Winston Sill/Freelance Photographer
Fashion designer Barry Moncrieffe (left) walks the runway with a model wearing one of his creations at Caribbean Fashionweek fashion shows, held at the National Indoor Sports Centre, Independence Park, Arthur Wint Drive, on Sunday, June 11, 2006.

The National Dance Theatre Company (NDTC), now in season at the Little Theatre, Tom Redcam Avenue, is devoting the August 21 performance to one of its most illustrious alumni, Barrington Moncrieffe. Since the very inception of the company in 1962, he has served the world renowned ensemble of dancers, singers, musicians and creative technicians with the dedication, loyalty, sustained application self-discipline and artistic integrity for which the company's members are well known.

As associate director to the company following his retirement from active performing some years ago, Moncrieffe, according to artistic director and founder Professor Rex Nettleford, brings to his duties the pedigree of having been a long-time front-line performer with the NDTC, eventually emerging into arguably one of the finest and most renowned of Jamaica's male dancers for some decades.

His development into a first-class teacher after graduating from the Jamaica School of Dance with honours has only strengthened the moral authority he brings to the NDTC's current renewal/continuity exercise. He coordinates the work of the dance captains, supervises the scheduling and conduct of rehearsals, assists the artistic director in the casting of revivals and acts as consultant to choreographers in the mounting of new works. Small wonder he is affectionately known to new-generation dancers as 'Uncle Barry'.

Teaching dance

Moncrieffe returned to the 35th Season in 1997 from his position at Vassar College, New York, where he had been teaching dance. He has developed in his teaching a vocabulary, style and technique based on the 'NDTC system' of training, to which he has contributed semi-annually as student and executant. A senior tutor at the Jamaica School of Dance, he is also tutor to the company at home and on tour. He returned to resume his role as the father figure in Nettleford's The Crossing, one of Moncrieffe's triumphs among other roles created for him by every major choreographer (resident and guest) working with the NDTC.

Early training

Himself a product of the NDTC system, he did early training in the Eddy Thomas Dance Workshop, in summer schools at the Mona campus of the University of the West Indies and later, on scholarship at the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance in New York. He appeared with the last statewide tour by the famous Anna Sokolow Company before finally returning to Jamaica. With colleague Bert Rose, he was chosen to be part of the Commonwealth Dance Company recruited by Bill Harpe to open the Roman Catholic Cathedral in Liverpool in 1967. He has toured extensively with the NDTC and served as 'the clay' on which many leading male roles were moulded for over three decades.

A Musgrave medallist, he made his debut in 2002 as a choreographer for NDTC with a work based on 'bruckins' party in collaboration with Joyce Campbell.

Apart from his new found passion as costume designer for the NDTC (Katrina, Character Sketches, Joyful Joyful, et al.) he is a highly acclaimed fashion designer through the lines he has recently introduced.