[This article was originally published in The Jamaica Sunday Observer. This online version has been slightly amended from the original article.]
A shining performance by Movements Dance Company for their Silver Jubilee
Anticipation was high as a brimming full house sat in The Little Theatre awaiting the rising of the curtains last Sunday evening. The evening was to be the concluding performance of the 25th anniversary season of Jamaica’s Movements Dance Company, and people had flocked out in the hundreds.
The curtains opened to reveal a large platform ornamented with a simple backdrop – an abstract medley of brash colours over a large white canvas – and a solo figure sat at the left hand corner of the stage in a hunched position. It was a solemn commencement for what was to be a celebratory evening. The male dancer soon began to display, through writhing gestures, the tale of his anguish as an AIDS sufferer. A sequence of cinematic ‘flashbacks’ marked with emotive choreography transported the audience into this tragic world. Certainly a pressing contemporary issue, I commend the choreographer, Monica Campbell, for her innovative and daring, if somewhat disjointed piece, aptly entitled ‘Flashback’.