Little exposure, in-breeding take toll on National Dance Company

By Raschid Osman
Guyana Chronicle
October 24, 1999


LIKE any craft, whether it be writing or carpentry, the dance has to be learned and developed. The fuller these steps are employed, the more distinctive and glowing the dancers become.

This Cinderella of the arts is about the most stylised there is, and so it lends itself to a rich gamut of experimentation and innovativeness, in a growing number of genres, so much so that companies have the capacity to present seasons as fresh as next year's.

Our National Dance Company presented `Lotus' at the National Cultural Centre earlier this month, evoking a bitter-sweet nostalgia for the organisation as it used to be, for a technical splendour which is now just a bit dulled, and for a dance theatre component which is all but gone from the company's repertoire.

Of course we understand the reasons for all this. And bearing all the constraints in mind, we must applaud artistic director and choreographer, Vivienne Daniel, and the company for their valiant efforts at keeping the organisation alive and for staging the charming and unpretentious `Lotus'.

Homage to the Lotus Flower, choreographed by the late Philip McClintock, costumed in cool, pastel shades, graceful and buoyant, and full of promise of things to come, constituted the curtain-raiser at the performance. However, its promises were not realised.

The language of the National Dance Company is not as varied and as elegant as it used to be. With choreography by merely two persons, Daniel and Linda Griffith (not to mention the McClintock opener) the company's articulation is cloying and circumscribed. After a while, there is little left to say, and the show becomes bogged down in banalities.

The biggest problem here is insufficient exposure of those responsible for the artistic development of the company, and the inability of the authorities to attract famous choreographers in all the forms of dance for attachments with the company.

Many years ago, there were artistic directors from Haiti and Cuba, ethic and modern and classic exponents, who assisted in fashioning the company into one of which we were quite proud. There was also an Indian component, compliments of the Indian Cultural Centre here, which added a unique flavour to the Guyana company. No other regional dance company boasted performers in Indian dance.

But all this is no more.

An incestuous in-breeding has taken its toll on our National Dance Company.

A few of the dancers exhibit some potential. But this has to be harnessed and developed and explored beyond the boundaries inside of which the company's directors operate.

In Lotus, an attempt at classical dance in a jump suit was pathetic. Costumes were inadequate, particularly in the Diwali dance which demanded full shalwars and orhnis and jingling bracelets and bells on the feet ringing in true kathak style.

The Diwali dance also told us that the company had lost the Indian techniques which were so carefully instilled in its lines years ago. The Diwali celebrants employed in their performance just token elements of the elaborate Indian techniques, techniques in which the mere curve of a finger and the lift of an eye-brow are fraught with meaning.

What is still pretty strong in the company is the Afro element and with this the costumes assumed some degree of adequacy, and the dancers contracted and expanded with the necessary vigour and elan to galvanise their audience into rounds of appreciative applause.

All in all, our company deserves much more than it is being allowed. The company today is a mere shadow of what it used to be. There is the threat of becoming fossilised staring it in the face.

If our dance company is to be our ambassadors of dance at Carifesta in St. Kitts next year, performing alongside the National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica and other top-flight groups, we must start to work now on putting back the shine on what used to be a competent company.


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