Story and Photos

by Dexter Rose

Last Saturday evening saw the culmination of the KCCU National Dance Festival at a Peace Memorial Hall packed beyond normal capacity. The performing groups had all gained a place on the evening’s programme by virtue of having all won gold medals in the preliminaries. The prelims had been run over the two previous weekends where silver and bronze medals had been awarded to those other groups deemed by the judges to so deserve.{{more}}

The hosting of this festival must have stretched the human resources at the Ministry of Tourism and Culture and their hardworking staff must be commended for their efforts. Dance co-ordinator Anne Marie Venner looked understandably very stressed out at the finals and that must be. Besides the task of organizing the festival along with her colleagues, it just seemed as though the same persons had to be doubling up with too many tasks. She did a great job!

The Peace Mo has a limited capacity and more than double the amount of persons turned up, eager to support their favourite dance troupe. The result was that too many persons were allowed inside where they stood at the back of the hall but, commendably, maintained order.

Now, on to the dancers. First on was Ecole de Ballet, a group of primary schoolers whose choreography utilized elements of drama and very colourful and appropriate costuming to give a very professional appearance for their piece “Let there be”. The audience warmly received them.

They were followed by the Junior Dance Club, which featured even younger dancers nervously going through their paces with their dance “The Gathering.” But real excitement followed with the Stubbs Primary School doing the Rumba to much applause, as the very energetic dancers went through their paces.

Perhaps the most excitement came from the LaGracia Dance Company, which went on to cop the top prize for the event with their well co-ordinated piece “Loco, Loca” to the strains of Icon’s popular refrain “We don’t care.” The rest of the evening was filled with several pieces featuring the Punta dance, which our Ministry of Culture is making a concerted effort to have reintroduced to the country, which may have given birth to this Garifuna dance form.

There were performances from the Georgetown Primary, the Layou Government, the St. Mary’s R.C. and the Stubbs Primary all with versions of the Punta. A soloist from the Creation Culture Club performed a very moving piece called “Bad” which earned the dance a prize at the end, before an all male group called Dr. Luv Brave Hearts, braved the stage with one dancer descending from stirrups in the roof of the stage. They were well received but seemed put off by something, which the audience could not view but which was very audible even behind the closed curtains.

The Prizes awarded were: La Gracia, the Most Outstanding Creative, Folk and Popular Dances; Anthony Williams took the prizes for Most Outstanding Solo Popular Dance and Most Expressive Dancer. Patrice Bascombe, who did not dance at the finals was adjudged Most Versatile Dancer while Carrie DaSilva took the award of Most Promising Dancer.

In the Secondary Schools category the Georgetown Secondary won for Most Outstanding Traditional while the Georgetown Primary took the Most Outstanding Traditional prize. In the junior division Ecole de Ballet won the Most Outstanding Modern title while the Stubbs Primary School, which seemed to be in every category won prizes for Most Outstanding Social Dance, Most Outstanding Popular, Most Outstanding Creative Folk and Most Outstanding School. But Stubbs also saw one of its own Rosnel Snagg copping the Most Versatile Dancer Prize.

Rickeisha Marshall was adjudged Most Expressive Dance while Vinroy Bascombe from Georgetown was Most Promising Dancer.