Avia Ustanny, Outlook Writer
DRESSED IN cool summer wear, the dancer and teacher, macaroni-slim, strides towards the sound of drumming in the auditorium where summer dance school is being held, pausing only momentarily to point at shrubbery with tiny blooms and commenting, "this is my garden."
Barbara Requa, matriarch of dance, and Dean of the School of Dance at the Edna Manley School of the Visual Arts is in her true domain.
At the school on Arthur Wint Drive in St. Andrew, she has been administrator and tutor of dance at the tertiary level for well over three decades.
Requa is also a founding member of the National Dance Theatre Company (NDTC), and according to NDTC director Professor Rex Nettleford, "has trained a whole generation of dancers".
The dean is also the first of three generations of dancers. Her daughter Danielle (now based in New York) was a promising dancer with the NDTC in the early '90s. Grand-daughter Khadija is now a young recruit into the same company.
For over 50 years, Barbara Requa has sculpted the skills of many who would go on to excel in dance.
Rex Nettleford, university vice- chancellor and head of the National Dance Theatre Movement states, "She is one of the true originals in the development of post- Independence Jamaican dance-theatre and dance education."
Requa's influence, he points out, has spread to the annual dance competitions in the festival movement (Jamaica Cultural Development Commission) through helping to prepare syllabi, training dance creators in the schools and adjudicating.
Growing up on Appleton Estate, St. Elizabeth where her father Henry Grant (of the Appleton Estate Special fame) was manager, Requa recalls of this time: "I always wanted to do dance."
Ballet was her first choice, but in the face of her parent's disapproval, she studied music, instead, for eight years.
While at boarding school - St. Andrew High School for girls in St. Andrew - she would teach other girls to dance, dabble in choreography and stage weekend concerts.
Later, after leaving high school, Barbara wasted no time in joining the Ivy Baxter School of Dance, the only professional institute then.
But, even then, she felt that she would make a career of teaching not dancing. In 1955, she went to England to study physical education. Dancing was a part of the curriculum and therefore as near to her dream as she could make it.
Coming back, she was employed by her alma mater -- St. Andrews -- as physical education teacher and dance instructor. She also became involved at Ivy Baxter's school as a dance instructor.
The period between 1958 and 1962 were watershed years for dancers. Barbara was soon involved in the pantomime whose artistic director was then Rex Nettleford.
The professor states, "Barbara was well placed to be a founding member of the NDTC in 1962, especially since she had been working with a small nucleus of dancers drawn from a number of dance studios in Kingston and had worked with others in LTM pantomimes between 1959 and 1962.
STELLAR STATUS
"She stood out as an elegant strikingly attractive performer and gained stellar status in her still memorable portrayal of 'The Other Woman' in 'Dialogue For Three' for which she won local and international acclaim.
"She is loyal, dedicated and consistent in her commitment to the dance as art and certainly as a route to cognition!" he applauds, adding, "She has a great sense of humour and quite unflappable. The flounce-less Barbara Grant (as she then was)."
Requa's partnership with Sheila Barnett and Bert Rose to start the Jamaica School of Dance later flowered into the creation of the School of Dance which later became a division of Edna Manley School of the Visual and Performing Arts where she (Requa) is dean of Performing Arts.
This month, Requa will say adieu to Edna Manley in her role as dean of the School of Dance. She will, however, continue to teach movement studies and dance composition.
The garden we pass on the grounds are her handiwork and so also is the summer school, one of many projects launched to get children and others introduced to the expressive art.
Requa, a Silver Musgrave awardee, is also writing a book, a guide for teachers of dance.
She counts her best memories as including meeting the Queen and the Duke of Edinborough, meeting Fidel Castro and a tour of Russia in the late 1980s that was a "fantastic experience." She is very proud of the programmes which have been introduced for the teaching of dance to children and states that she longs to see the day when dance stands in the curriculum on its own and not just as a sub-section of physical education.
TRANSFORMS LIVES
Dance says the mother of four girls and one boy, has the capacity to transform children's lives.
She counts as one of the milestones in her life the day when her grand-daughter Kadeesha became a member of the NDTC although her home is in Denmark.
Kadeesha, in turn is in awe of her grandmother. "She is full of integrity and very independent. She is a really good role model" this young woman told Outlook.
She is the kind of woman who she would want to become.
