The National Dance Company (NDC) last week staged ‘A Celebration of African Heritage,’ as one of its six regular annual programmes on specified themes at different times of the year. This was a commemoration of the anniversary of Emancipation, and is no doubt very relevant to our discussion of African dance a fortnight ago.
The question of what is African dance will find further elucidation in an analysis of some of what the NDC offered in its suite of dances. The choreographies took the audience along a continuum of African dance in terms of themes, subjects and forms in modern dance, moving through items influenced by religion and traditions as well as traditional dance itself. These were approached in themes of slavery and in sections on ‘Identity,’ ‘Spirituality’ and ‘Glimpses of Traditions and Culture.’
For the most part they represented the outcome of research into African dance including surviving traditions in the Caribbean and tributes to others working in related areas of both African influenced and derived dance and music. Performances were done by the Company along with its associates, junior dancers of the NDC and students. The production included treatments of slavery such as “The Journey, “Memoirs” and others about an African identity
