Saturday, March 6, 2010 at 8pm
Sunday, March 7, 2010 at 2pm

Walt Whitman Theatre at Brooklyn College
2900 Campus Road, Brooklyn, NY  11210

Brooklyn Center

Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts at Brooklyn College will dedicate its upcoming March 6 and 7 performances by the National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica (NDTC) to the memory of the company’s Founding Artistic Director, Rex Nettleford, who passed away on February 2, 2010.

Professor Nettleford’s association with Brooklyn Center began in the mid 1980s when the NDTC first performed at the venue.  "The Board and staff of Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts are saddened at the news of the death of Professor the Hon. Rex Nettleford," said Frank Sonntag, managing director of Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts. "It has been our profound honor and pleasure to share the work of Professor Nettleford’s exquisite company with the residents of Brooklyn, and especially the Caribbean community, for more than 25 years.  He was a true gentleman and a consummate artist, and he will be missed very much."

NDTC returns to Brooklyn next month with a new generation of young artists who, since the ensemble’s last visit two years ago, have come to embody the Company’s dual principles of renewal and continuity, working to integrate a strong hold on the ancestral legacy of Jamaican music, movement and rituals with a ready response to contemporary life.  The repertoire includes Tintinnabulum, a social-commentary piece on sons and mothers, peer group pressure and youth violence created by Nettleford, who was principle choreographer for the company.  Both presentations will end with the New York premiere of another piece by Nettleford entitled Apocalypse, which explores the anguish and the hope of contemporary Caribbean life.  Using the traditional ritual of zion revivalism, a community bypasses traditional law enforcement and instead invokes ancestral spirituality to reform the violence-prone wrongdoer.

Photography by Roland Hyde

The Saturday evening performance includes the following pieces:

Incantation, choreography by JeanGuy Saintus, music by Toto Bissainthe, Martha Jean Claude, Zao

NDTC Singers

Asi Somos, choreography by Arsenio-Andrade Calderon

Tintinnabulum, choreography by Rex Nettleford

Vignettes of Life, choreography by Clive Thompson

Reflection, choreography by Arsenio-Andrade Calderon

Apocalypse, choreography by Rex Nettleford

The Sunday afternoon performance includes the following pieces:

Sly Mongoose, choreography by Rex Nettleford

Asi Somos, choreography by Arsenio-Andrade Calderon

NDTC Singers

Tintinnabulum, choreography by Rex Nettleford

Vignettes of Life, choreography by Clive Thompson

Reflection, choreography by Arsenio-Andrade Calderon

Apocalypse, choreography by Rex Nettleford

About National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica

Founded in 1962 after Jamaica’s liberation from Great Britain, the

National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica (NDTC) is known for an energy and creativity characteristic of the Caribbean. The company’s dancers, choreographers, musicians and designers are dedicated to the creation of works rooted in the Jamaican and Caribbean cultural experience.   NDTC has demonstrated its versatility in storytelling, pantomimic play, and fusion of elements of Caribbean dance with classical ballet to the Brooklyn community in biennial performances since the 1970s.  To date, NDTC has completed more than 100 tours throughout North America, Europe, Australia, the former Soviet Union, Latin America and Puerto Rico.

About Rex Nettleford, Artistic Director and Principal Choreographer

A seminal contributor to the "NDTC system," Rex Nettleford documented the work of the Company in numerous articles and published lectures as well as in two major works, Roots and Rhythms and Dance Jamaica with a sequel entitled Renewal and Continuity. His interest in dance and theatre began early in life growing up in rural Jamaica. As an undergraduate at the University of the West Indies (UCWI) he became a member of the Ivy Baxter Creative Dance Group. His time at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar was shared between his studies in Politics and choreographing for venues, operas and Shakespearean drama. His return to Jamaica also led to intensive work with LTM pantomimes and the founding of NDTC. His parallel academic career earned him honorary Doctorates from several U.S. Universities as well as a Presidential Medal from Brooklyn College. He was the recipient of the high national of Order of Merit, the Gold Musgrave Medal of the Institute of Jamaica, the Order of the CARIBBEAN Community and numerous overseas awards including the Living Legend Award from the Black Arts Festival in Atlanta, GA and the Zora Neale Hurston-Paul Robeson Award. Professor Nettleford was the Vice Chancellor Emeritus of the Mona campus at the University of the West Indies.

National Dance Theater Company of Jamaica

Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts

Saturday, March 6, 2010 at 8pm

Sunday, March 7, 2010 at 2pm

Walt Whitman Theatre at Brooklyn College, 2900 Campus Road, Brooklyn, NY  11210

Online orders: BrooklynCenterOnline.org

Box Office: (718) 951-4500, Tuesday – Saturday, 1pm – 6pm

Groups of 15 or more: (718) 951-4600, ext. 33

Tickets $40 orchestra, $30 mezzanine

Support for National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica is provided by Air Jamaica and Caribbean Royal Delight. Major support for Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts’ World Stages: Dance series is provided by Macy’s and by The Harkness Foundation for Dance.

Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts’ programs are made possible in part with public funding from the City of New York Department of Cultural Affairs and the National Endowment for the Arts.  Funding for the 2009-2010 season is provided by: Target; JP Morgan Chase; Brooklyn Community Foundation; Con Edison; National Grid; TD Bank; the Carnegie Corporation of New York; and the Lila Acheson Wallace Theater Fund, established in the New York Community Trust by founders of The Reader’s Digest Association.  Additional support provided by CNG Publications, The Brooklyn Eagle, and WBGO.  Marriott New York LaGuardia Airport is the official hotel of Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts 2009-2010 season.  Backstage catering graciously provided by Applebee’s.

Brooklyn Center acknowledges the support of Assemblymembers Karim Camara, Steven H. Cymbrowitz, Rhoda Jacobs, Alan Maisel, Joan L. Millman, N. Nick Perry, Annette Robinson, and Helene E. Weinstein, members of the Brooklyn Delegation to the New York State Assembly, and New York State Senators Martine Malavé Dilan, Kevin S. Parker, and John L. Sampson. Special thanks to Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn, Councilman Domenic M. Recchia, Jr. Councilmembers Kendall B. Stewart and Albert Vann, and Cultural Affairs Commissioner Kate D. Levin.

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