By Michael Reckord, Contributor
The Xaymaca dance troupe during their annual season at the Little Theatre recently. - Winston Sill/Freelance Photographer
DANCE THEATRE Xaymaca's 2002 season at the Little Theatre earlier this month was pleasing. It comprised seven dances and though none achieved greatness and bear in mind one dance critic's statement that a ballet has to be great before it is any good most had some memorable aspect.
Guest choreographer Tony Wilson's Night Dancers started the evening off in great style. To the bouncy jazz of Miles Davis, the nine young women in the piece moved perkily around the stage performing complex ensemble moves in, for the most part, unison.
Their maroon costumes ( also by Wilson) were as attractive as the floor patterns and upper body moves. With a strong sense of the dramatic, the choreographer had them gather upstage and move as one to pose in the centre as the lights faded to black.
The delightful flash and style of that dance would not be picked up again till some dances later. Artistic Director Barbara McDaniel's Glorious Days, which followed, was quite sentimental, with emotion overpowering the choreography. The latter featured Jeunette Small in a solo to Amazing Grace and Joy to My Soul. The company supported her in the last minute or so by portraying revved-up worshipers at a church service.
Rotation (Arsenio Rafael Andrade), the third dance, featured girls dressed austerely in black bra tops and black shorts - exercise wear it seemed. This impression was heightened by the mechanical, passionless, moves which made up the work.
Gymnastically, it was exciting: for example, the grand jetes across the stage thrilled the audience, who expressed their enjoyment with strong applause. However, generally, the dance operated only at a surface level.
The succeeding dance was the opposite. Self, which closed the first half of the programme, was multi-storied in more ways than one.
In this work, the lights go up on what could well be the set of a play; it is a decor by McDaniel, the chief choreographer. In one room, a dancer/character sniffs coke and shoots heroin; another area suggests a prison, and we see a young woman behind bars; in a third area, a girl is at a piano, on the stool.
To music by a host of artistes including Capleton, Beenie Man, Elephant Man and Sean Paul - and to a poem by Connie Bell, the dancers take us through three major movements. They show us a woman's complex existence, at work, with family, at play, et cetera.
Her life is not easy, but, the dance seems to suggest, it can be joy-filled. This message comes across most clearly in the final movement, choreographed by Natalie James, a dance hall session.
The movements were impressive. They indicated that now after about a decade dancehall possesses a sufficiently large vocabulary to merit a full length ballet or musical. The form is so dynamic, it should go down well internationally.
Kirk Rowe's Social Antipathy, the first dance after the intermission, is an impressionistic portrayal of America's September 11th tragedy. In this experimental creation, words play a role: an unseen Voice starts chanting the well known bible passage, To everything there is a season... Part-way through the dance, the performers start spouting poetry as well as expressions of grief.
The dance contains 'snapshots' of the people, dead and alive, at the scene of the terrorist attack. As this gymnastic-filled dance ends, a light bulb on a cord is lowered to a few feet above the stage. A dancer pulls the string and the stage goes black.
A short, sexy duet, Chemistry U & Me (Sabdiel Hardware), performed by Najah Peterkin and Kevin Moore, followed. Both dancers were graceful and well controlled. Their unusual rocking and rolling embrace, with Kevin seated on the floor with Najah in his lap, earned them mid-dance applause.
Illustrating the Africa/Jamaica connection through Arlene Richards' costumes and varied dance movements, the celebratory Motherland (McDaniel) sent the audience home happy.
