular Dance Culture”

John Hunte is an accomplished dancer and arts activist. He has been awarded a Diploma in Dance Theatre and Production from Edna Manley College’s School of Dance, a BS in Dance from SUNY Brockport NY and a MFA in Performing Arts Management from CUNY Brooklyn College. He is currently a PhD candidate in the cultural studies programme at the Cave Hill Campus of the University of the West Indies and works as the Cultural Officer – Dance at the National Cultural Foundation in Barbados. This article is, in fact, extracted and adapted from a chapter of his PhD thesis, entitled, Beyond the Silence: Men, Dance and Masculinity in the Caribbean, The Case of Barbados.

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“The Role of the Theatre Critic in Creating Cultural and Historical Documents”

Barbara Naedene Ellington is a formally trained educator with more than 17 years teaching experience at the high school level in Jamaica, United States and the Bahamas. Currently the Public Affairs Editor at Gleaner Jamaica, Ms. Ellington has covered overseas assignments on a wide range of subject areas in Canada, Cuba, St. Maarten, Puerto Rico, Barbados, U.S. Virgin Islands, St Lucia, Antigua, Thailand, Norway, Spain, England, Zimbabwe, Amsterdam, France and the United States. A winner of three Press Association of Jamaica awards in journalism, she also serves as an annual guest lecturer for journalism and P.R. students at the U.W.I. and a part-­‐time lecturer in Food Writing at the University of Technology (UTech).

“The Performing Arts as Documents”

Mark-­Shane Scale is from Kingston, Jamaica. He pursued a BSc in Political Science with Statistics and later a Masters of Library and Information Studies at the University of the West Indies, Mona campus.

He has worked as a teacher librarian in a vocational school and later as a Departmental Librarian at the University of the West Indies, Department of Library and Information Studies. Eventually Mark-­‐ Shane worked as an Assistant Lecturer for the Department. He currently lives in Canada and is pursuing a PhD in Library and Information Science. His area of interest and specialisation is in information sources in social media and personal and organizational storytelling in knowledge sharing.

The NDTC Journal is produced by members of the National Dance Theatre Company (NDTC) of Jamaica on a biannual basis. The publication, which began in 1968 as the NDTC Newsletter, serves as an invaluable source of information for members (past and present), patrons (potential and current) and associates of the NDTC. The wider artistic community also benefits from the Journal as it shares matters relating to the Arts, Education and Dance Theatre in Jamaica, the Caribbean and wider Diaspora. This edition, Issue #4, 2013 addresses – “Performing Arts as a Vital Historical and Cultural Document” as highlighted by above noted contributors.

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LIST OF PHOTOGRAPHS

Page(s) Cover/Content

Collage of NDTC Members in performance

THE DANCE AS AN ART FORM AND ITS PLACE IN THE WEST INDIES 4-­‐15

Gillian Samms in The Crossing (1978) chor. Rex Nettleford | Kumina (1971) chor. Rex Nettleford with Marlon Simms (as king) Keita-­‐Marie Chamberlain (as Queen) | Gerrehbenta (1983) chor. Rex Nettleford |Kristina Graham in Chris Walker’s Urban Fissure (2004) | Bert Rose’s Edna M (1987) | Dis Poem (1988) chor. Rex Nettleford | Phillip Earle portraying ‘Uncle Tom’ in Rex Nettleford dance-­‐drama The Crossing (1978)

THE RELEVANCE OF CULTURAL AND HISTORIC DOCUMENTATION IN UNDERSTANDING THE PARALLELS BETWEEN JAPAN AND JAMAICA 21-­‐24

Lead soloist Helen Christian in Eduardo Rivero-­‐Walker Sulkari (1980) | Kumina (1971) chor. Rex Nettleford | Gene Carson’s Sanctuary (2013)

32

Sulkari (1980) chor. Eduardo Rivero-­‐Walker – foreground Marlon Simms and Candice Morris

THE ROLE OF THE THEATRE CRITIC IN CREATING CULTURAL AND HISTORIC DOCUMENTS

34-­‐36

Kerry-­‐Ann Henry in Clive Thompson’s Phases of the Three Moons (1992) | Rhonda Lumsden-­‐Lue in Performance

41

NDTC Members in Rex Nettleford’s The Crossing (1978)

42/49

Collage of NDTC Members in Performance

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FROM THE ARCHIVES

50-­‐57

Mark Phinn in Bert Rose’s Edna M (1987) | Rex Nettleford with world renowned ballerina Alicia Alonso, Director of the Cuban National Ballet | Tamara Noel and Patrick Earle in Chris Walker’s Urban Fissure (2004) | Members of NDTC Singers in Performance | Jackie Guy represent the ‘bush spirit’ held aloft in I Not I (1977) chor. Sheila Barnett accenting the importance of the African heritage in Jamaica folklore | Myal (1974) chor.

Rex Nettleford | Bert Rose and Melanie Graham meld dramatically in the duet Ebb Flow (1978) chor. Bert Rose

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Veteran Wardrobe Mistress Barbara Kaufman – photography Marvin Bartley

72

(l-­‐r) Kerry-­‐Ann Henry, Tamara Noel and Marisa Benain in Rex Nettleford’s Tintinnabulum (1997) – photography Bryan Robinson

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