Align, the lat­est pro­duc­tion by the Mar­cia Charles Dance The­atre Com­pa­ny, was held from May 2-4 at Queen’s Hall, St Ann’s.

At the heart of this un­for­get­table ex­pe­ri­ence was Mar­cia Charles, the vi­sion­ary founder, mas­ter chore­o­g­ra­ph­er and cre­ative force be­hind the com­pa­ny. Her dis­tinc­tive blend of mod­ern, con­tem­po­rary and Caribbean move­ment styles guid­ed au­di­ences through a deeply hu­man jour­ney.

With each step, Align asked the au­di­ence to re­flect on what it tru­ly means to find bal­ance in to­day’s chaot­ic world, of­fer­ing a fu­sion of rhythm, re­silience and re­flec­tion as it ex­plored themes of har­mo­ny, iden­ti­ty and col­lec­tive con­scious­ness.

From dancers as young as three years old to sea­soned per­form­ers, the cast moved with a com­mand­ing pres­ence, nav­i­gat­ing pieces that ranged from in­tro­spec­tive so­los to ex­plo­sive en­sem­ble mo­ments.

The pro­duc­tion un­fold­ed in four evoca­tive seg­ments, each the­mat­i­cal­ly rich and chore­o­graph­i­cal­ly dis­tinct.

Ce­les­tial Sym­pho­ny, the breath­tak­ing open­ing, ex­plored cos­mic or­der, the bal­ance of day and night, an eclipse and di­vine rhythm. Tem­po­ral Har­mo­ny was a trib­ute to time, mem­o­ry, the yin and yang and the cycli­cal na­ture of life. In­ner Bal­ance was an in­tro­spec­tive se­quence ex­am­in­ing emo­tion­al and spir­i­tu­al align­ment, while El­e­men­tal Align­ment was a vi­brant cel­e­bra­tion of the nat­ur­al forces that con­nect us all.

Join­ing Charles in this mul­ti­di­men­sion­al show­case were chore­o­g­ra­phers Dar­ren Ramirez, whose hip-hop chore­og­ra­phy elec­tri­fied the stage with sharp pre­ci­sion, and Shaakir “Tur­bo” Grif­fith, whose Afrobeat chore­og­ra­phy was in­fused with in­fec­tious en­er­gy and cul­tur­al depth.

Now cel­e­brat­ing over 27 years of artis­tic ex­cel­lence, the com­pa­ny con­tin­ues to evolve while re­main­ing root­ed in its mis­sion to nur­ture young dancers and con­tribute mean­ing­ful­ly to the na­tion’s cul­tur­al fab­ric.