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Marlon Simms in 'The Beloved' at Southern Methodist University in the United States.Barbara Ellington, Senior Gleaner Writer
FIVE MALE dancers with the National Dance Theatre Company (NDTC) have taken time out from performing without missing a season to obtain degrees in the fine arts.
Four first pursued the diploma in dance at the School of Dance, Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts (EMCVPA), on NDTC scholarships. Then they articulated into the State University of New York (SUNY) at Brockport which has for some years been receiving School of Dance graduates for the Bachelor and Master of Fine Arts degree programmes.
In addition, a scholarship from Southern Methodist University to NDTC frontline dancer Marlon Simms earned the Master of Fine Arts last month from that university in addition to a diploma in labanotation from Dance Notation Bureau in New York.
DANCE DOCUMENTATION
This is a welcomed skill that will help in the documentation of dance-works by the NDTC and others, as well as in training interested persons in mastering this time-tested form of dance documentation.
Mr. Simms told The Sunday Gleaner that he is currently directing a work first done by African American choreographer Lenny Williams in 1992.
"The dance is titled Sweet in the Morning and I am reconstructing Mr. Williams' piece that was based on his experience with two of his former choreographers. The dance will be a solo piece with a man on a bench," said an obviously excited Mr. Simms.
He has also obtained the rights to teach and perform the dance.
Mr. Simms attracted the attention of Southern Methodist when he performed the American classic The Beloved two NDTC seasons ago. He was to repeat this performance while at Southern Methodist. The dance was mounted on the NDTC dancers by a dance professor from Southern Methodist in 2003.
Since his return home, Mr. Simms, who is on leave from Meadowbrook High School where he teaches, has been choreographing with NDTC and coordinating the four-week summer adult dance workshop as well as doing the background course work for the programme.
He is happy to be home, having turned down lucrative offers to return and serve his country that enabled him to pursue studies abroad.
TEACHING COURSES
Oneil Pryce earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from SUNY (at Brockport) and has since returned to teach at the School of Dance as well as to choreograph for the NDTC.
He told The Sunday Gleaner that he considers himself first and foremost a choreographer, then a teacher and dancer/performer: "I love choreography, I am passionate about it."
Since graduating, Mr. Pryce has has been teaching the courses - dance history one and two, as well as Jamaican and Caribbean folk dances - at the School of Dance, and is also currently choreographing Certain Todays/Unborn Tomorrows for the upcoming season.
"I have also performed for the last Easter morning show and Dancefest. I love my work, it's hard to make a living from dance in Jamaica because it does not get the respect that other traditional careers get, but one can survive if one creates one's own opportunities," he said.
Mr. Pryce is hoping to win a scholarship to pursue an MFA in choreography.
Patrick Earl, who also gained the BFA from SUNY, is back teaching at St. Catherine High School and continues to perform with the NDTC.
Dancer Kevin Moore, an apprentice choreographer, is the most recent to obtain his BFA, also from SUNY, on the occasion when artistic director Professor Rex Nettleford received an Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from that same institution.
Mr. Moore studied on an NDTC scholarship at the EMCVPA before articulating into the programme at SUNY. A talented dancer, he has also choreographed for the NDTC.
Christopher Walker, a talented choreographer and front-line dancer with NDTC, recently earned his MFA from SUNY.
His thesis dealt with 'Jamaica Dance Theatre - Folk Origins and Contemporary Aesthetics'.
Along with Marlon Simms, he is assisting with coordinating the School of Dance summer school adult programme. Apart from staging the last LMT pantomime he assisted Barry Moncrieffe, NDTC associate director, in remounting the 1968 dance drama The King Must Die in tribute to the bicentenary celebrations of the Haitian Revolution.
All of these fine arts graduates in dance are choreographing for the NDTC's upcoming Season of Dance (its 43rd), beginning at the end of July.
Marlon Simm's Homeland will join Christopher Walker's Urban Fissure and Onion Price's Certain Todays/Unborn Tomorrows to bring even greater variety to the already diverse and wide-ranging repertoire of the NDTC.
