A declaration of hope and celebration. National Dance Theatre Company dancers raise their hands as they rejoice in this file photo. - file

The National Dance Theatre Company's (NDTC) 2007 Easter Sunrise presentation better known as A Morning of Movement and Music will launch on Sunday, April 8, the year-long activities of the acclaimed Jamaican dance theatre ensemble.

The one-hour-thirty-minute "act of worship" through dance and music, is co-sponsored by the Little Theatre Movement and will begin at 6:00 a.m. promptly, which requires the expected capacity audience to be seated by 5:45 a.m.

The featured dance works are all noted for the spirituality which they depict and are a part of the extensive repertoire of the NDTC, which describes itself as being in a continuity-renewal mode. The new generation dancers represent a new breed of artistes who have been the products and beneficiaries of the work of the NDTC over the past four decades.

A masterwork

Choreographers for the event are Bert Rose (Steal Away), Barbara Requa (Sunday Morning), Clive Thompson (Of Prophecy and Song), Arsenio Andrade (Footprints) and artistic director Rex Nettleford who will present the sextet 'Motherless Child' from his last work 'Katrina' and the finale from 'The Crossing', a masterwork being remounted for the 45th Season of dance later this year and in tribute to the bicentenary celebration slave the abolition of the Trans-Atlantic trade.

The commemorative full-length works will also be presented - 'He Watcheth' by the late Milton Sterling and 'The Rope and the Cross' by Sheila Barnett, founding member of the NDTC and who along with Barbara Requa and Bert Rose gave life to the Jamaica School of Dance, now a division of the Edna Manly College of the Visual and Performing Arts.

Musical Director Marjorie Whylie is again in charge of the choral music, much of which she composed and/or arranged taking the Morning up to Noel Dexter's Psalm 150 all to be sung by the NDTC Singers, the choral wing of the Company assisted by the NDTC Orchestra comprising flautists, guitarists, painists and drummers.

The company of dancers, singers and musicians are supported by a crew of creative technicians comprising Tony Holness (sound director), Rufus McDonald (lighting director), Barbara Kaufman as wardrobe mistress, and Tony Locke, the stage manager.