Mutual Gallery, a small space on the edge of New Kingston, recently opened an exhibition of Jag Mehta's ceramics. Mehta, who is always attired in white, eschews the pottery wheel and makes his ceramics using the hand coiled method. The exhibition, titled Imperfect but Perfect, runs until November 19, 2011.
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Jamaica, Land We Love.

The video below for the Jamaican National Anthem is so beautiful, that even though it is dated, I wanted to share it with you. Yes, it is sentimental and designed to pull at the patriotic heart strings, but. But, it reminds me of everything I love about Jamaica, about the vision that we need to move towards. Watch it. It's really special.

Kudos to the production team.
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Cecil (Maurice Bryan), Rose (Rishille Bellamy),, Joseph (Shayne Powell) and Clarence (Andrew Lawrence) discuss love and life in Last Call.
Ever heard of Myrtle Bank Hotel? In the golden era of downtown Kingston, from the late 19th century to perhaps the mid 20th century, it was THE hotel. It was known for luxury and prestige. Lorna Goodison, well-known Jamaican poet, writes of how awed she was when as a youngster her older sister, Barbara Gloudon, then a cub reporter, took her to the hotel. In Keiran King's musical, Last Call, the oppulent hotel becomes the setting for a tale of love lost and rediscovered.

Written by Keiran King with direction from King and Mike Daley, the plot follows four high school friends who  reunite by design and coincidence at Myrtle Bank Hotel in 1949. The play features musical direction by Karen Armstrong and choreography by Paula Shaw. Perhaps one of the most interesting features of the play is the live band, including the obligatory ultra cool bass player,  which plays the accompaniment to the musical numbers sung by the talented cast. With respect to singing ability, Andrew Lawrence must be giving special mention as he is particularly talented.

This weekend (August 18 - 21) is the play's last. It will run from Thursday to Sunday at 8 pm, with matinees  at 5 pm on Saturday and Sundays, at the Phillip Sherlock Centre of the Creative Arts at the University of the West Indies, Mona. The play, with its heavy air of nostalgia, offers a means of looking back to a more golden era and a much more optimistic time in our history. Ir is well-worth attending.
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L-R: Rose (Rishille Bellamy),Cecil (Maurice Bryan), Daphne (Sakina Deer) & Joseph (Shayne Powell) in a group song.
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From L to R, Rose (Rishille Bellamy) and Daphne (Sakina Deer) catch up in Last Call.
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Sakina Deer plays Dphne, the sultry cabaret singer at Myrtle Bank Hotel.
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Dancer/writer Nicole Bain speaks with Oniel Pryce, Jamaican choreographer. (Dance photos courtesy of Danceworks, photographer: Albert Blackwood.)
Dancer, choreographer and Edna Manley College lecturer Oniel Pryce mounted two works in Danceworks’ 2011 season, ‘Transcendance’ Danceworks is the performing corps of the School of Dance, Edna Manley College. Cultural Jamaica sat down with him to discuss his work and his journey in the world of dance.


NB: First of all, thanks for agreeing to do this interview. I wanted to find out from you how you got started in dance. Can you tell me a little bit about your journey as a dancer?

OP: I became a dancer by accident really. It was just after high school (Wolmer’s High). I really wanted to be an accountant or a doctor, but towards the end of my final year in school I found myself becoming a little bit bored with regular academics and was searching for a different avenue to express myself, because at that time I was also very introverted, and I didn’t like to talk much. I wanted a different way to talk basically, so I started to search and the Edna Manley College School of Dance sparked my interest and I just decided to apply. Accidentally I got in...

NB (interrupts): Accidentally?

OP (laughing): Yeah, well I say that because I had absolutely no experience. So I applied and I came and was like, “I don’t know what I’m getting myself into!” But that was where the real dance journey started in terms of training.
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Choreographer, Oniel Pryce
NB: What was it like?

OP: Well, the first year was very rough because I was coming in as an inexperienced person and at that time they didn’t have a PQ (Preliminary Qualifying year), so I went straight into first year. And most of the people that I came in with had lots of experience! So it was very difficult for the first year and a lot of people were very negative about me being here and didn’t give me enough encouragement. So, after the first year I decided to prove to myself that I could do it, kind of take it as a challenge to myself. And I improved over the three years - I was doing a Diploma in Education at that time. In my final year, I think it was, I did a show with Neila Ebanks and two other persons. At the time we called ourselves "Four Poor Dancers", and our show was entitled Destination Self, and Professor Nettleford came to the show and asked who I was, and he invited me to work with the NDTC. Before that, I had done a stint with L’Acadco. So I went on to work with the NDTC around 2001, and around 2003 I became interested in doing an exchange programme at Brockport and I was shortlisted and got the opportunity to go and do it for a year and transfer my credits to complete a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dance.

NB: What made you choose the education track at EMC and how did that segue into a love of choreography?

OP: To be honest, I cannot recall exactly why I chose education, but in terms of the segue into choreography - again because I was introverted - I wanted a kind of expression that was not me. I wanted to put my ideas onto other bodies. I’ve always considered my dancers the canvas on which I am creating a kind of artwork. To be honest,  I do not know exactly when the actual choreographic spark started, I don’t know which piece it started with really, because I’m sure the first few pieces I did were absolute rubbish, but as Jerome Robbins says, in order to make one good piece of choreography you probably have to make 10 bad ones (laughs). It was trial and error in terms of figuring out what kind of process I wanted to engage in and what kind of work I wanted to make. And even now it’s still a difficult process for me because I’m constantly being asked what kind of choreographer I am. But I cannot define myself as a particular kind of choreographer. I prefer to be known as someone who choreographs, because if I say that I’m a certain kind of choreographer it’s as though I’ve set a limit on myself. I do however like to work with physical theatre, post-modern, experimental dance which I don’t think necessarily fits into a Contemporary box. I’m also interested in fusion and I think the kind of work that I make is also influenced by the space that I’m in.
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Dancer/writer Nicole Bain interviews Jamaican choreographer and dancer Stefanie Thomas.
Last week the National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica (NDTC), along with the general communities of dance and academia, paused to celebrate the life and legacy of Professor, the Honourable Ralston "Rex" Nettleford. One of the mantras for which the Professor was known was “Renewal and Continuity”, and one of the ideas he implemented in this vein was the Young Choreographers workshop/showcase.  Formed several years ago to give a voice to budding dance composers within the NDTC, the showcase is held once every two years in December and has become a well-supported undertaking - anticipated by patrons as much as the company’s regular season. Some of the pieces coming out of the workshops have gone on to be included in the company’s repertoire. The 2010 showcase featured choreography from company dancers Marlon Simms, Kerry-Ann Henry, Kevin Moore, Tovah-Marie Bembridge, Tamara Thomas, Natalie Chung, Terry Ann Dennison, Benton Morris and Stefanie Thomas. Cultural Jamaica Magazine sat down with Stefanie recently to reflect on her journey as a young dancer and choreographer.
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Dancer, choreographer Stefanie Thomas (photo contributed)
CULTURAL JAMAICA: How long have you been a dancer and how did you end up dancing with the NDTC?

STEFANIE THOMAS: I started ballet as a bee buzzing across Ward Theatre’s stage at 3 years old with Norma Spence at the Ballet Centre and continued ballet until my teenage years. I took my first modern class with Barry Moncrieffe as a teenager at the Jamaica School of Dance (Edna Manley). After taking a few years’ break from formal dancing I rediscovered a love for it with modern dance teacher Jane Schwartz at Colgate University, my alma mater. After graduation from Colgate and while pursuing further studies at the University of the West Indies, I started taking classes at the Edna Manley School of Dance, and in November of 2005 Arsenio Andrade invited me to take a class with the NDTC, whereafter Professor Nettleford encouraged me to continue taking classes with the company.
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Bob Marley is perhaps the most well-known Jamaican that there is and people come from all around the globe to visit his homes and his burial site in Jamaica. His music is legendary. Had he been alive, this year he would have celebrated his 66th birthday. As it was we celebrated it for him in his absence.

February 6 saw us in Trench Town listening to his sons Damian and Stephen Marley and a whole slew of acts from and around the community. Trench Town has a character all its own which I am just now uncovering. It is certainly worth a visit even if it is just to see where Bob spent many of his formative years and to check out the source of the inspiration of many of his songs. Some of his lines are so poignant they evoke tears, others just so descriptive that you get the clearest picture. I remember reading somewhere (it may have been in Kwame Dawes' Bob Marley: Lyrical Genius) that no less a person than Derek Walcott was envious that he was not the one to write the line "my feet is my only carriage" in No Woman, Nuh Cry. I have several favourite Bob Marley songs. When I was a child, not quite ten, I would sit and play my father's records and I loved Redemption Song. The music was hypnotic and although I may not have understood the full import of the words I new without a doubt they were important and meaningful. Today, many years later, my favourite line may be the one to the right from Babylon System. For me personally as I close out my 3os, rebelling is an important concept as it becomes an even more fearful thing. Also the notion of Jamaica as a rebellious country that somehow in 2011 is not rebelling enough is frustrating and scary. It makes me wonder if we are all waiting to see what will be the spark that will set everything ablaze in this Babylon Sytem.

In addition to being able to write lyrics like those in Babylon System which give you pause, Marley is also perhaps the most famous Rastafarian there is, notwithstanding his conversion to the Ethiopian Orthodox faith before he died (http://www.jamaicans.com/culture/rasta/interview_AbundaYesehaq.shtml). A great deal of his music was about the teachings of Rasta. His music in fact that went a long way towards spreading the message of Rastafarianism and in the long run, giving it a sort of cool, maybe even some respectability, that it lacked when the movement first surfaced in the 1930s.

Rastafarianism began in Jamaican in a time of great economic difficulties for many of the country's people. The religion of Rasta, although it has many African and Christian features, is a genuinely Jamaican product. Like Mr. Marley himself. He was born of a white man and a black woman at once reflecting the tensions in Jamaican society between the ruling class and the masses. He represents rural Jamaica as well as urban Jamaica. In his lifetime he was depressingly poor and relatively rich. Bob Marley may have had dreams of Africa but he was definitely one of ours.

To Bob: a complicated, brilliant Jamaican. Happy birthday!

Jamaica Cultural Enterprises provides cultural tours which include stops relating to Bob Marley and his music. For more information email info@jaculture.com
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Vybz Kartel (photo courtesy of FB page)
Adijah “Vybz Kartel” Palmer, one of Jamaica’s most popular dancehall artistes announced last year that he plans to launch a line of cake soap for the skin, apparently called Vybz Kartel Cake Soap. For those unfamiliar, cake soap is a solid, cheap, blue, almost brick looking detergent that is used by the majority of households in Jamaica, if not the Caribbean, to wash clothes by hand. So it is a little hilarious. Cake soap for the face? (A suitable North American parallel might be frothing your skin with All or Tide.) It seems like a gag product, the dancehall equivalent of fuzzy stuffed snakes springing out of the peanut brittle can.  You almost feel as though Kartel is at home sniggering to himself as the collective blood pressure of Jamaicans rises.
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Vybz Kartel (photo courtesy of FB page)
It is also a little sad. Why? Because on the surface at least it seems as if the French got it right: “plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose” (the more things change, the more they stay the same). Not only has Kartel launched his own cake soap, he has also admitted (sort of) to bleaching. Bleaching is the act of deliberately lightening skin. This seems to have come as a shock to many across the world, and his comparing his skin lightening to a white person darkening their skin by tanning has many aghast (see youtube video below - approx. minute 3). This admission of intentionally striving for a fairer complexion brought again to the forefront the whole issue of identity, race, and class in Jamaica, issues that have the power to get us hot under the collar. It may be difficult to comprehend the depth of feeling around the issues being ventilated so here is my attempt at breaking it down.
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Laura-Anne Fung (right) explaining her work.
Visual art is one form of creative expression that absolutely has the power to confound. Discussions regarding what is good, or how much art is really worth, can bounce back and forth without going anywhere. At a recent Laura-Anne Fung exhibition, which I attended with a tour group, the discussion turned on the question of value. Fung’s work, though not the most expensive, is definitely not the cheapest. Some thought it outrageous for her, at 18, to even contemplate charging as much as established artists who had been around for decades. The backdrop for our discussion was the recent launch of her exhibition at Grosvenor Galleries. The work on display was bold, exhibiting bright brush strokes; but perhaps equally impressive was the launch itself. The conservative gallery had been tricked out by the addition of a wine bar, a food station with aromatic scents, streams of white cloth accented by tiny disco lights, and a disc jockey. Pretty spectacular for a Jamaican art launch! The decor, the pricing, and the art itself all hinted at a personality worth learning more about. The portrait that emerged of Fung was quite intriguing.
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YardEdge's Karin Wilson-Edmonds recently went on a JCE tour. This is what she had to say.
This past Saturday, I ventured out with a group of art enthusiasts on the inaugural Kingston Art Trek- our mission, to visit a cross-section of Kingston’s galleries. The creation of Jamaica Cultural Enterprises (JCE), a new tour company specializing in cultural tours of Jamaica, the Kingston Art Trek is designed to expose participants to a wide range of local art and artists. It also turned out to be an education on the history and landmarks of Kingston, as well as a great opportunity to meet fellow art aficionados!

JCE’s Karen Hutchinson was an excellent tour guide, highly knowledgeable on local art and on Kingston’s history and highlights. She expertly guided us around the various galleries, while simultaneously trying to keep us on schedule- not an easy task with so much to see!

We visited a total of six galleries, three downtown and three uptown, including Emancipation Park in New Kingston, Revolution Gallery, the National Gallery of Jamaica, Studio 174, Roktowa Gallery, Heather Sutherland Wade’s gallery and Grosvenor Galleries. A comfortable bus kept us from worrying about traffic and parking and allowed us to focus on the sights and sounds around us.

We began the day at 10 am sharp with coffee at Emancipation Park, where we viewed Laura Facey-Cooper’s Redemption Song, which although we’re all quite used to now caused quite a stir when it was originally unveiled.

Read full article here.

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Writer/Dancer Nicole Bain

Nicole Bain gives us  her critique on the latest latest performance of the Stella Maris Dance Ensemble
Last weekend, the Stella Maris Dance Ensemble presented its 17th season of dance in dedication to the memory of former Artistic Director of the NDTC, the late Professor the Hon. Rex Nettleford. It featured two of his works and four others choreographed by Abeldo 'Tokie' Gonzales and Dr. Monika Lawrence, Artistic Director of Stella Maris; both were former dancers with the NDTC. The evening opened with “Dis Poem”, choreographed in 1989 by Nettleford and remounted by D’Roi Rose. In the first section the dancers, clad in light grey sweat suits with red, green and gold stripes emblazoned across their chests, moved militantly to the spoken word of Mutabaruka.

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They danced the frustrations of a race of people denied the right to exist freely, effectively brought across by Nettleford’s use of stark, clipped movement, and the dancers’ emotiveness. In the second section, soloist Gavin Hart gave a solid and committed performance. The piece ended with a hopeful final movement which was strong, jubilant and fluid, marred only by the occasional overdone facial expression from one or two of the performers.

Next up was the new work ‘Supernova’ by Abeldo ‘Tokie’ Gonzales. This was an ambitious number in concept but fell somewhat short in execution. The piece opened with an athletic solo, danced brilliantly by Kamar Tucker. However the strong build up was quickly followed by a visually overwhelming mass of dancers moving through the space and struggling to keep up with the pace of the choreography. When working with a large group, clean lines, synchronicity and attention to the nuances of the music are a must for effective communication, and unfortunately in this piece these elements needed refining. However there were some spectacular moments, such as the forming of a human trampoline which released Mr Tucker into the air like an exploding star - the supernova. Also interesting was the choreographer’s melding of gymnastics, contemporary movement and break dancing.
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Tribute to Cliff
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Black Current
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