- FileRex Nettleford
Michael Reckord, Contributor
(This is the third and final piece in a series on the 40-year-old National Dance Theatre Company.)
ONE AFTERNOON, four decades years ago, Bridget Casserly was walking across the Mona campus of the University of the West Indies (UWI) when Rex Nettleford called to her.
He had known her as a student of the Mademoiselle Soohih ballet school and wanted her to attend a meeting with other dancers in his flat in Chancellor Hall that following Sunday morning. To be discussed was Nettleford's vision for a major dance company for Jamaica. She would be there, she said.
Dancers at the meeting included ones from troupes like Doris Rumsey's, Fay Simpson's and Ivy Baxter's. Out of the meeting was born the National Dance Theatre Company (NDTC), with Nettleford and Eddy Thomas as co-directors.
Bridget recently recalled that Thomas, just back from studying with the Martha Graham company in New York, taught most of classes which started at the Half-Way Tree Junior Centre. Now the company's secretary-treasurer, Bridget was speaking outside the NDTC rehearsal studio in which, as she spoke, drums were pounding and glistening bodies were leaping, twirling, gliding and gyrating around the floor.
The dancers were being guided by Nettleford through the intricacies of one of the 60-odd dances he has choreographed for the company. Looking on were a number of persons who have assisted in the growth of the NDTC over the past several decades. In recent interviews, Nettleford spoke gratefully of them, and the other persons and institutions who have contributed to the development of the NDTC.
"The University has been very critical," Nettleford, now UWI Vice-Chancellor, said. "If I had not been working here, I would not have been able to give the leadership I did.
"Anything I've succeeded in doing in life has been done in collaboration with others. I've never entertained the view I'm a one-man band. That's how I preside over this university; my senior management team is critical in all this. Similarly in running theatre group. In a real sense, performing artistes are co-creators. You can be the conductor but you can't play all the instruments."
The founding members formed another 'critical' group for the company, Nettleford said. He said many are still his team, "Pansy Hassan and Bridget Spaulding on the administration side, and George Carter, still going strong on the lighting." Two others, Bert Rose and Barbara Requa, are now artistic advisors.
Later, important additions to the team included Barry Moncrieffe, now artistic co-ordinator, Arlene Richards, the ballet mistress and Barbard Kaufmann, wardrobe mistress.
Nettleford addressed the much-asked question of how the unpaid, volunteer company could have lasted so long.
"We have a thing that you put family ahead of the company, but spouses have been very good. The view that people like us can't run things, that we can't sustain things, I'm concerned (to disprove), while producing work of artistic excellence and with aesthetic weight. He added, "I have a deep concern for the education and advancement of all members. That's the principle on which we operate. Each one helps the other." (He was referring to the fact that some of the dancers who have done well, with the assistance of others in the company, had deprived backgrounds.)
He was grateful too, he said, especially in the company's first decade, for the questions and criticisms raised by members of the university - and he mentioned George Beckford and Kamau Brathwaite, specifically. "Some felt that despite what we said, we were still Eurocentric and not Caribbean enough. I remember giving a lecture demonstration and they questioned us. That was nice."
Nettleford went on to praise the vision of the younger choreographers who are now making their contribution to the company. He singled out for special praise the multi-talented Arlene Richards - dancer, designer and choreographer - who is a "total product" of the NDTC, is using the NDTC vocabulary but "making her own statement."
He said he was also proud of Barry Moncrieffe, who now teaches most of the classes. "He has developed an (excellent) teaching style. It is just wonderful. He'd gone to Vassar College for three years and this gave him a chance to develop on his own. I see him teaching things I didn't even remember (I'd taught), but Barry has brought them back, giving them his own stamp."
Nettleford spoke of the early contribution made by co-founder and co-director Eddy Thomas, whose workshop was, "informally, the school of the company. It fed the company.
"Later on, when Eddy left the group, we replaced it with classes which were run by Bert Rose, Barbara Requa and Sheila Barnett and we brought those three together and made it into the School of Dance."
"There are other stalwarts, like Marjorie Whylie, music director, and Maria La Yacona (company photographer), who has been with us over 30 years and have been critical. Her (La Yacona) photos were able to market the company and she never charged a penny."
Nettleford remarked that each decade has thrown up stellar dancers - "in the '60s Yvonne DaCosta, in the '70s Patsy Ricketts, in the '80s Melanie Graham, and in the '90s, Arlene.
"For the men, Bert Rose, Barry the long-distance runner Tony Wilson, Duran Hylton, the two Cubans (Arsenio Andrade-Calderon and Abeldo Gonzalez-Fonseca) who made a very good injection into the company, and Delroy Rose."
Q The spirituality, which you say has always been there, has blossomed in the last decade or so. Why?
Nettleford: I think it's a response to what is natural in this society. The best things about us are the spiritual things, the things that are not said. Despite the fact that we're killing each other and we can be wicked to each other and we bad-mouth each other, we're often mean spirited, there is that underlying, other dimension, which is powerful. In that realm we're able to say a lot of things which in the realistic mode we would not be able to say."
Q Now, 40 years later, have you fulfilled your objectives?
Nettleford: (Laughing) In the Arts, one never fulfills one's objectives. Life is such that sometimes the incremental changes create new challenges. I think what we've done is, we've built a strong enough platform from which we can leap.
"But even with the strongest platform, the planks get a little weak. So we've never stopped exploring or experimenting. Nor do we pretend we've created a technique. I think there's an NDTC system, an approach to technique, vocabulary and style and I think it's quite distinctive, but I do feel it is open ended enough for new experimentation."
Audiences can judge how experimental the new dances are in the current NDTC season of dance at the Little Theatre.
