SAN­DRA L BLOOD

blood­l­sandy@gmail.com

When glob­al pro­fes­sor of dance Pe­ter Lon­don was a youth, he brought to Amer­i­ca some his­to­ry of tra­di­tion­al dances he learned while grow­ing up in his na­tive coun­try, Trinidad, and im­me­di­ate­ly won the hearts of the di­rec­tors of the pres­ti­gious in­ter­na­tion­al dance com­pa­nies Alvin Ai­ley and Martha Gra­ham.

Lon­don said Alvin Ai­ley and Martha Gra­ham per­son­al­ly asked him to join their com­pa­ny, but de­spite his in­se­cu­ri­ty and ef­forts to con­vince Martha that he may not be ready, she per­sist­ed and saw a tal­ent that he didn’t see.

“I even­tu­al­ly be­came her com­pa­ny’s prin­ci­pal dancer, toured in­ter­na­tion­al­ly with it and served as its As­so­ciate Artis­tic Se­nior Con­sul­tant.”

Lon­don al­so danced with La­m­ont and Ai­ley.

From Gra­ham’s Com­pa­ny, Lon­don, to grad­u­at­ing from Juil­liard School, where he was a William Ran­dolph Schol­ar, to be­ing the founder-di­rec­tor of his dance acad­e­my, Pe­ter Lon­don Glob­al Dance Com­pa­ny (PLGDC), to cur­rent­ly be­ing a dis­tin­guished pro­fes­sor of dance at Mi­a­mi Dade Col­lege’s New World School of the Arts (NWSOA), where he at­tained a BFA de­gree.

Lon­don said he first saw dance when he was six years old, while still re­sid­ing in Trinidad dur­ing his vis­its to a Yoru­ba tem­ple when rit­u­als were be­ing held to ho­n­our an­ces­tors and the or­isha.

“I got a thrill every time chil­dren were al­lowed to en­ter the tem­ple and pre­tend to dance and play the drums, but at 12, re­al­i­ty stepped in when I en­coun­tered a Trinidad reg­i­ment sol­dier, Eso Fras­er, who was a drum­mer and start­ed a dance group and karate class. Af­ter a few hard falls on con­crete dur­ing karate prac­tice, I chose dance,” Lon­don cheer­ful­ly re­called.

“That was my first for­mal en­counter with sec­u­lar dances that were re­tained from Con­go, Eg­bo, Sier­ra Leone, Temnes, Demnes, Coro­man­del, Mandin­gos.”

He be­gan tour­ing in­ter­na­tion­al­ly at age 17, trav­elled to Cana­da, and al­so joined the re­mark­able As­tor John­son Reper­to­ry Dance The­atre, where he gained his first bal­let tu­tor­ing, lead­ing him to a bal­let school. At 23, he made a “pas­sion­ate de­ci­sion” to fuse Bal­let, African and Con­tem­po­rary dances and chore­og­ra­phy us­ing the re­spec­tive tech­niques.

“I do not teach cho­rus dancers,” Lon­don ex­pressed, “I teach prin­ci­pal dancers, and de­spite them learn­ing in in­sti­tu­tions, they are not stu­dents, they are di­vine be­ings. I work with them in the same way my teach­ers worked with me in Trinidad, and in the same way Gra­ham and Ai­ley worked with me. What I do is spir­i­tu­al work and the out­come must be per­fect.”

He clar­i­fied dance, en­ter­tain­ment and per­fec­tion: “Dance is ac­tu­al­ly a light and spir­i­tu­al heal­ing, and when cos­tumes and make-up, etc., are ap­plied, it be­comes en­ter­tain­ment, while per­fec­tion speaks to in­evitable move­ment. Move­ment must have sev­er­al things in or­der for it to speak clear­ly to the au­di­ence. It must have a sense of in­ner-abil­i­ty… It must have clar­i­ty and pre­ci­sion, and must be im­bued with pas­sion from the heart.”

Dis­tin­guished as a leg­end of mod­ern dance, at NWSOA, he chore­o­graphs and teach­es Gra­ham’s tech­nique and Afro-Caribbean dance, and at PLGDC, a fu­sion of bal­let, African, Caribbean, and Mod­ern dance. “I cre­ate a space where my dancers’ spir­its could shine,” he stat­ed.

Lon­don said PLGDC’s mis­sion is to ad­vance his vi­sion and not lose fo­cus, which in­cludes cre­at­ing un­par­al­leled op­por­tu­ni­ties for the dancers and show­cas­ing their tal­ent to the world.

Boost­ing mo­men­tum and dri­ven as a re­sponse to fall­outs from the glob­al pan­dem­ic, in­clud­ing eco­nom­ic con­trac­tion, among oth­er as­pects, Lon­don, his board of di­rec­tors and oth­er par­ties de­vel­oped a road map to­wards fi­nan­cial sus­tain­abil­i­ty and up­ward mo­bil­i­ty. Four pri­ma­ry ar­eas of de­vel­op­ment to cov­er 2021-2026 were shaped. Re­cal­i­brat­ing the com­pa­ny’s mis­sion, vi­sion, and val­ues, among oth­er ar­eas of en­deav­our, was tak­en in­to ac­count.

Among the guid­ing prin­ci­ples and core val­ues are Artis­tic in­tegri­ty, Re­spect, Col­lab­o­ra­tion at the high­est eth­i­cal stan­dards, and pro­mot­ing di­ver­si­ty, eq­ui­ty, and in­clu­sion.

Lon­don said he al­so con­nect­ed with an­oth­er spir­i­tu­al di­vine per­son in the form of jazz­ist, men­tor, com­pos­er, ace stu­dio mu­si­cian, and pro­fes­sor at the Frost School of Mu­sic (FSM), Eti­enne Charles.

For Black His­to­ry Month, in the US, on Feb­ru­ary 5, in an in­no­v­a­tive spin on an ex­plo­ration of Afro-Caribbean cul­ture, which in­clud­ed ca­lyp­so mu­sic, Lon­don brought dance and mu­sic to­geth­er with FSM at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mi­a­mi.

PLGDC per­formed Lon­don’s new chore­og­ra­phy with the Charles-di­rect­ed FSM Jazz Band. Three of Charles’ new com­po­si­tions, which drew up­on tra­di­tions of Car­ni­val/Caribbean, were fea­tured. The au­di­ence was said to have ap­pre­ci­at­ed the artis­tic col­lab­o­ra­tion, which soft­ened bound­aries be­tween move­ment and mu­sic.

Charles said he felt ho­n­oured to have met Lon­don. “We share a Trini­bag­on­ian cit­i­zen­ship, her­itage and roots, which cre­at­ed great syn­er­gy be­yond mu­sic, be­cause it’s an an­ces­tral con­nec­tion.”

On March 28, Lon­don recog­nised Women’s His­to­ry Month with PLGDC ho­n­our­ing women along­side men. They per­formed Women and Men Voic­es at the Sanc­tu­ary of the Arts in Coral Gables, Mi­a­mi-Dade.

Lon­don said he an­tic­i­pates vis­it­ing Trinidad this year.

Among his se­ries of awards is the Martha Hill Prize for Out­stand­ing Achieve­ment and Lead­er­ship in Dance.

Main­tain­ing hu­mil­i­ty, Lon­don re­ferred to him­self as “just a lit­tle tiny thread in the car­pet of per­form­ing arts.”