ANOTHER FINE season of dance, their 31st, is currently being presented by The University Dance Society. It opened last weekend at the Philip Sherlock Centre for the Creative Arts (PSCCA) and closes on Sunday, March 24.
Ten dances make up the two-hour long programme, with special guest choreographer, L'Antoinette Osun Ide Stines, being the creator of one of the most outstanding, 'Poetry and Motion'. This dance is dedicated to Professor Kamau Brathwaite, and was first performed at the start of the four-day tribute paid to him in January by the University.
Performed to a recitation, both on tape and live by the dancers, of some of Brathwaite's poems, the dance depicts the early experiences of Africans brought to the New World in slavery. We see and hear of the stagnation, horror and pain they felt this in the dancers' freezes, agonised movements and contorted poses, but we also see the resistance to the negative conditions and the hope sustained by the spirituality of the people.
The other dances are choreographed by a heartening number of Society members. Evidently many of them delight not only in the physical side of dance but the creative as well. The other choreographers are Kyisha Patterson, Keita-Marie Chamberlain, Natalie Chung, Peta-Gay Pryce, Tania Whitby, Marlon Simms (the only male choreographer), Danielle A. K. Nembhard, Neila Ebanks and Marielle Barrow.
Not surprisingly, since university is a place where one explores oneself as much as one learns about the world, introspection plays a big part in many dances. 'Dementia' (Pryce), for example, features a young woman trying to 'find herself.' The woman is represented by four dancers who, sometimes simultaneously, sometimes concurrently, portray a woman's different moods.
'Harlem Blue Note' (Patterson), which follows, is a more extroverted number. The setting is a Harlem nightclub and at lights up eight cocktail waitresses in short blue dresses 'profile' and chat among themselves. Later, couples get involved in incidents motivated by jealousy: there is a triangle with two women and a man, for example, and a lively episode featuring 'dance duelling' with the dancers showing off their moves.
'Tataku Fire' (Nembhard) is a heavy piece about slavery and racism. Visuals are cleverly included, and we see scenes of slavery, including drawings and newspaper ads. The well-thought out work links slavery to racism and the current violence in the Corporate Area. Pictures of the National Heroes projected onto the scrim upstage and the consequent laying down of weapons by combatants suggests a solution to the violence problem.
'D.A.P.S.' (Whitby) is the acronym for 'Dance Affair Pon Di Street', and that's what this lively dance is all about. As the programme blurb states, 'is jus pure vibes an excitement a gwaan pon de street side.'
'Leggo Di Vibes' (Ebanks) expands the theme. This work is longer, has more music and dancers, and builds nicely to become very energetic. Reggae music, for example, is succeeded by dancehall. It is a good work to end the first half.
Simms' '100 and Park Redemption' opens the second half with tremendous tension, caused by the music and the suggestive images shown. There is at times a robotic quality to the movements of the central male figure and the women. The man seems to dominate and give energy to the women, all but one of them; she is left by the others at the end.
Both the robotic movements and the spiritual quality of this dance are magnified in the next piece, 'A God in the Machine', (Barrow). An angelic figure, a woman dressed in white and moving with grace, enters halfway through to 'save' the soulless 'robots,' symbolic of mankind, no doubt. She succeeds and the negative mood of the dancers changes to happiness.
Chamberlain's 'Untitled' is a lightweight piece featuring two dancers. The non-title suggests that not much thought went into its creation.
A major work appropriately ends the show. This is Chung's emotion-packed opus about moral corruption and gun violence in Jamaica. It features scenes of drug dealing, prostitution and murder. Repentance and confession are necessary, the choreographer states - the 'mea culpa' gesture of beating one's chest is seen at one stage. But it is not clear that in the end the gunman forsakes his gun.
The dancers vary in skill and control of their bodies, but all in all, this is a satisfying concert.
M.R.
