Orville Hall goes through one of his pieces at Embryo held at the Louise Bennett Garden Theatre on Friday
Embryo: The New Breed, produced by Dance Theatre Xpressionz (DTXZ) on Friday evening at the Louise Bennett Garden Theatre, Hope Road, may have been more aptly named than intended. While the evening suggested that the troupe is promising, like an embryo it was also a barely formed thing.
Embryo is the troupe's first step out onto theatrical boards with their own production. It featured dances and speech items from Dance Theatre Expressions and guest performers, but the performances from DTXZ highlights that they are in a barely formed state, and thus need to work toward crafting their identity, especially as it pertained to their dances.
Left: One of the pieces presented at Embryo concert held at the Louise Bennett Garden Theatre on Friday. - photos by Colin Hamilton/Freelance Photographer
UNIMAGINATIVE PIECES
The DTXZ performers delivered some solo pieces and a few group pieces, but their dances were generally unimaginative and devoid of exciting choreography or execution. The piece Evolution a look at Jamaican popular dance and music was a half-hearted attempt that was hampered by a hackneyed narrative that wallowed in stereotype. The pieces Salsa Night and Big Spender were at best mildly entertaining. The sole exception came from the Patsy Ricketts choreographed Robotics, performed by Orville Hall.
Of course, the title Dance Theatre hints at the group's skills in other areas and as such the night also featured the hilarious skit, written and directed by Orville Hall, Dancehall Romance. The skit was premiered a few years ago and since then has featured better stagings than Friday night's which remained a hilarious bit of silliness, but the execution had watered down some of its effectiveness, and it also now included a painfully obvious plug for the evening's sponsor.
Hall's delivery of the comedic monologue, Trini-Jam which features various stand-up jokes spliced together to create a discussion on Caribbean diversity was another good touch to the night. The dub poem Black Chant, however was riddled with clichés while Untalented performed by Shereen Davis was lost in translation.
Nonetheless, Embryo was an entertaining show, but most of the interesting pieces came from the guest performances. As such, the first taste of exciting dance came with Robotics and then escalated with Shady Squad's guest performance. The group, which had placed second in the Mi Phone Dancing Dynamites competition produced an exciting sample of popular dance, mixing tight, exciting choreography with a flair for dramatics and humour.
A TOUCH OF A BELLY DANCING
The evening also featured a performance by Vibes Ihatas (a solo dance) who had been the winners of the Mi Phone competition. The dance included a touch of a belly dancing shimmy that is taking over female popular dance, (popularised by Shakira).
The dub poetry group, Nomaddz also added their work to the evening with Walk Away, a story put to music and rhyme of a young man's thwarted encounter with the girl of his dreams. This was followed by the titillating Porn Star which lathers recrimination on the infamous King tapes and those who were featured on them.
