Good start to a promising NDTC season

Michael Reckord, Gleaner writer

It's Friday night at the Little Theatre. The audience's pre-show chatter vibrates with excitement.

The house lights dim and the chatter subsides. Over the speakers comes a familiar, carefully modulated voice: "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the 49th season of the National Dance Theatre Company."

Marjorie Whylie, the NDTC's musical director and the leader of the NDTC Singers, has been making similar announcements for decades, but the one last Friday, on the opening night of the current season, was only the second with Barry Moncrieffe as the company's artistic director.

Naturally, for the mantle of the former artistic director, the late Rex Nettleford, is a weighty one to wear, many have been wondering how Moncrieffe has been coping. Are the high standards of the internationally acclaimed company being kept?

In his message in the printed programme, Moncrieffe admits that "2011 has so far been challenging". But the information in the programme indicates that the challenges have been met, and even overcome.

We read that already for the year, there has been "a successful first-time tour to Suriname and two other overseas engagements to Florida and New York," and that "Through a generous grant from the Digicel Foundation, the NDTC offices have been refurbished and equipped with technological and other tools to allow for effective administration, documentation, and archiving" of the 49-year-old company's "rich history and legacy".

By the end of last Friday night's performance, the audience would have been assured that the presentations - in both dance and song - supported the optimism of the printed programme. Fed by, in Moncrieffe's words, a "new generation of choreographers" (and he might have added "a new batch of Singers"), the NDTC undoubtedly continues to flourish.

Nevertheless, it was two Nettleford dances that opened and closed Friday's show. They were, respectively, Drumscore (1979) and Gerrehbenta (1983).

In both, the accompanying sound - mostly, but not exclusively, music - is as important as the dance itself. Drumscore's thesis statement is a Ghanaian proverb: "When God created the earth, He first created the drummer." (The suggestion here is that sound is of primary importance - a scenario comparable to the Old Testament's creation myth that has God speaking before the creation of the earth, as well as light, etcetera.)

Friday's second item was, minutes and seconds, choreographed last year by Kerry-Ann Henry and Momo Sanno. Based on a statement by well known televangelist Joyce Meyer that "Life is sometimes very complicated - Let's purposely learn to enjoy the simple yet powerful things God has created," the dance tells a love story to music by Portishead.

Graceful movement

As a love song played on Friday, the dancers, Kerry-Ann Henry (in a short, yellow dress) and Marlon Simms (in a cream shirt and brown pants), moved languorously around the stage. Most of the time, they were touching - lifting, hugging, caressing, pulling away and returning close. The movement was always graceful; many of the lifts were unusual and evoked applause.

The dance is one of five new works in the NDTC's 2011 repertoire. A total of 13 dances are slated to be presented during the month-long season ending August 21.

The NDTC Singers, grown to 14-strong this year, were the third item for the night. Attractively dressed - the women in bandana tops and layered skirts, the men in brown shirts and darks pants - they sang three lively narrative songs and illustrated the action with appropriate movements. The songs, by Slim and Sam, two popular mid-20th Century minstrels, were Jump and Jive, Run Isaac, and Propoganda.

After a jazzy musical interlude by the NDTC orchestra, the pre-intermission dance, Oneil Pryce's Barre Talk, was staged. A very imaginatively choreographed work, it features practically all the movements a really athletic dancer can do beside, under and on top of a dance room barre.

The movements in the first third of the dance are disconnected, and arguably more free-form gymnastics than true dance. However, pattern, order and ensemble movements are imposed on the rest of the work, and on Friday it proved to be very popular with the audience. The applause was enthusiastic.

Another new dance, The Thin Line, choreographed by Natalie Chung, kicked off the second half. Having the tone and mood of a soap opera, the dance tells the sad story of a loving couple who yield to temptation and have several affairs outside the relationship. Many people are shown to be hurt when the couple attempt to get back together, and perhaps because of the pressure of the many affairs the couple find their love cannot be rekindled. They eventually exit at opposite sides of the stage.

The expressive dancers, evocatively costumed by Chung, easily portrayed the familiar characters created for them. There was strong applause at the end from, presumably, fans of The Young and The Restless.

Gene Carson's Cry of the Spirit was the penultimate dance. A emotion-filled solo, the work was gracefully executed to a lush arrangement of Amazing Grace, sung by a passionate Sandi Patti.

Gerrehbenta is probably the dance most often chosen to end NDTC presentations. Fans of the NDTC know why: it is identifiably Jamaican (thanks, in part, to the music and the Jonkunnu and other folk costumes), it is accompanied by catchy folk songs by the NDTC Singers, it gives a peek into folk lore, it is well choreographed and is always well danced.