One of the most innovative companies to have achieved world acclaim in the last half of the twentieth century, the National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica blends the lore, music and dance traditions of Jamaica, the wider Caribbean and the American South with both Modern and European classical ballet forms. This richly illustrated history, as sequel to the earlier Dance Jamaica – Cultural Definition and Artistic Discovery, celebrates the Company’s first forty-five years.
This is the story of how a group of unpaid dancers, musicians, choreographers, designers and technicians became one of the most influential cultural voices of the Third World. The work describes the Company’s continuing efforts through the dedication, commitment and sustained application of its members to forge an organic vocabulary, technique and style of Caribbean dance art against the background of the wider society’s history of severance, suffering and survival. The author shows how the Company achieved it’s ambition to secure for the Jamaican people a way of articulating their identity and of building faith in a historical reality denied by three centuries of colonial subjugation.
The tours of the internationally acclaimed National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica have taken them to all parts of the world – from London’s Sadler Wells to Mexico City’s Palacio de Bellas Artes, from the Theatre Royal in Sydney, to the Palace of Culture in Kiev. The Company has also performed at numerous venues throughout the United States, including at the Gusman Theatre in Miami, the New Orleans Theatre of Music and Performing Arts, the New York City Centre Theatre.
Contents
PROLOGUE: Renewal and Continuity the NDTC in Transition
- Avatar and Living Monument: The NDTC 1962–2007
- The Bridge Generation and Early Renewal: The Nineteen Eighties and Nineteen Nineties
- The Later Renewal: The Mid Nineties and After
- The Music of the NDTC its Singers and Musicians
- The Repertoire
- Technique(s), Vocabulary and Style
- The Artistic Direction, Choreographers and Creative Technicians
- Critiques and Commentaries
- Signal Events: Carifesta, Overseas Tours, Morning of Movement and Music, Musical – Jamaica Calling – The School of Dance (Education & Training)
EPILOGUE: Beyond 45 and the Way Forward
About The Author
The Honourable Rex Nettleford is a founder, a former lead dancer and currently the principal choreographer and since 1967, the sole artistic director of the national Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica. He has staged and choreographed several musicals and revues in his native Jamaica and in Britain as well as advised on the staging of the Broadway musical Reggae. A Rhodes Scholar, Rex Nettleford is a leading Caribbean academic currently serving as Vice Chancellor Emeritus and a Distinguished Fellow at the University of the West Indies where he edits Caribbean Quarterly, the University’s Cultural Studies journal. In 1975 he was awarded the high national honour of Order of Merit; in 1981 the prestigious Gold Musgrave Medal and in 2008 the high ranking Order of the Caribbean Community for his artistic and scholarly work. He is also the recipient of several honorary doctorates from universities on both sides of the Atlantic. Professor Nettleford is the author of Mirror, Mirror – Identity, Race and protest in Jamaica, Caribbean Cultural Identity – The Case of Jamaica. Roots and Rhythms – Dance Jamaica Cultural Definition and Artistic Discovery. Inward Stretch, Outward Reach – A Voice from the Caribbean among other publications.
Maria LaYacona has been the NDTC’s official photographer since the early 1960s and has illustrated both Roots and Rhythms which she also designed and Dance Jamaica – Cultural Definition and Artistic Discovery, the two previous publications on the Jamaican Dance Company. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, US, she studied photography with her father, Mario LaYacona and at the Winona School of Photography in Warsaw, Indiana. She then worked as a photojournalist in New York City in the 1950s and later established a professional practice in Jamaica. She joined the NDTC in 1964 as a full-fledged voluntary member and has since produced two major works of photography – Jamaica Portraits 1955-1988 and more recently Jamaica Reverie – 1955-2005 – both of which have won high critical acclaim.
