Aba A Luke

Dancers across T&T will be pre­sent­ed with an op­por­tu­ni­ty the likes of which they've not seen for some time. From Oc­to­ber 9 to 15, the Min­istry of Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism will host a project en­ti­tled The Caribbean Dance Fes­ti­val 2011, which is aimed at re­vi­tal­is­ing dance as a dra­mat­ic art-form on the is­land. The project will pro­vide the na­tion's dance prac­ti­tion­ers with train­ing in dance tech­niques, ex­po­sure to dance forms tra­di­tion­al to var­i­ous re­gions, an op­por­tu­ni­ty to share ex­pe­ri­ences, styles and chore­og­ra­phy tech­niques, as well as var­i­ous op­por­tu­ni­ties to pro­mote the Caribbean as the mec­ca of cul­tur­al di­ver­si­ty.

Or­gan­is­ers say the fes­ti­val is en­vi­sioned as a pi­o­neer­ing event that will cre­ate an en­abling en­vi­ron­ment for the pre­sen­ta­tion and dis­course of dance, and the reaf­fir­ma­tion of the ex­ist­ing ties be­tween the re­gion­al dance com­mu­ni­ty and cul­tur­al work­ers alike.An­oth­er fun­da­men­tal goal of the project will be of­fer­ing young peo­ple an op­por­tu­ni­ty to par­take in dance ed­u­ca­tion, and sub­se­quent­ly, a chance to face off and even learn from oth­er dancers across the Caribbean. The project will fea­ture three live qual­i­ty dance per­for­mances at dif­fer­ent venues, among them the Na­pari­ma Bowl in San Fer­nan­do and Queen's Hall in Port-of-Spain.

Get­ting reg­is­tered is key

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion rep­re­sen­ta­tive at the min­istry, Mar­lon De­bique, said the dance fes­ti­val has been in the pipeline for the past two years.He ex­plained that it stemmed from the Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Min­istry's stag­ing of projects like NA­PA Fest.Every oth­er year, De­bique said, the min­istry in­tends to pro­duce and show­case an over­all art fes­ti­val.This year it has teamed up with the Na­tion­al Dance Acad­e­my to host the Caribbean Dance Fes­ti­val 2011.

"The ma­jor ob­jec­tive is in­sti­tu­tion­al strength­en­ing and au­di­ence de­vel­op­ment," high­light­ed De­bique, adding that the dance acad­e­my has been en­trust­ed with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of get­ting the dance groups. He said the core re­quire­ment of the fes­ti­val was that any­one in­volved in the dance show­cas­es must be mem­bers of the dance acad­e­my.

"It of­fers an in­cen­tive to the or­gan­i­sa­tion and strength­ens the dance as­so­ci­a­tion. Per­sons can then have ac­cess to par­tic­i­pate in work­shops and re­ceive in­for­ma­tion that oth­er­wise may not have been so eas­i­ly ac­ces­si­ble," he said.He en­cour­aged mem­bers of the pub­lic who want to be a part of the work­shops and dance ex­hib­it to reg­is­ter with the Na­tion­al Dance Acad­e­my by call­ing 628-5629.

Project One ends Re­pub­lic Day

The fes­ti­val comes just as the min­istry clos­es the cur­tain on The Re­mem­ber When In­sti­tute Ex­hi­bi­tion, which was launched on Sep­tem­ber 9 at NA­PA.That project sought to en­light­en the gen­er­al pub­lic on the dig­i­tal archiv­ing ini­tia­tive for lo­cal cul­ture.The ex­hib­it, which ends on Re­pub­lic Day, brought some 3,000 digi­tised mem­o­ry books to the fore, with much of the con­tent hav­ing been safe­guard­ed since 1971 with­in the archives of the cul­ture di­vi­sion.It is hoped that the repos­i­to­ry of these and all cul­tur­al mem­o­ries will pro­vide tan­gi­ble as­sis­tance to the gen­er­al pub­lic when need­ed, and pro­vide any­one from any­where in the world with an in­ter­ac­tive hub par ex­cel­lence that show­cas­es as­pects of T&T's cul­tur­al her­itage.