The Decades of Dance-Dance Fes­ti­val 2011, a pro­duc­tion co­or­di­nat­ed by the Min­istry of the Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Na­tion­al Dance As­so­ci­a­tion, has kicked off.Ac­tiv­i­ties be­gin on Oc­to­ber 15 at se­lect venues through­out T&T, in­clu­sive of the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA), Queen's Hall, St Ann's and Na­pari­ma Bowl, San Fer­nan­do.This is a fes­ti­val of dance in­clu­sive of per­for­mances, work­shops and sym­posia, pre­sent­ed by dance com­pa­nies of Trinidad and To­ba­go along with vis­it­ing com­pa­nies from Ja­maica and Bar­ba­dos.

The group that will be rep­re­sent­ing Ja­maica is the L'ACAD­CO-A Unit­ed Caribbean Dance Force which was ini­ti­at­ed by Ja­maican dancer/chore­o­g­ra­ph­er, Dr L'An­toinette Stines, who has cre­at­ed dis­tinc­tive train­ing and chore­og­ra­phy, based on L'An­tech dance lan­guage.This dance com­pa­ny is wide­ly re­gard­ed as Ja­maica's lead­ing con­tem­po­rary dance com­pa­ny with its mem­ber­ship in­clud­ing dancers from Trinidad and To­ba­go, Bar­ba­dos, Guyana, the Ba­hamas, Cu­ba, Bermu­da and Suri­name. At the Decades of Dance-Dance Fes­ti­val 2011, L'ACAD­CO's elec­tri­fy­ing per­for­mances and orig­i­nal­i­ty would ra­di­ate from its rev­o­lu­tion­ary fu­sion of rich Caribbean folk­lore with con­tem­po­rary themes.

An­oth­er for­eign del­e­ga­tion at this year's Decades of Dance-Dance Fes­ti­val is Bar­ba­dos, which will be rep­re­sent­ed by two well-known com­pa­nies, Dancin' Africa and Of An­oth­er Na­ture.Dancin' Africa is a com­mu­ni­ty group that was found­ed in 1992 as a 15-mem­ber adult troupe. Over the years, this group has ex­pand­ed and now boasts a tal­ent­ed corps of dancers in both the se­nior and ju­nior troupes. Dancin' Africa is trained in a va­ri­ety of gen­res in­clud­ing Mod­ern, Jazz, Caribbean Folk, Tra­di­tion­al and Con­tem­po­rary African, Hip-Hop and Street Jazz.Of An­oth­er Na­ture, the sec­ond group from Bar­ba­dos, is a dance troupe that seeks to em­body var­i­ous tech­niques, styles and art forms. Artis­tic di­rec­tor and chore­o­g­ra­ph­er Olivia Hall and her en­sem­ble have been suc­cess­ful­ly re­ward­ed through the Na­tion­al In­de­pen­dence Fes­ti­val for Cre­ative Arts (NIF­CA).