Caribbean Dance Company, which was to have premiered a new work in concerts Friday and Saturday night at Island Center, has canceled the performances.
The action was taken for financial and technical reasons, founder and artistic director Monty Thompson said..
The new work that was to have been performed by the St. Croix-based professional company, now in its 23rd year under Thompson’s direction, is "Keepers of the Path," choreographed by Thompson and Nii Yartey, art director of National Dance Theatre of Ghana.
Thompson advised Island Center several weeks ago that he was canceling the performances. He said he took the action because "we just financially can’t do it" and because Island Center has yet to replace some of the stage lights that were stolen several months ago. The lighting available at present "is just inadequate" for the dance company’s needs, he said.
Instead of preparing for the St. Croix concerts, the CDC has been rehearsing for its next performances — at Allegheny College, Washington & Jefferson College, Lafayette College, the Great Valley Community Education Foundation, and Montgomery County Community College in Pennsylvania; the University of Delaware and Delaware Valley Arts Consortium in Delaware; and Montclair State University in New Jersey. The company is to leave St. Croix on March 1 for the three-week tour.
Six weeks later the troupe will take off again, to take part in Norfolk’s Virginia Waterfront International Festival on May 9 and to perform in Cleveland at Cuyahoga Community College on May 12.
A main reason for both tours is the introduction of "Keepers of the Path," which was commissioned by the first nine of the 10 venues through funding from the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation.
Thompson, a native Trinidadian, has long described Caribbean Dance Company — which has nine dancers and eight musicians/drummers/singers — as the Virgin Islands’ "best cultural ambassadors." The group’s core repertoire consists of works choreographed by Thompson to interpret indigenous dance forms of the Caribbean and, more recently, the West African roots of those forms.
Among the best known are "Queen Mary," a tribute to the leader of St. Croix’s 1878 Fireburn uprising; "Bongo," a showcase of competitive solos at a wake; and "Calypso Rainbow," the company’s colorful signature finale.
Contributing choreographers have included Crucian-born Curliss Solomon, CDC founding member, soloist, teacher and assistant to the artistic director; Ghana native and CDC teacher teacher Mary Apeadu-Lewis; and Yartey.
The troupe was invited to take part two years ago in what is widely regarded as the nation’s most prestigious performing arts festival, Spoleto U.S.A. It had a three-week residency last summer on Martha’s Vineyard to work on projects of Thompson’s choosing that included development of a work-in-progress interpreting the Big Drum Dance of Cariacou. The residency concluded with a performance that included excerpts from "Clear de Road," a piece Thompson had created for the 1999 season.
Thompson has scrapbooks full of clippings praising CDC appearances in Europe, Israel, Canada, the U.S. mainland and the Caribbean. He spent time in Ghana in 1996 and ’97 collaborating with Yartey on new Afro-Caribbean works.
Yartey was on St. Croix for two weeks last fall as they completed "Keepers of the Path," which company managing director Jill Thompson describes as "about African-Caribbean identity, not a literal piece. It’s an exploration of identity prior to colonial times, identity in the Diaspora and contemporary identity."
Through the affiliated Caribbean Dance School, Monty Thompson and his staff offer dance training for children and adults at studios in Christiansted and Frederiksted and on St. Thomas. Dancers who have come up through the ranks have gone on to become junior, and then senior, members of the company. For many years, CDS also provided in-school dance instruction to thousands of children in St. Croix’s public and private schools.
Caribbean Dance is a professional company, meaning its members are paid for their work. Rehearsing and training a minimum of 18 hours a week throughout the year, the dancers are rooted in traditional West Indian dance forms and receive regular training in contemporary, classical and jazz styles.
As the company has grown in international stature, it has commanded booking fees commensurate with those of its contemporaries. At this point, for better or worse, Jill Thompson says, CDC has literally priced itself out of the local market, unless presenting organizations are able to obtain major foundation funding — as they so often do to bring in outside artistic groups.
The Thompsons have always made a point of representing CDC as a "Virgin Islands dance company," as opposed to a St. Croix entity. The company has performed annually at Island Center since it was founded. It has traveled to St. Thomas to perform at the Reichhold Center there only three times in its 22-year history, and never to a full house.
When Caribbean Dance tours abroad, it is booked by the presenting organizations, which not only pay its artistic fee and travel costs but also handle publicity and ticket sales. When it performs at home, it still has to rent the hall and cover marketing costs on its own. And at this point, Jill Thompson says, "We cannot afford to do so."
"‘Keepers of the Path’ was supposed to have its world premiere on St. Croix," she says. "It’s something the community should see, that we want the community to see." But CDC was unable to secure a major sponsor for the local performances.
In the end, "We cannot afford to put our energy where we are losing money," Jill Thompson says. "Last year, we had over 1,300 people in two nights at Island Center, but we barely broke even on our direct expenses. And we lost huge amounts of money in terms of the dancers having worked nine months on the ‘Clear de Road’ project."
