Stella Maris to premiere two works

When the 17th Annual Season of Dance of the Stella Maris Dance Ensemble opens officially at the Little Theatre next Friday, October 8, the ensemble will debut two new works.

One is an impressive piece called The Potter - choreographed by artistic director Dr MoniKa Lawrence and ballet mistress Patsy Ricketts in honour of the late Professor The Honourable Rex Nettleford.

According to Dr Lawrence, The Potter - a piece commissioned by Jamaica National Building Society (JNBS) - will pay well-deserved tribute to the memory of an artiste who constantly demonstrated "his genius in manipulating movement". Principal dancer Gavin Hart will be the soloist in the piece.

Dr Lawrence also said that the season will be dedicated to the outstanding dance pioneer and founder of the National Dance Theatre Company (NDTC).

This means that Stella Maris Dance Ensemble will be performing not only The Potter but also two of Nettleford's seminal works, Tribute to Cliff and Dis Poem.

"Nettleford entrusted those two works to the ensemble while he was alive and we are very proud of the fact that our ensemble is the only company, apart from the NDTC, to which he gave his works for performance purposes. We believe he felt that our ensemble would do them justice and we will, therefore, honour him by pulling out all the stops in our performance of the pieces," said Lawrence.

Audiences will be in for an additional treat as Abeldo 'Tokie' Gonzales, the outstanding Cuban dancer who Nettleford recruited into the NDTC many years ago, will be returning to the stage for the first time in seven years to dance a duet with Stella Maris Dance Ensemble principal dancer Monique Spence.

The duo will be performing the Many Rivers to Cross segment of Tribute to Cliff - a duet which has been performed in the past by outstanding NDTC leads such as Barry Moncrieffe, Patsy Ricketts and Melanie Graham.

Special tribute

"Tokie's return to the stage for this performance promises to make Stella Maris Dance Ensemble's first staging of the full Tribute to Cliff even more special; his exceptional talent has been missed from the performance arena, even though he has continued to bless us with his talent as a choreographer," explained Dr Lawrence.

In fact, Tokie is the architect of Stella Maris' second premiere.

His offering on this occasion will be Supernova.

The repertoire for the ensemble's 2010 season will be completed by two additional JNBS-sponsored works: The Staff and the Cross, which had its premiere in 2009, and Liza - the Ensemble's rib-tickling, seminal work, which has often been compared favourably to Alvin Haley's Revelations and Nettleford's Kumina.

The season actually begins on Thursday, October 7, when the ensemble will mount a special performance for children from children's homes and places of safety across the island.

Reggae Jammin', a Jamaica Broilers Group brand, will provide refreshment for the children.

Friday's performance will be used as a benefit for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Kingston, while the remaining two shows will raise funds for the building of a studio home for the ensemble.

That studio,which will be erected on the premises of the Stella Maris Prep School, will also be used by young dance aspirants from the prep school, and will serve as a community outreach facility through which Stella Maris will offer fitness and other programmes.