Scenes from the National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica's 45th anniversary season of dance, held at Little Theatre, Tom Redcam Avenue, on Saturday, July 21. Dance: 'The Crossing'.

THE CURTAIN at the Little Theatre, Tom Redcam Avenue, closed on the 45th anniversaryseason of the National Dance Theatre Company (NDTC) on Sunday last in front of a capacity audience that sent the dancers, singers and musicians off with uproarious applause.

The last dance on the programme was the ancestral 'Gerrehbenta', utilising the NDTC Singers as choral orchestra and the company's expert drummers on the drums, kerosene tins and the benta accompanying the talented new generation of dancers led by Kerry-Ann Henry and Alicia Glasgow with Patrick Earle under the bodymask of a horsehead skilfully manipulating the mask as centrepiece.

Before that, enthusiastic applause went to Arsenio and Carol Andrade in the love duet 'Footprints' and the remounted 'Sulkari' by the famous Cuban choreographer Eduardo Rivero who travelled to Jamaica to prepare a new cast comprising Kevin Moore, Allatunje Connel with Marlon Simms, Shakee Dobson, Candice Morris, Melissa Llewellyn and Marissa Benain for the Caribbean dance classic.

New meaning

Gerrehbenta'. - Photos by Winston Sill/Freelance Photographer

Thunderous applause was reserved for artistic director Rex Nettleford's masterwork 'The Crossing', depicting the journey across the Middle Passage and the creolisation of slaves and their offspring in the Americas.

With the entire season dedicated to the bicentenary observance of the abolition of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, the work seemed to take on new meaning with the interpretation by the company of new generation dancers led by Marlon Simms, Kerry-Ann Henry, Shelley Ann Maxwell along with featured character dancers Arsenio Andrade, Patrick Earle and Alicia Glasgow. Before that came the quiet work of Bert Rose entitled 'Steal Away' done to the black spiritual by the same name.

The NDTC Singers in excellent voice rendered Marjorie Whylie's arrangements of Caribbean songs featuring the lyric tenor Carl Bliss and soprano soloist Carole Reid as well as Earl Brown in the Guyanese folk-classic'Sancho'.

They had accompanied, to open the programme, Christopher Walker's "energetic and dynamic Hill and Gully", which drew wild applause second only to Marlon Simms' moving and impressive solo-work in Leni Williams's 'Sweet In the Morning' reconfigured by labanotation by Mr. Simms himself some two years ago.

The evening brought the watershed 45th season to a close after the enthusiastic reception the NDTC had earlier received for such other works as Clive Thompson's spectacular 'Earth Birth', Arsenio Andrade's delicate and elegant 'Out of Many'. Jean-Guy Saintus' Haitian ritual-based 'Rhythme des Dieux' and Nettleford's Caribbean essays 'Celebrations' and 'Ritual of the Sunrise'.

The dance works attracted sponsorship from the local corporate structure Digicel, Jamaica Producers, Guardsman Ltd., Carreras and Jamaica National Building Society. All plan to co-sponsor appearances in the United Kingdom later in the year.