 A book highlighting the history of dance in St. Lucia has been launched. Performer, choreographer, fashion designer Christine Samuels has added to her list of achievements by capturing the endeavors of the local dance fraternity. Details in this report. Decades of documentation have enabled performer and choreographer Christine Samuels to compile a book titled A Dance Footprints 40 Years of Dance in St. Lucia this month. The coffee table book, oversized and hard-covered, is intended to not only inform and entertain but to also inspire some conversation about the movers and shakers of the art form. The book is made up of bios and photographs in color black and white so it will give it a whole story from where the dancer started and the group started and will give you the photographs to show who these people are and what they have done in the development of dance in St. Lucia. There have been a lot of people who have helped in the development of dance in St. Lucia. The generation today do not know these people and I felt it was necessary for all the generation of people now and the dancers that are going to be bringing dance forward to the next generation needed to know who these people were. Samuels' own career as a dancer spans over 40 years and she established and managed her own dance institution, the Crystalites Dance Academy, as a premier institution for arts education in St. Lucia. During this period, she says she hoarded dance paraphernalia which later allowed her to spare head an exhibition commissioned by the Cultural Development Foundation. The book, she says, evolved from this event. What really brought it out was when Auntie Vodji died, Virginia Alexander passed away and CDF did the Icon Series on Dance in St. Lucia and they asked me to put an exhibition together for her and just to document dance. And for me that was the right opportunity. So what I did, I did the exhibition at the Blue Coral Mall in bios and photographs. So basically when the exhibition was done, I transformed the exhibition into the book. The cover features a poignant image of the author in dancer's pose with cultural and dance icon Virginia Albert shortly before her passing in 2008. The few months of when Vodji was very ill, we had decided to go to a studio to do that photograph and we put a collection of photographs together. And I mean, last time I was writing my speech and I'm saying, wow, this is really a magnificent photo because it captured everything that Vodji and Vodji has put together for dance in St. Lucia and I felt it was very fitting since the book is in memory of her and she's the mother of dance in St. Lucia. So hence the reason that this book, the cover of the book puts Vodji and I on dance footprints. The virtual launch for dance footprints 40 years of dance in St. Lucia was held on Saturday 10th April 2021. For the government information service, I am Jesse Leance reporting.