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Aug 08, 2010 Features / Columnists, The Arts Forum
By L’Antoinette Osunide Stines, PhD.
On Rex Nettleford’s final work:
DANCE JAMAICA: RENEWAL AND CONTINUITY—The National Dance Theatre of Jamaica 1962 – 2008
Dance Jamaica: Renewal and Continuity The National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica 1962-2008. Author: Rex Nettleford. Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle Publishers, 2009, 318 pages. Designed and Photographs by Maria LaYacona. U.S. $50.00 = ISBN: 978-976-637-392-3 (hbk).
In 2008 while working on my own dissertation [for a doctorate], I was fortunate to have an opportunity to interview Professor the Honorable Ralston (Rex) Milton Nettleford, O.M. I was intrigued that his office was swamped with opened books: on the floor and in every possible corner of the room. In the middle of the interview, I posed the question about the state of the office. He responded very excitedly and told me he was writing his next book. This was to be his final work. Dance Jamaica: Renewal and Continuity – the National Dance Theatre Company 1962-2008, published after his death on February 2, 2010 and launched at the Caribbean Studies Association Conference in Barbados on June 3, 2010.
As a young scholar, dancer and choreographer whose life is fueled by the dance, the first Dance Jamaica: Cultural Definition and Artistic Discovery The National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica 1962-1983 published in 1985 was an inspiration to me and the book was regarded by performing arts practitioners and the academic community internationally as the main source on Jamaican dance.
Rex Nettleford attended Cornwall College in Montego Bay and received his formal tertiary education at the University College of the West Indies and Oxford University. He returned to Jamaica to serve as the Director of the Trade Union Institute and though he went on to crown an illustrious academic career with being appointed Vice Chancellor Emeritus of the University of the West Indies – Mona Campus, he never lost his commitment to ongoing learning..
Nettleford who writes that the “African Presence is the ethos (and aesthetic) of Jamaica and the entire Caribbean” began his ancestral work immediately with Dance Jamaica Renewal and Continuity: The National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica 1962 -2008. After reading Caribbean Cultural Identity (1978.), Inward Stretch Outward Reach (1993), Mirror Mirror (1998) and the numerous articles in readers such as Caribbean Dance from Abakua to Zouk: How Movements Shape Identity, it becomes clear that foremost in Nettleford’s life’s work is the importance of ancestral memories, African continuities, identity within the Caribbean space, the power of the creative intellect and imagination, documentation and dissemination.
Nettleford seems to have taken as one of his responsibilities in life the job to elevate the knowledge on Caribbean history through the arts. He writes “Since some of us belong to the Caribbean where black people do have a sense of territory even if we are yet to attain total political power” (ix). In documenting the achievements of the NDTC throughout the book and especially in the Chapter titled “Signal Events”, Nettleford claims political dance power among the other existing companies while having a close relationship with the Jamaican government from independence. Many have reservations when tackling a book written by Nettleford as he uses academic terminology that is sometimes difficult for the layman to comprehend. However Dance Jamaica (2009) does not suffer from academic inaccessibility. Rather it is stylistically presented as an extension of NDTC program notes.
It is clear that, through the guise of dances, documentation and dissemination were his lifetime goals, and these were both achieved through the body of the dancer. Dance for Nettleford was the ultimate freedom of the body and the mind as he emphasized his own determination to “employ dance, a natural source not as “source of minstrelsy” but as expressions for liberation…”making dance not just a merely decorative but a central vehicle of meaning in the creative process” (18, 21).
Many have expressed concern that the title Dance Jamaica could give the reader who is uneducated and unaware of Dance in Jamaica the impression that the professional art of Dance begins and ends with the National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica and that there are no other “professional” dance companies in Jamaica. This, I am certain was not Nettleford’s intention.
The book is presented from his perspective as long time Artistic Director which he also founded with Eddie Thomas and Neville Black. It is evident from the subtitle that the focus is the documentation of the National Dance Theatre. Dance Jamaica: Renewal and Continuity (2009) is, in many ways, an extension of the Dance Jamaica: Cultural Definition and Artistic Discovery (1985) with both primarily concentrating on the National Dance Theatre Company as a tool of resistance and revolution concerned with nation building.
Dance Jamaica (2009) documents the evolution of dance in Jamaica through the paradigms of the NDTC. It offers the reader perspectives of Jamaican history, it records each individual that played a role in the development of the NDTC and gives a visual imagery of the scope of performance genre executed on and by the company. Nettleford shares his philosophy on arts management and on the importance of volunteerism. He explains:
The Jamaican company has long offered to audiences worldwide a repertoire of works created performed and technically/artistically supported by an ensemble of dedicated, disciplined souls who voluntarily share their talents with compatriots and others convinced that it makes sense for the psychic, social, and cultural health of the society…It remains at 45 committed to continue exploring, experimenting, creating, disseminating, entertaining, educating. (xiii, 21)
Nettleford presents the NDTC as one of primary artistic vehicles through which Jamaica became internationally acclaimed. This, he explains, was achieved through the choreographic relationships with music by “Jimmy Cliff in Tribute to Cliff, then Bob Marley (Court Of Jah), Toots Hibbert (Backlash), Peter Tosh and Burning Spear (Children of Mosiah), Ya Ya, Gregory Isaacs, Papa Levi (Vibrations), Buju Banton (Bujurama), as well as Tribute inspired by Jimmy Cliff.” (2010:15)
The chapters titled “The Bridge Generation and Early Renewal”; “The Nineteen Eighties and Nineteen Nineties”; “The Late Renewal”; “The Mid –Nineties and After”; and “The Music of the NDTC”: It’s Singers and Musicians give strong evidence of the important relationship fostered through the music with the dance and documents of the artistes who have graced the stage and have been instrumental in the artistic development of the NDTC. We are offered concise biographical data on such persons as Marjorie Whylie, the NDTC Musical Director; Patsy Rickets (still considered the premier Anglophone Caribbean female dancer); and Rohan Chrichlow, the then master drummer. Dance Jamaica (2009) guides the reader through the lived experience of 45 years of the NDTC offering information on the transitions from first generation of dancers, singers, drummers, management team into the now generation.
The Cuban impact on the NDTC’s work towards the development of the male dancers is credited to two Cuban male dancers, Arsenio Andrade Calderon and Abeldo Gonzales. Then came the new breed of female dancers, such as Stacey Lee-Hassan-Fowles, Kerry Ann Henry, Arlene Richards, Carol Orane-Andrade and many others who were to be considered part of the generational transition and renewal towards continuity. We are then introduced to the present generation of dancers who must carry the mantle of the Company and have the grave responsibility of keeping the memory of their Artistic Director alive through the Dance.
The author then transitions from biographical explanations to an exegesis of the methods and works in Chapter 5 titled “The Repertoire and Choreography”. At first I questioned the title, since it is obvious that a repertoire would have to be choreographed, but then it became clear that he was not only discussing the repertoire but extended the discussion to a greater Caribbean repertoire through the connections to other regional choreographers with whom the NDTC had worked.
Choreographers such as the famed Eduardo Rivera from Cuba (who choreographed one of NDTC’s signature pieces Sulkari), as well as “Incantation by inventive Haitian choreographer Jeanguy Saintus” (111), Dream on Squatters Mountain (1984) by Nettleford and Cross Currents (1993) by MoniKa Potts-Lawrence were also mentioned for their cross cultural connections to South Africa “exploring the travails of South Africa” (108).
In this chapter Nettleford clarifies the strong Caribbean ethos within a modern contemporary dance perspective mentioning works choreographed by Bert Rose such as “Glory –Road, Steal Away done to Black Spirituals, Ebb-Flow and certainly his narrative dance works, Thursday’s Child and Edna M”(120). Mention is also made of Jamaican international contemporary choreographer David Brown who resides in the United States. Brown “mounted his Labess on NDTC stage in 2002, giving the new generation of dancers welcome challenges” (12). Nettleford writes that:
“The NDTC”s strong folk background influenced but did not dominate the output by these young choreographers – all children of postcolonial Jamaica. They indeed re-affirmed the need for Caribbean dance-theatre to continue to re-invent itself, ‘precisely to fit the artistes’ contemporary needs of diverse identity”. (122)
I must admit that the chapters titled “Techniques, Vocabulary and Style” and the interchangeable use of the terms “technique”, “vocabulary”, and “style”, throughout the book requires clarification as the constructs in dance are not interchangeable. Nettleford himself admits that the NDTC works with many techniques such as Graham and Horton and has developed their own style of movement. He mentions the Associate Director, Barry Moncrieffe, as having developed a technique. This is the personal perspective of Nettleford but I, as a Jamaican choreographer and technique developer, am unaware of any such codified technique by Moncrieffe.
Many have critiqued The National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica. However, Nettleford is one of the few choreographers who have rebuffed reviewers at length offering instead his personal insights to reviewers about what the dances are meant to invoke. In the chapter titled ‘Critiques and Commentaries of Substance, Integrity and Validity’ he addresses many comments on the NDTC but pays special attention to the work of Associate Professor Deborah Thomas’s Modern Blackness: Nationalism, Globalisation and the Politics of Culture based on her thesis. He seems to have problems with many of her opinions and states that “She clearly missed the complexly textured context of the Jamaica cultural development and reality” (189). I have always found this practice to be an interesting approach as I have never experienced choreographers or Artistic Directors publicly responding to writers who have reviewed their work.
I conclude that for anyone interested in Caribbean dance and history, this book Dance Jamaica Renewal and Continuity: The National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica 1962-2008 is a must have. It offers us a critical historical perspective and aims to document each important moment towards the development of the NDTC. Additionally, this book is a kaleidoscope of powerful [photographic] images celebrating the body and repertoire of the NDTC. These images submitted by Maria LaYacona, The NDTC lifelong photographer can by themselves tell the story of the artistic life of Rex Nettleford and the NDTC. It is tempting at first to focus on the pictures rather than the script, but Nettleford’s elegant and passionate presentation of his life’s work is riveting.
The editor of THE ARTS FORUM’s ARTS COLUMN, Ameena Gafoor, can be reached at E-mail: [email protected] or by telephone: 592 227 6825.
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