A scene from Movements
THE MOVEMENTS Dance Company of Jamaica presented 'The Journey Continues ...', their 24th anniversary season of dance at the Little Theatre on Tom Redcam Avenue last weekend, with a gala performance on Thursday night.
The seven dances presented on Thursday night suggested interesting concepts in choreography but were essentially uninspiring.
Of the dances presented 'Amor en Tres Tiempos', choreographed by Arturo Castillo, 'Semicolon', choreographed by Patrick Johnson, and 'Baraka', choreographed by Monica Campbell, came closest to their intentions.
'Baraka', Thursday night's closing dance, is a work celebrating life and uses modern techniques with a hint of folk and gospel. It was mostly successful through the use of numerous roving spotlights and the fog machine which helped to fix the dance in an ethereal grace and greatly accented the dancers' white, feathery costumes. Additionally, the dancers have to be given kudos for not flinching when the sound system developed problems.
DANCERS WEAK
'Amor en Tres Tiempos' had the potential to be quite an exciting dance but suffered under Movements' weakest element - the dancers. The piece showed love from two different generations: the first taken in the middle of the last century and the second from the contemporary era. The first movement, therefore, detailed courtship in a more 'innocent' era, when the emphasis was on flirtation and dalliance. The second movement was far more fiery in comparison, and featured more daring moves for the second couple.
Alas, the dancing lacked that almost indescribable element that takes dance from being a craft to being an art. It is the element that shows the audience that dance is far more than the movement of the limbs, as the dancer moves with his or her entire being. Leesa Kow was one of the few dancers in the troupe who exhibited this element and it greatly helped in making 'Semicolon' a more enjoyable piece.
AMBITIOUS ATTEMPTS
Dancing aside, the choreography and what it attempted to translate was quite ambitious. Campbell's 'Desert Heart' and Michael Holgate's 'Doorways' were two of these pieces. 'Desert Heart' featured four movements representing different stages from groping desperation, to the finding of knowledge and finally fulfilment. Each of the first three movements featured a different male dancer, first Arturo Catillo, then Lazaro Caballero and finally Patrick Johnson, representing the persona's search for fulfilment.
'Doorways' was a take on the movement from this life to the next. Though interestingly conceived, its complete meaning was not adequately translated which could have resulted from inadequacies from both the dancers and the choreographers. Neila Ebanks' 'Cardo Valore' and Maz Luna III's 'Rendering' completed the night's offering.
The result was that the night featured dances which were concep-tually interesting but largely flawed and uninspiring in execution.
- Tanya Batson-Savage
