Essi­ba Small

Nan­cy Her­rera loves to talk about dance. She would tell you that she in­sist­ed her mom take her to learn bal­let when she was five years old. She grew up as the on­ly girl in a house­hold with three broth­ers and dance was the one un-boy­ish thing she could get in­volved in. She'd al­so tell you about go­ing off to Lon­don Col­lege of Dance and Dra­ma and Bed­ford Col­lege at 19 and re­turn­ing to the teach the Meta­mor­pho­sis dance com­pa­ny, the dance school of Caribbean School of Danc­ing of which she was once a dancer. But what Her­rera doesn't like to talk much about is the state of dance in this coun­try.

"Don't raise my blood pres­sure," she said half jok­ing­ly. "Let's keep thing pos­i­tive." She bor­rows a quote from 3 Canal's Trod­ding On, a song which pays trib­ute to the spir­it of Beryl Mc Burnie and ex­plores the themes of artis­tic sur­vival, per­sis­ten­cy, con­sis­ten­cy, and pro­duc­ing dance against the odds, as a way to ad­dress the is­sue. "Some­times you just have to keep work­ing and keep go­ing and for­get what else is hap­pen­ing and that is ap­par­ent in so­ci­ety."

Dance, long treat­ed like a stepchild lo­cal­ly, in com­par­i­son oth­er art­forms, has seen the ex­o­dus of some of its best ac­cord­ing to Her­rera. "As soon as a dancer gets very good, they go and live away and they don't come back. That's the sad re­al­i­ty. "If you want to make it in fine art and the­atre you have to go out there. Some stay." Among those who have left are Zara Bar­tels, who now per­forms with the Li­on King cast in Eng­land; Fana Fras­er, who is now a mem­ber of the Alvin Ai­ley Dance Com­pa­ny in the USA and Brid­gette Wil­son, who start­ed her life in dance the­atre as a Meta­mor­pho­sis dancer. Wil­son went on to study chore­og­ra­phy in Cana­da and has now re­turned as the re­hearsal di­rec­tor and one of the chore­o­g­ra­phers at the Com­pa­ny.

Over the years, dance at Meta­mor­pho­sis has been kept alive by rig­or­ous fund-rais­ing, com­mit­ment of teach­ers and par­ents, and kind cor­po­rate sup­port that have al­lowed the Com­pa­ny's dancers to tour in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, per­form for dig­ni­taries, en­ter pres­ti­gious schools for the per­form­ing arts, dance in ma­jor the­atre pro­duc­tions in Eu­rope and pro­duce an an­nu­al dance sea­son. Her­rera could have eas­i­ly been one of them-choos­ing to stay in Lon­don af­ter grad­u­at­ing from the Lon­don Col­lege of Dance and Dra­ma. She chose to re­turn home for love of coun­try and the de­vel­op­ment of dance lo­cal­ly and large­ly be­cause she teach­es dance rather than do it for a liv­ing. "If I was a pro­fes­sion­al dancer I would have al­so stayed abroad be­cause re­turn­ing home would have meant I have noth­ing to come back to in terms of reg­u­lar per­for­mances. "As a teacher at least there are danc­ing schools that I can teach at."

Her­rera, for whom life is lit­er­al­ly a dance ("I eat, wake up to dance every­day. It is my full time job") is at least en­cour­aged by the younger gen­er­a­tion of dancers. Meta­mor­pho­sis is known to have nur­tured young dancers and has re­cent­ly es­tab­lished an an­nu­al schol­ar­ship de­vel­op­ment fund in ho­n­our of the late Kath­leen Arm­strong Kil­go­ur, moth­er of pro­fes­sor, au­thor, ac­tor and dancer Dr Joanne Kil­go­ur-Dowdy, to en­cour­age even more. This year the re­cip­i­ent was Juan Pablo Al­ba-Den­nis who is al­so fea­tured both as a dancer in the up­com­ing Meta­mor­pho­sis an­nu­al sea­son ti­tled Trod­ding On. Chore­o­g­ra­phers work­ing on the pro­duc­tion in­clude Her­rera, who will present the piece Chrysalis-a clas­si­cal bal­let done to tra­di­tion­al drum­ming, Brid­gette Wil­son, Son­ja Du­mas, Clau­dia Ap­ple­whaite, Nicole Wes­ley and Gre­gor Breedy-who will chore­o­graph a spe­cial dance with an all-male cast. Her­rera is heart­ened by the ded­i­ca­tion to dance by the younger gen­er­a­tion. The shows sched­uled for May 5, 6, 7 and 8 at Queen's Hall will fea­ture dif­fer­ent styles of dance in­clud­ing clas­si­cal bal­let, mod­ern and folk.

More In­fo

Tick­ets for Trod­ding On are avail­able at the Caribbean School of Danc­ing, 2

A Dere Street, Port-of-Spain, at the Queen's Hall Box Of­fice dur­ing the week lead­ing up to the per­for­mances. For reser­va­tions and in­for­ma­tion call Nari­ba Robin­son 785-9096.