Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts at Brooklyn College continues its 2011-2012 World Stages series with the much-anticipated return of the National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica(NDTC). The company will perform two programs of dance and music celebrating West Indian culture and the 50th Anniversary of the company on Saturday, March 24 at 8pm and Sunday, March 25 at 3pm.
A biennial visitor to Brooklyn Center for more than two decades, NDTC celebrates its Golden Anniversary with two special programs featuring repertoire highlighting the company's 50 year history. The repertoire for the company's 2012 Brooklyn appearance includes:
Drumscore (1979), choreography by Rex Nettleford, featuring the NDTC singers
... minutes and seconds (2010), choreography by Kerry-Ann Henry and Momo Sanno
Cry of the Spirit (1996), choreography by Gene Carson
Sweet in the Morning (1992), choreography by Leni Wylliams
Urban Fissure (2004), choreography by Chris Walker
Sulkari (1980), choreography by Eduardo Rivero-Walker
Gerrehbenta (1983), choreography by Rex Nettleford, featuring the NDTC singers
Kumina (1971), choreography by Rex Nettleford, featuring the NDTC singers
About National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica (NDTC)
With the blessing of the Ministry of Development and Welfare, co-founders Rex Nettleford and Eddy Thomas formed the National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica in 1962 at the time of Jamaica's Independence from Great Britain. Their search for a definitive Caribbean dance theatre linked a varied and versatile group together to make this goal a reality. The original 18 members represented a diverse mixture of artists with differing backgrounds in dance training and. This emerging corps, along with Dr. Nettleford and Mr. Thomas, worked together for three years, from 1959-1962, to form NDTC. The company has survived on a vision of dancing on its own feet, capturing the rhythms, body language and aesthetics of a people who have lived for over three centuries under British rule and a total of 400 years under slavery and the plantation system. Its dancers, choreographers, musicians and designers have continuously striven to communicate these experiences and are dedicated to the creation of works rooted in the Jamaican and Caribbean cultural experience. NDTC has gained an international reputation, garnering both critical and popular acclaim throughout the world. To date, NDTC has completed more than 100 tours to North America, Europe, the former USSR, Australia, the United Kingdom, Latin America and Puerto Rico.
Barry Moncrieffe (Artistic Director) Former Associate Director and long-standing lead dancer with the NDTC, Mr. Moncrieffe has served as "the clay" on which many leading male roles in NDTC's repertoire were molded for some three decades. Mr. Moncrieffe did early training in 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. The company's principal dance tutor and a senior lecturer in dance at Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts, he has also taught and performed in the Caribbean, Germany, England, China, Finland and at Vassar College in the United States. He appeared with the last States-wide tour by the famous Anna Sokolow before finally returning to his native Jamaica and NDTC. A Musgrave Medalist, he made his debut as a choreographer for NDTC in 2002 with a dance-work based on Bruckins Party in collaboration with NDTC founding member Joyce Campbell. Mr. Moncrieffe is also a well-known fashion designer, designing costumes for major NDTC dance-works such as Incantation, Katrina and Apocalypse.
Marjorie Whylie (Musical Director) Leader of the NDTC Singers, composer, arranger, cultural consultant, music educator, musicologist, and jazz expert has been all these things inside and outside of Jamaica to her credit and greatly advanced reputation. Former Senior Lecturer and Head of Department of the Music Unit at The University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, many times honored, nationally and in the profession of music, she continues to explore and experiment with the rich reservoir of Jamaican traditional and contemporary musical forms and rhythms which she has collected, researched and documented for over forty years.
