 You and I are from the Cain piece. Most of us are from the Cain piece. Lots of us like to forget it but you know, some of us have come a little earlier than others and part of the problem is that the educational system in the past, though it certainly has prepared us to cope with the rest of the world in many respects. In many instances it has not prepared us to cope with ourselves and so many of us who indeed have come from the Cain piece have forgotten about that Cain piece but to those of us who can claim some wisdom and some insight into as complex as society as the Caribbean are the legacies where people who are the beneficiaries of the wisdom of that very Cain piece and the people from below as George Lamming describes them continue to be the source of energy for much that makes sense in the Caribbean. Good afternoon and welcome to week five of 10 weeks in Jamaica theater conversations from Jamaica to the world. I'm Magalena co founder and co artistic director of a Cuba of Baca arts. We are an international theater production company that creates plays concerts talks and processes for making plays concerts and talks for the global stage. This series is presented in partnership with raw management and esteemed talent agency representing artists and groups across all genres and film, television, theater, voiceovers branding and endorsements. We are very grateful to work in collaboration with Miss Nadine Rollins raw management, raw management's managing director and co curator of this series. 10 weeks in Jamaica theater conversations from Jamaica to the world is a talk series that shares the behind the scenes stories of Jamaica's theater community with the global theater community and members of the Jamaican and Caribbean diaspora. Each week, Jamaica's leading theater pioneers and practitioners narrate their histories and memories of the Jamaican stage and offer their visions for the future development of theater in this 21st century. This series is made possible by a sponsor and publisher howl round calm, a free and open platform for theater makers nationwide that amplifies progressive disruptive ideas about the art form and facilitates connections between diverse theater practitioners. 10 weeks in Jamaica is also sponsored by the martini seagull theater center at the city university of New York and Manhattan. The seagull center is home to theater artists scholars students performing arts managers and the local and international performance communities. Now, whether you are joining us for the first time, or you have been watching weekly since we started this series on November 1, we thank you very much for being in our audience today, and hope that you will return weekly through the end of the series on January 3. I'd like to invite you to click the subscribe button to become part of our growing family. And you know why you're at it, click that bell below to to get notified of upcoming episodes and engagements from our channel. And while you're at it, join us and follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. We are akiba abaca art on all platforms. As a child of the dance hall I like to say, I am so excited about today's episode. You got a little taste of our topic today, moment to go with videos from the National Dance Company of Jamaica with continuum choreographed by one of our panelists Marlon Sims, with the voice of the late great Rex Nettleford. We also saw 50 seconds of the baddest dance hall masters class we're going to get with Professor expressions himself, Orville Hall, another panelist and the beautiful, very talented nearly e banks will be with us also. This time, it is my pleasure to introduce my partner and crime co founder and co artistic director akiba abaca, a distinguished director dramatist producer, etc, etc. Akiva has been bringing theater to diverse communities throughout her 20 plus career, and she will be your host and moderator for today's conversation. Welcome to keep. Yeah, girl, let me tell you something. I am excited. I'm excited. Thank you for bringing back to those W er s days when you hold on the reggae program here in Boston. Yes. I gotta tell you, I could not wait for this episode for the I mean they've all been exciting thus far but you know, being you know a true fan of reggae music dance home music I'm really excited to see where this conversation is going to go, and how it just dives into making theater scene and how the dance hall really becomes into it. I'm excited. So, but you know, we always say, Mads me you and caution that we're really a dance hall theater company, you know where, or where that where a theater company founded on the principles of dance hall. Listen, whatever that means, whatever that means. This is going to be awesome. Yes, so much Maggily have fun. Reggae or reggae dance all is a part of Jamaican life and culture that refuses to be dismissed reduced or silenced by the technology of electromagnetic waves or electronic current dance hall contains and transmit what Aristotle named in his artistic proofs, the ethos, ethics or principles, the pathos, emotions or relationships and the logos, logic or reason of the stories of the Jamaican people. Ralston Milton Nettleford, O. M. Order of Merit OCC Order of the Caribbean Community, known belovedly as Professor Rex Nettleford was a Jamaican scholar, political scientist, choreographer, teacher and cultural architect. He founded the world renowned national dance theater company of Jamaica, NDTC, and served as vice chancellor of the University of the West Indies from 1998 to 2004. His love and protection of his Jamaican country roots and his overall Caribbean being made him the cultural godfather of every Jamaican child that has ever been born, or that will ever be born. Though he was a Rhodes scholar, a member of the literati and the glitterati with contemporaries and colleagues and collaborators, such as James Baldwin, Alvin Ailey, Lorraine Hansberry, Tally Beattie and Catherine Dunham. He always brought the Jamaican and Caribbean people with him in all our hues. Butu to Bourgeois, Petit Bourgeois, he centered us all. Our esteemed panelists today are among the beneficiaries of Professor Nettleford's legacy, and they continue his teachings and his inquiry into the depths of Jamaican culture through dance theater. Marlon D. Sims is the artistic director of the National Dance Theater Company of Jamaica. Succeeding former artistic director Barry Moncrease in 2018. He has appeared as lead in several seminal works, including Spirits at a Gathering, Ritual of Sunrise, Dispoen and Cumana. He holds a master's of fine arts in choreographic theory and practice from Feathern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. Among his most critically acclaimed works are Barris on Love, a tribute to reggae superstar Barris Ferdhamand. He has taught and conducted workshops in choreography, technique, performance, dance education within the Caribbean with an aim to develop dance in the region. Between performing and directing the company, he co-produces NDTC's journal and oversees the company's trainee program and education and its education arm. He is also the current Dean of School of Dance at the Edna Manningley College of Visual and Performing Arts. Welcome Marlon. Hi, how are you doing? Nice to see you. So good to see you. So happy to have you. It's a pleasure being here. Thank you so much for the invitation. What's an honor? Thank you. The honor is ours. Artistic director and founder of Jamaican Dance Aggregation and Company. Neala E. Banks holds a master of arts in physical theater from Royal Holloway University of London and the University of Surrey. A bachelor of science in sociology from the University of the West Indies and the certificate in dance theater and production from the Edna Manningley School of Dance. Her diverse Jamaican and Caribbean connections include her present work with the Edna Manningley School of the Performing and Visual Arts as the school's dance director and director of studies in acting. As well as work with Continuum Dance Project, the Stella Morris Young Adult Dance Ensemble, the University Dance Society, Ladako, United Caribbean Dance Force, Dance Theater of Jamaica, Ashe Performing Arts Company, and the National Dance Theater Company of Jamaica. Internationally, Neala has also represented Jamaica in the Biennial de Danza de Caribe, the Caribbean Educative Arts Festival, Tobago Contemporary Dance Festival, and Carri Festa 13 and Outburst Queer Arts Festival. She is a dynamic speaker, as you will see today, a real light bearer in the line of the great Champong Nani, so join the truth, so many great women that she falls in the line of. Welcome, Neala Evans. Oh, greetings, greetings, greetings, everyone. Thank you so much, Akiba. Oh, your words bless my heart. It's great to be here. Oh, happy to have you. Arvil Expression Hall, aka Dan Sal Professor, is the artistic director of theater expressions, dance expressions. He served as the chief judge on Dancing Dynamite on television Jamaica TVJ for 15 years, and a radio host on Jamaica's fame FM for 10 years. He is also the creative director for Dance Hall Hostel in Kingston, Jamaica. You know, that dance hall hostel is very, very hard to get into. It's always, I've been trying to get it to stay there for years. So, you know, it's a very successful venture. Mr. Hall is the writer director of the world's first dance hall musical from then till now. And the creator and producer of the YouTube series, the bartender, which can be found on Expressions JA's YouTube channel. He has stored over 35 countries teaching and lecturing about dance hall. Mr. Hall is the recipient of the Gregory Isaacs Foundation Award for international contribution to dance by the Jamaican Reggae Association Reggae Industry Association, Jerry in February of 2020. He is also the vice president of the Jackson Town Citizens Association. Welcome, Orville. That's a love. Yeah. Thank you for having me. Thank you so much for being here. We are truly honored and when we say esteemed panel, this is an esteemed panel, you know, I before we jump into the conversation. I really have to big up miss Nadine Rawlings again because first class world class universe boss, are you that Nadine, are you that. All right. All right. So I want to jump into the conversation here. Marlon your entry into the career into your professional career as a choreographer began in the dance hall, rather than at the ballet bar, like most choreographers and artistic. How has dance all influenced your development personally and professionally. Well, how much time do I have. I think to really understand its impact on my life, I would have to say for instance what I believe it means. And for me, dance hall means and I'm talking about someone who started dancing in high school, and what was happening around me was with the dance hall, and I think the next door to a dance hall. So we kept up later nights, because we were venturing back and forth into that so I knew all the latest tunes. And of course, my family that was very conservative did not allow me to be out late. My room became the dance hall because I get a song from next door. And so my, that was my christening, so to speak to dance hall. And of course the interest in what happened there really caused me to be deep into what it was about learning the dances that came out of that space. I believe dance hall means inventiveness. It means creativity. It means freedom that kind of liberation have come from self discovery, claiming your body as your own, because nobody could tell me I didn't have what I have when I was in my own space with my own thing. It was mine to celebrate. And I believe that dance hall meant that it's not a celebration of self. It also meant the prowess, because you get to know how far you can stretch your imagination how far it can stretch your body physically to do some of the things that are being done. Some are a bit extreme for me at my age, but it's the extent at which you will go to be creative and trying new things and be inventive. It also means enjoyment. The dance hall space is filled with so much joy that when you go there with your friends and you see beyond in a long time that music is playing and you're, you know, you're partaking certain activities within that space it becomes a fulfillment almost of your purpose. And in that space, you know who you are as a Jamaican as a Caribbean. And that for me is a fulfillment that comes with the dance hall space, the music that you hear becomes an extension of your life. It is what you hear. Your story comes told in the music. And you get these messages from the music sisters, you know, those persons who have come before you, who have passed and left their legacy through the music and so they learn about the culture through the movements and through the music. So the music connects it to your past, to your history, and to the movement of our people. Now another thing that interests me is the body politics, the man-woman story relationship that comes out in the dance hall between how a man relates and how a woman relates and how a woman is and how they actually match their wits in quotation through the movement. And that becomes assertion of who they are, that sort of confidence that is built in the space and the rivalry that helps you to dig deeper into finding out who you are because you have to stand up in that space and be counted. And I love the dance hall space for that. It also means companionship. I mean, we can talk about people who meet each other in dance hall and end up in long lasting relationships. Because the space becomes one where you meet new people and exchange ideas. If this is a lived experience, where are you from? Who are you? What do you bring to the space? What do you learn from the space? What do you leave behind in the space? And how dance hall becomes a space for this evolution of self. And that's what I love about it. Now it's a power play as well because there's a gender power play happening in the space. There's a lot of forces where they meet and collide. Where certain government policies might be challenged in the space. And so it's the people's voices that rise up against certain ideas, philosophical ideas, ideological ideas, political ideas, and the space becomes where you hear the voice of the people. And there is a kind of dominance in that conversation that comes out of the music, out of the movement, and out of the identity of the people where things have to be challenged, where things have to compete. I also believe that it's an economic space that gives people hope. You can earn, you can make a living. And that space re-energizes a community. It energizes a community because of all the activities that take place around dance hall. The song selector, the sellers, the fashion industry. So it becomes a space of hope because people earn from it and people make a living from it and becomes a lived experience. So you move from one dance hall space into the next to kind of generate this. I'm not going to take too long because I know you have two other speakers. I believe that dance is about finding your voice, that creative voice, the voice of identity, and the important voice of affirmation, which gives the space for the people to speak for the people to become visible and important for the people to become heard. You know, thank you for that. Thank you for sharing that. And when you talk about being christened in the dance hall, and when we talk about the ecology, you didn't only lay out your personal and professional dance hall imprint in your life personally and professionally, you've actually laid out the socio-economic ecology of dance hall. And for many of us, probably, if you're born in Jamaica to some extent, a christening, a birthday party, definitely a wedding, you're going to have a dance hall. So when you talk about the music coming through the walls, the music coming through the windows in your room, and that christening, I remember, you know, my seventh birthday party and it was a kiddie party, but by seven o'clock, the sound system would go up, and all of a sudden, you thought it was storm love in the yard. It was the record. So you never got a chance to miss dance hall to a certain extent. Mila, what does dance hall mean for you? When and where do you enter? Let me tell you something. So, um, dance hall for me, initially, was what you'd call a guilty pleasure. Let me tell you why. My family, very Christian, very conservative, nowhere near dance hall at all. No dance hall could have played at this house. But I had dance, and I had people like Pat Sirichitz and Monica Lawrence teaching me dance and bringing music from all over the place and making sure that as a young dancer, as a, as a, as a preteen, I was being introduced to a number of different kinds of music. On top of that, of course, we go to school, we have friends, we hear from a friend in the bar a cassette, and so dance hall became the thing that I would listen to on my walkman while everybody else in my house was like, you know, everything is going on fine. I mean, one time actually, um, I borrowed my father's Walkman and I listened to a Shaba cassette. I'll just leave it right there. It was not a pleasant time in the house. But meaning that there was, there was something about it that resonated for me. That actually performed even, even a kind of a, maybe a kind of a spiritual function that I didn't realize just yet. There was something that was happening, something that I knew about myself as a mover, as someone of African origin, of someone who, who wanted to hear things that were youthful and energetic and on the pulse and on a pulse that I wasn't even necessarily living, recognizing from early on that there are many different Jamaicans, there are many different realities and happenings and if you're not careful, you get caught up only in one. Dance hall allowed me to understand others, really, really allowed me to understand others. Um, there came a point in time when I was becoming a young feminist and womanist, and I used to fight myself. Because here comes Bujubantan talking about Gelfibeg. I must say to myself, Lord of Mercy, this really is sweet. It's sweet, it's sweet, it's sweet, it's sweet, it's sweet. I was talking about Gelfibeg. And why, why was Gelfibeg and Bujubantan a fight for you? What were you battling with with the lyrics of that song? If you can just give us a little content. I'm going to tell you, I'm going to tell you, I can't, let me, let me, all right listeners, I cannot go into the fullness of it, but basically he's speaking about sex. And the fact that it must be so good that the girl must beg, right? Me as a young girl, um, you know, 16 year old now, love the rhythm, love Bujubantan, voice upon the rhythm, love the quality and the tone and the rhythmicality of him voice upon the rhythm, but find myself on the dance floor with my friend doing this. Boy, I'm going to know you're not coming a really thing said it's begging to understand, not understanding the fullness of it. So, so, so it also became early out for me a kind of a political space where I would actually have to filter some of the things and think about them and say all right to understand this is somebody's reality but is this where I think everything could and should be. So I never, I never accepted everything wholesale necessarily, but I was able to listen and filter and agree and disagree so it becomes that space of dialogue even for myself with my friends and myself from early out. So it's Joe can say that dance hall for Jamaica is like a comma sutra. Because there is also the aspect of it now that tells you what your parents are not going to tell you about what you need to be doing in the bedroom. So there's there's a way in which it's almost like a, it lays out sometimes a little bit to bear and sometimes you know, everybody not really belong everybody by bedroom but at the very least, it is where you can go for certain kind of information. For me as a maker. And as an aficionado and love of everything that comes out of the roots of us dance hall is a space of regeneration. There are some things that can only be said through the music and the bodies of dance hall. And I don't mean, I don't mean the bodies of dance hall. That put it on stage like I do, or that as a choreographer as I am, would extrapolate from to create an abstract. I mean the bodies of dance hall. Those who are living the dance hall experience, I would never say that I live the dance hall experience I would be lying if I did, but I appreciate it from all of the angles. And I am concerned and I care for it too because there are ways in which some things remember saying that it has come to me also as a space of challenge. It's a space of questioning. And there are some kinds of things that I wonder if it as much as it's very important is critical to hear what is going on. It's also critical to hear what you want. It's also critical to vision like a Bob Marley would have vision in voice word sounds power. And so no I think there's another level no I think there's a corner that beloved dance hall can turn, but it's a corner of responsibility. Right, so that those who are there at the head because those who are at the head and those who are driving down to all them smart, you know, I mean I don't just mean in terms of lyrics I mean of course in terms of intellect you have all kinds of intellects. So there's a way in which dance hall also is a space of challenge for me, but I embrace it all. You know it's a space of dialogue. It's certainly a space of our centering as Marlon said is that we have the right is always to celebrate all of us, no matter what you know matter what anybody wants to call social status. Yeah, and we have to respect it we have to respect it to because it is carrying the DNA of things before it is carried just like I carry my DNA some of I mean I can trace it back, but it is carrying the DNA of reggae music. It's carrying the DNA of Cumina and Buru. It's carrying the DNA of the people who came over who are stolen from the various parts of the continent to come over here to the to the Jamaica. So in that regard we have to respect it and to look and see where it is going to evolve to know and maybe now we can have a more, we can have a more deliberate approach as to its evolution to use it for the kind of healing that it can be. It provides it provides stability and grounding financially and economically as Marlon said from number of stakeholders in Jamaica, but there's also a grounding that is spiritual. There's also a grounding that is social. And I think actually that culture, culture thinkers need to come together with with makers within the dance hall to say look here, where are we going. What we're going to use is to transform Jamaica because that is where the transformation is actually going to be. So it's a lot of things for me. And I'm what it is for me is excitement. At the end of the day I'm excited about dance hall always because it is newness it is freshness it is richness. There's a bubbling over of there is a there's an anancy story you know anancy is one of the big quests from Ghana. We have received anancy as the spider right the spider man who is a trickster, who is who gets between the black and the white and makes the gray. And there's a story about him and this pot that keeps making food no matter what just keeps making food keeps making food dance always like that. We have to hear the rest of the story for the careful now, because that will boss you. So, all right. That's my piece. You went into that story, because when you think about the parables, right, we think about folklore, right, even if you listen to a bean man, you know, even if you listen to pop corn, or one I love these days the skillet then you hear it in these parables, you know, you got to dance our professor. You're the one that's working and living and really representing the form, more than any of us on this panel right now. When I'm where does dance I'll enter your life how is it how has done so influence you personally and professionally. All right. I always tell people that I don't. I don't dance dance all I am done so I was born in the dance. Yeah, that's that's my place. That's who I am. That's what gave me a voice. So, when I hear Marlon talk about that self expression. I can identify immediately with it because that is how I was able to express myself, even before I started expressing myself verbally. You know, so my parents started the first dance session in the community that I grew up. It was the first yard that had a television. People used to just pack up in the yard watching television. When there was a dance session there was people from the communities around that came here. So I was raised in dance hall, and it is what helped me to be able to speak to the rest of the world. You know, I've seen the struggles that that dance hall, the dance hall people have to go through. I can appreciate the fact that it's also a space that we can, we can earn from because people get the entire liberty from dance hall. I was there with people being oppressed and having to fight their way through to be able to earn just to keep a dance session and, you know, how political division. Even though political division had us living apart, it was always a dance session that was able to bring us back together. You know, so a guy would sneak from over a PNP side to go to a GLP side, just for one dance party, and vice versa. The two political parties on the island, the PNP and the People's National Party and the JLP, the Jamaica Labor Party, and for many years, especially in the 70s and the 80s, there were wars. Yeah, man. So that's coming from one side to the next could be very dangerous. 1988 represented the one of the block the selection that Jamaica has ever seen. And this was, this was the birth of the dance hall era here in Jamaica. This is, this is when we started to evolve and come into what dance hall was. This is where we started to decide that we are now with reggae music because I was, I was, it was a time for me when we were just evolving into dance hall and when reggae. In my yard, my father was a part of 12 tribe of Israel, so in my yard I would put drums, he used to play and the rest of them used to come and chant and bond them chalice and, you know, play drums. That's where I learned to play drums the first time. And we, we listened to reggae understood that reggae was the voice of the people and the heartbeat of the people and we were talking to people through the lyrics for them to understand the play that we were going through. But then when we got to dance hall, we decided that we were going to get it later and we're going to speak our truth in the most crass way, because it's the only other way that we think that people could understand us. You know, so if it is sex, we're going to speak blatantly about sex. And if it's, if it's about the gun, we were talking about things that was happening in our society, we were talking about things that was happening up the road from us, down the road from us across from us. So when there's, there's always a passion in my voice when it comes on to talking about dance hall, because I saw how classism divided us and how classism allowed some people to speak about dance hall in a, in a, in a more scholar type way, but the reality of what was happening to us in the, in the, in the industries was still not paid attention to when the voice of the people was always dance hall when the, the mass was always dance hall. And we refuse to listen because it was at a time when you couldn't partner was not something that was acceptable. If you talk partner then that means that the hard core Jamaican language. So it was for me, when, when I, when I was leaving St. Richard's primary school, I failed my first common entrance, and I was sick for my second common entrance. And I left and I went to Edith Dalton James secondary that was in the Hainan Park. And if it wasn't for that, that's, that's where Dan saved my life, because my youngest brother went to Calabar. And me, I was seen as it wasn't intentional, but it was unintentionally I was now the, the black sheep I was now the outcast because the community would rally around to send my brother to school. Because he was not one of them that was uplifting the face of the community by going to a high school, and I was no shaped up to one of the volatile communities in Jamaica which was to Hainan Park, and Edith Dalton James. And the only, the only thing I had that made me feel worthy of anything at all was, was dance and dance. So while students were in class, I would go into the auditorium and just dance, and just all of the, all of the reggae music and dance and music of the 80s is what I would do. And that is when I started to get some amount of visibility. And even when I left Edith Dalton James secondary school, I could not get a job of any worth with a SSC, which is a secondary school certificate. And I was out into the world as a dancer trying to get a name for myself. And I did not go back to college until I was 30 years old. I was 30 years old when I went to, to exit community college, and I didn't have a subject. I didn't have any kind of CXC subject. Let me do a little bit of framing, because for those who are not raised or educated in the Caribbean school system or the British school system. When you leave primary school, which is up until about middle school to getting a good high school, you have to take entrance exams, which Jamaicans call the common entrance, or what are some of the, I don't know, it was called a common entrance when I was there. What are they called? It was common entrance. I think it's what I'm calling. No, go ahead. No, I think they call it GSAT. No. GSAT. So you have to take these, these exams. So some of us, we have them near the, the essay, the SSATs, which will get you into a really good high school. And if you don't pass, if you, you, you have to pass subjects, English, math, science. And if you don't, depending on how many subjects you get, how many you pass, it turns the type of high school that you go to. And it's the type of life that you will have there on. So here you are, you didn't pass with any great and great number of subjects. So you now have to go to a school that is less resourced and will give you less access as far as your career. And you find a career in dance hall. Yes, that's exactly what I did. And it wasn't until I, I was making a name for myself in dance hall. In 1998, I choreographed every single dance piece that went into the National Stadium when Jamaica was campaigning for the World Cup. I was the youth. Before everybody know, know the name of the expression, they know the Russ and the 20 girls that run out on the stadium field. That's how the minister said. Yeah. And it was the same year. It was that year that a friend said to me, you are going to waste yourself away if you continue to just give your talent away without a formal education. I said, homie, I'll get a formal education in any institution with having CXC subjects. They demand that you have CXC subjects. And it was the same year that I begged my way into exit community college. And never become parts of Rick, it's never become Mr. Kenny someone who said to me, I will get you into the program, but you have to do the CXC's on the side. And I did that. That is when I got into the program and I was doing the subjects on the side and I ended up becoming the dance lecturer for exit community college dance hall lecturer, helping to write the first dance hall course that existed at exit. And the only issue I had with exit is that they didn't want to call it dance hall. They wanted to call it urban contemporary folk. And I said, no, I want a dance hall course online. And when I left exit, less than two months ago, after rewriting a dance hall course online, I know have a dance hall course online that is accredited by heart and seat of it. So it's, it's, it's extremely passionate for me because when I tell people that dance hall saved my life, there are so many different channels I could have taken. When I was at Utah, my brother was going to Calabar High School. When I was at Edith Delta and James we were green tie, Calabar color tie is green and black. I used to use black paint for right to draw the stripe on my tie because you were, you were looked down on going to a secondary school at that time, especially if you have a brother that went to high school. So I carved a niche. So when I speak to youngsters know about the power of dance hall, especially the fact that I've been a part of dancing dynamite for so many years and hear dancers complain about dance hall not getting enough visibility or respect. We have to be a part of that change. We have to be a part of how we propel dance hall forward, how we make people sit dance hall, and there's a certain level of self respect that we have to take within ourselves and a certain amount of knowledge. I realize that dance hall has to come from somewhere. This is how I started educating myself about things that existed before our traditional forms. We started a rock study reggae, 80s dance hall, 90s dance hall up to where we are today. So it's just a lifestyle for me. I used to lock gone as a youth. I used to give them gone for luck as a little youth. That is a that is a road that I could have taken and dance. Dance hall said, if you ever want to be a complete, not a failure in your life and you want to elevate yourself. The first thing I think about whenever you come in the morning is dance. The last thing before I go to my bed is dance. So this is what I must be doing. Wow. It's an incredible story. Powerful dynamic stories of your entrance and your relationship currently with dance hall hearing how this art form for you orville transformed your life and listening to you three and it puts me in the mind of hip hop culture. I know that I may end up stepping on some toes with my fellow dance hall purists because we don't like the comparison and all of that and I'm a dance hall purist but I want to talk a little about dance hall and hip hop because many people say hip hop comes from dance hall but hip hop doesn't come from dance hall. Hip hop and dance hall are parallel movements that is always here. And it is the compression. As you all are explaining it is the compression of the experiences that we we encountered being the descendants of the transatlantic slave trade that gives us and leads us to hip hop and dance hall. And they intersect. If you notice during the 60s with with with the mobile dance hall the roots of dance hall is in scar rock steady, which is verging in the new world, we have a convergence of the black Americans in the American south in in the industrial north, creating this music that is called blues R&B in the Caribbean. We are listening to this blues R&B coming off of the radio. And we are inspired by Marley was and well as was a R&B quintet when they started. Yeah, and something happens around the time of independence in 1962. And it's what is happening because we're seeing Jeff cares in the 60s Jeff cares is assassinated. Dr. King is assassinated. Malcolm X is assassinated. There is a lot happening in the world at this time. And the creativity creates converges in these two kind of global centers of the United States and the Caribbean, but we get hip hop coming out of funk, right. We get dance all coming out of reggae rocks. And something happens in the late 70s around the time that we, the panelists were born and continue throughout the 80s, and it's dance all and it's hip hop, and they're working as parallel movements and everything you that you have described here in your stories. We see in both cultures. That space for a second. Yes. There's, it's, it's two groups of people telling their story based on what they were experiencing at the time. And that is why both exploded. Yeah, and it's just demographic that changed it. I mean, in the US, there's a bigger space that could lift hip hop to a certain level, but dance all and reggae was the voice that had to be heard. When we were, it was, it was a pain and it was a pain and the social issues that was happening to people in reggae music that make people and this dynamic way that reggae was played. When people talk about skin we can most of the emphasis of skin is on the second and fourth beat one, two, three, four, but reggae know is that third beat where people could one, two, three, four, and that is why we get that kind of grounded something in our bodies. But it was, it was what we were living that was coming out into the music that had to be heard. So it's really two of people that were oppressed that were speaking to their music and their dance moves that just exploded onto the world stage. Mm hmm. You know, you talk about I'm going to talk about the one drop you talk about that third beat. We in reggae music we in dance I'll call it the one drop I'm going to talk about the one drop. What I want to do next is I want to bring in nettleford, the great professor nettleford. Neela as a former student of professor nettleford at Uimona. When I'm where does professor Rex nettleford enter the conversation on dance all how does he he intersect as a scholar and as a very highbrow artist artist, how does he intersect dance all culture. Wow. Okay, so so professor nettleford as an artist scholar scholar artist because it's all one. He, he, I mentioned earlier had a love affair with all kinds of music. Right. I mean, all kinds. In fact, if you wanted to find new music, you'd be able to find it from going to the seasons of dance of NDTC, because he would have found something, something new we're here Miriam McCabe as voice here are some you masochil over here say here are some Peter touch. You hear Jim if you've never heard before. And then you take it I use it in festival because you love it so much but which is a competition that happens annually in Jamaica. But he was a man of, of many musical loves, and he brought that into his space to speak about whatever you had to speak about on stage. Um, but that was also coming from him understanding the real center of Caribbean power and the real center of Jamaica and power. And that centers ourselves. When I was at UI as an undergraduate student, I remember having to read and it wasn't for his course but we have to study him in Caribbean political thought really so we also studied Bojo. And we, he, he wrote an article, well it's a chapter called battle for space in the seminal book in word stretch outward reach right man I love that book. And that particular chapter does kind of open my eyes as to G's on peace. This is who I have to be as a Jamaican artist. This is what I have to know as a Caribbean artist. I am actually at the center and everything else is peripheral. A lot of times what we have been taught, especially because we are still living in colonial legacy in as much as we call ourselves post colonial right is that we must look to a metropole. We are small island and we're always looking outside we know what is going on over there we know what's happening over there so we're aware of all the news. We want the latest trends. And that kind of outward stretch before you were outward reach before you actually do an inward stretch is the problem. How much have you interrogated on inside of what you have. How much do you love your, your Bush medicines from your grandmother, or you know the stories that your that your grandfather would tell you in our native password language, before you go to and try to learn somebody else's he during with his writings with his with his academic work with his artistic work was trying to turn that lens for us back onto us to remind us that we are where we start and I mean he was not. He was not the only one they're not the only Caribbean voicing this Lloyd best of Trinidad and Tobago brilliant thought leader there said I am my own first world. I am my own first world. I am my own first world. Yes, yes, yes, I am my own first world and when you when you think about that and link that with how many other scholars and so on we're saying the same thing. Dance always in the same thing too. Mm hmm. And I think professional but also recognize that so there was no way, for example, a regular dancer would not be included in the soundtracks to the music, and I don't just mean by lyrics you know I just I also mean by as I was breaking it down a while ago about the rhythm the kind of rhythms are telling the story already. The rhythms give you the idea about what is going on already where that impasse is drops, says something different every time you hear it, then you add the layer of the melody of the layer of the lyrics. And Professor understood that very well. He worked with Miss, Miss Wiley Miss Wiley Marjorie Wiley for so many years as musical director in terms of crafting the music whether it was done live or done. He recorded dance hall reggae, whatever it was, he crafted it to be able to tell the story that he wanted to tell. And there was no piece of music that was beyond reach or below. You know there was no below for him. There was only center. And so I found the kind of example that he gave also as this artist scholar, very, very secure in self, which made other people uncomfortable. And when you are centered in yourself. So many are going to be uncomfortable think about dance hall. Think about how many people in dance hall are centered in themselves they're living there, them living them life. And there are so many outside who are so uncomfortable with that when you live and sit in your authenticity and you use your authenticity and authenticity to rise. Those who thrive on being in the authentic are going to be very upset. And so he knew that, you know, so he amplified dance hall in works. He amplified dance hall in thoughts and philosophy. He amplified reggae music. He amplified kumina and other traditional forms. His was the thing of amplification of what belongs to us so that we understand that it's not about us being on par with with anybody else in the galaxy. We just are who we are and then eventually, just like the sun, they will orbit, and they will come. Wow. I am my own center. Loibes first world. I am my own first. No, the developmental psychologists teach you that the child's first place of belonging is in the home. Yes, child's first love is the mother, the mother of the father, the person, the caretaker, the caregiver who centers them in their lives. And in passing on and the beauty of what you're saying here, Nila is dance hall allows us to is a vehicle that allows us to enter into our own centering. We're going to talk about movements in a minute. I'm going to try to control my little body here. No, don't, don't, don't. It's a part of the dialogue. I'm going to be very professional and keep it steady. But before we go into the movement and the body parts, we're going to talk with Marlon about you worked with Dr. Nettlesford. You are only the third artistic director of the NDTC, which was founded in 1962, 63 am I getting right around the time of Jamaica's independence. So you really are a torch bearer of a legacy that predates. But now you hold that and you work with him and you studied with him. Tell us about what Nettlesford meant for the NDTC and how that showed up in dance hall. And then I also want you to talk a little bit about, as we talk about centering ourselves, you did a piece of choreography to one of my favorite tiger songs. So that's all you think about the lyrics of that song. That is a song that really talks about centering and grounding and routine. And we'll talk a little bit more about the one drop in a minute, but Marlon talk to us about working with Dr. Nettlesford and then carrying his baton into the 21st century. Well, I mean, I can tell you that when I first met Professor Nettlesford way back when I was a student at the University of the West Indies, I never imagined that I would have been leading the NDTC today. And this is someone who I'd always heard about. I'd always see the NDTC on television. I've always admired the company, but I was just, I just felt as though it was several light years away in terms of that particular generation. And having a foray to the company was just not in my thinking. However, my entry into dance, which was through dance hall music, and through my first performance in dance hall as a part of that audition in high school doing tigers when it seemed to have been what has been a part of my self discovery and a part of my artistic interest into always infusing dance on what I do. And I believe that that became more evident and more profound in my life after I met Professor Nettlesford. And every third year students at the University of the West Indies, I know you, and neither was I do at the time, you have to do what is called a carbon studies. If you're an arts, arts faculty, and he was my supervisor. And I can remember the first time I met him because you know you have to make an appointment to see him because he's busier than the Pope. And I made an appointment with the secretary and I remember. I went to the office when it was time and was extremely nervous because this is a man who was just so iconic that you couldn't even envision him in the flesh. And I went to his office and I waited with the secretary on the outside and then she says, you know, you can go in. And when I went to his office, he was behind the mountain of books on his desk. And he was the most he was warm. He was welcoming. He was engaging. And let me tell you, we spoke for a very long time. Actually, I listened for a very long time, because I really did not know what to add to the conversation. The expense of his knowledge and his ability to articulate his ideas so freely was in itself just a powerful demonstration of his knowledge, his expertise and experience, and how he could communicate all of that in a small nugget on a very impressionable mind at that time. And let me tell you, when he spoke to me, he needed to say no more. This man was going to become my mentor. And so I had to learn his works, too, because I was in university dance society. And at that time, I was Dan, so I was mighty. Yes, we had the modern, but when it comes to Dan, so there was Marlon. We were introduced to the work of the NDTC, two works that were staged on us, excerpts. And that was how I began to learn the NDTC style and then I began to make the connection between Jamaican experience as a moving culture, the Jamaican experience as in the amalgamation of these forms to create art on stage. And most importantly, how this form is used to showcase Jamaican and Caribbean excellence. And that for me was an important thing. And in working with him closely, I mean, I started working with him because I joined the company in 1999. One of the things that he would always make these, give these mantras, and we'd have these conversations, and he was famous for saying things, he didn't quite know what they meant until probably a couple years and we're like, oh, that's what he meant. But one of the things that stuck with me was when he said, excellence is achieved through hard work, dedication, application, commitment, sustained application, high concentration, discipline, and generosity of spirit. And let me tell you that was a part of everything that he did. And he, in a very magical way, he was able to pull all of that out of you. It was about how he was personally able to relate to you as a human being, and how he was able to see you as an individual. And how he believed that the individual could bring something special to the process of creating work that itself is about you. And so he made you feel as if your voice was important in the process of expressing this Jamaican identity. And so you felt as though you were part of something that was greater than you. And something that was far more important because you have this vested interest in putting your voice in a mass of voices that have to come up with the Caribbean to kind of speak about excellence that can only be found here. And now I'm excited that it is, I am, I really just think I have one totally shoe, because you can only be professor once and professor never is professor never put and said it's really my steam on it to be kind of company on this particular leg of the journey because now I have to look at what the legacy is. Let's look about what our generation is doing with this particular legacy. And let's also look at how he was able to have to shape our artistry. I remember once I was doing our work. And I was, to be honest, I was looking at home, you know, I was looking towards North American because I was like, okay, what can I draw on to kind of inform my creative process. And I remember he told me I'm signing this at Maryland. Come here. You know, he had a nice accent. He told me you're in your work. But I think you should look closer to home. And let me tell you, I never, I've never, I've never forgotten that conversation. And it was a turning point for me, because it was his way of refocusing my attention on what we have. And it was really important things within our culture that need to be recognized and need to be celebrated. And he also had to refocus me because I think it was his way of saying the introspection and celebration of our people have to continue. Right. It doesn't stop with it. And it just stayed with me. And so I must tell you, when I'm in a very difficult spot and thinking about, oh my goodness, what do I do. I say, what would professor do? How we would, how would he handle the situation. And fortunately for us, he has left so many writings and research and thoughts and philosophies and ideologies and ideas about how we can be so rooted in our culture and how we can take what we're rooted in to help to develop who we are as an individual, how we can better serve our families, how we can better serve our community, and how we can better serve our Jamaican and Caribbean society. And it is always those writings and those researches that we go to, to get that intellectual further information that we sometimes need to embolden our confidence to put forward some creative and artistic ideas that we know will continue his work. The work of the art form will continue the work within the culture so that certain things are not forgotten. I must tell you too, I know I'm saying that in a very short time, that professor also believed that in the history of music and reggae is the ideas of the Jamaican people. So I believe that he was using his time over his period as 48 years as artist and director of the NDTC to find those nuggets of ideas within the music to bring on to the stage and crafting these ideas on the bodies to express them. And for him that was just not enough to movement. So he had to bring the live component because that's an important part of our African ancestry music and dance go together. So he had the live music. He had the music, the singers as a part of that expression and then he had the dancers and together they presented what is most what is strongest in our culture, which is the African retention of the relationship between music and dance. So he had a struggle, I believe, with finding that balance between doing recorded music, because he loves certain artists and a few. He loved Tosebert, love Bob Marley, love Papa Livia, Gregory Isaacs, Jimmy Click, Burning spray, Peter Tosh, Freddie MacGregor, and he also loved Bujibantan. God, the sitar come here now. Come with Bujibantan. We are going to talk about it. He loved Bujibantan and he would always try to find thematic ideas within the music of these voices coming out of that particular aspect of our culture to bring life to the movement and the stories that he had to tell. Your dance was like a canvas to him. You know, the bodies are like canvases and movement in poetry. But most importantly, he had to, the sort of philosophical ideas that he had had to resonate through the performance and it had to cross the footlights into the hearts and minds of the people. So when you leave that theatre at the end of an ending to the performance, you're not only celebrating what you saw on stage, you're celebrating yourself. There was no, nothing more performed than seeing black bodies of all shapes and sizes who look like you on the stage celebrating things that you do on a daily basis that you may not have thought of as being as excellent as anything else across the world. And for people who is coming, coming, coming from hundreds of years of suffering and separation and discrimination and all kinds of atrocities, Professor Rednett but knew that it was important for people to see themselves and to see the goodness within themselves. And so I think from a very early point in his life he recognized his purpose. It was something that he had to do. And he also ensured that the job that he started had to continue. And so when he knew, and this is that's why some people say professors are all the amount of what himself said it as well. When he recognized that he was going up in years, he started a succession planning. And he died in 2010 but as early as 2005 probably early on, he started a mantra, renewal and continuity. Renewal because he recognized that there were generations coming up behind him. Continuity, because the dance and the work that he started had to continue. And I'm going to leave you there for now. You know, I'm going to, I've been carrying a little secret in my heart for 20 years. I know I don't look old enough, but I met Dr. Nettlefield. In 2020, I was on a small delegation of US students who took an intercession course at the University of the West Indies called Jamaica Today. And we were a group in the group or a group of African American girls, we were black girls and there came a point where we were feeling very pressed as black girls in the group. Nettlefield without knowing we were to go to a lecture, and we had never met him. And we had our dashikis on and our, you know, we're in Jamaica so we're putting on our colors we're really showing up black power we it's the closest thing to Africa that we had at the time. And he comes up behind us and he says, look at the adornment of these African queens. I tell you, it was like fresh rain water on a desert sand, it was so needed, somebody needed to, we were, we were so pressed. And we needed the loving that day. And here comes this voice behind us, look at the adornment of these African queens. And, you know, eventually he did the lecture and he said something to me which, you know, I'll keep, I'll keep it in my heart but I'll tell you, Nettlefield sent me here. I'm a big Afro futurist. And in 2020 in 2000 on the steps of the Sherlock. As you walk into going to the Philip Sherlock Center at the University of the West Indies which is a theater on the university's campus. He said something to me. And I'll never forget what he said, and it brought me here. So all of what you know when I call him the Godfather of Jamaica's culture, you, I hope our listeners and the people who are studying and learning about Jamaica understand why, why I've dubbed him that. I'm going now into movement. So much of what you say, what you're all saying but what you said, Marlon resonates. As far as where where the culture is what I want to talk a little bit about the sound and movement sound so rest of mine said word sound power word sound power is a huge part of reggae is a huge part of dance all and movement the physicality. And I know all three of y'all can take this question to the moon and back. I want you to so have fun. I'll shorten the Q&A don't worry. But I want to talk about the sound. Right. When I hear the one drop as Orville you you you referenced it earlier, the beat on the three so the one it's called the one drop because you drop the first beat. So it's and what I can't call it. I'm not a drummer, but basically they drop the first beat and it's on the third beat that the impact is sound so when you listen to the one drop. When I hear it, I hear a work song. I hear a plow to the ground. I'm not surprised by Molly worked, you know, in the US on mechanics, he was, he would have heard that flow to the ground. So when we talk about dance all culture being rooted into the liberty of the people and the movement, the sound is in the body. Where's where the physical movements in the body. I want to start. I know you're going to take this and I can't wait. I want to talk about the actual body parts from thoracic movements, pelvic movements, movements of the limbs. Where do the movements live on the body and the owner take it. Go ahead. I won't point it anybody want to talk first go go with it but where where do the movements live and their significance of these movements. Wow. Wow. I want to jump in because I think I think I know where to start. I think they start in here. In the heart. They start in the heart. Wow. They start they start in that kind of that kind of like fundamental resonance. They come out as various things through hands and through rhythms over time. Right. I'm taking this that that spectral view of everything. Where where the movements come through has to be traced back to where the DNA of the movements comes from. I will mention retentions or I will mention retentions. What we have in our body container is remnants of what was brought over by our generations of ancestors who held on to that rhythm information and held on to that movement information and understanding of what the body is supposed to do and can do what kind of portalities for transformation and albeit four years of 400 years of fragmentation violence held on to it so much so that to this day it comes through through down through pelvis through spine through through the movement of the head in particular instances through any part of the body that needs to speak at a certain time. And most it is very very relevant and related to traditional farms, even some of those that that were birth in Jamaica and traditional forms that came over from our ancestors in parts of Africa and that we kept in the in the crucible of the body as best as possible. In as much as we can we can have that physical discussion, you know, we can talk about, you know, this movement, you'll find it there and the pelvis is central for particular reason, which I love as well because the reason why the pelvis is central is totally antithetical to the European part of our ancestry. It's not it's not erotic and it's not nasty and it's not base and it's not vulgar it's life. That's what it is it's life. It is central and important to life. It is it is it is and that's why it is also circular. It moves in a circular fashion. So anything else that comes out of that is great but at the beginning of that, it is it is central to life and the fact that it's central to dance hall speaks to what dance hall is and can be to us, because it's a place where you cannot repress a pelvis. Well, hmm. So for some, the pelvis is repressed and that is gender related. And that is something that can be challenged and questioned now because everybody have a pelvis. So, so and everybody suppose it can work or else life can happen. So, so you meaning meaning, look at what it is for what it is and not not through the lenses of maybe a divided European consciousness. Through a lens of eroticism. Yeah, exactly. You know, you talk about the movement of the pelvis and the suppression the repression of the pelvis. It's interesting, and you talk about the spine, right, and the heart. These are, if you think about them be there are chakra chakra systems right so you have a heart, you have a heart chakra, which is, is that what which one is that chakra are these points on the body that ancient people believe were energized right and then you have your first chakra is in your pelvis your life chakra is in your pelvis so that's powerful moving into I want to toss this to to Orville to talk about the movements and the repression of the pelvis, especially for our men. Why are the men's pelvis with repressed repressed in are the Jamaican men's let me let me fix that question because I know shots are going to get fired at me right now. The Jamaican men's pelvis repressed right now. You're muted you're muted or bill unmute. Yeah. Yeah, so I agree with, with me that this is where it starts here. Yeah. So for me, it starts in the heart, and then the pelvis is what gives it life, you know, send it out to the world. All right. It's interesting. It's, it's so interesting because there are a couple of things that's associated with how a man move them waistline not answer as opposed to how a woman move our waistline woman will always go for the 360 degree rotation deep pelvic movement. And the man them loves to that the man them now developed that thing that we call the infinity sign with the waistline does this, instead of this circular movement. So it's more of an infinity sign, both of which is never ending. Yeah, that is what it. Yeah. So the figure eight is what and both movements never ending. And it is a beauty to watch those two movements collide in a rubber dub. And if I go back to looking what Robert is saying, when a man and woman and look at their three primary movements for them using the rubber dub you have you have you have the water pump you have the cool and deadly. I have the slide and wine. So, when, when, when, when the woman use the cool and deadly waistline the man would impress her with that figure eight waistline at the same moment them use the S 90 skin color that. However, when we read what they send us my own research and just, you know, noticing things. Part of the reason why a lot of us in dance all couldn't relate to the winding of the waistline. It's because there are certain things we couldn't do as a youth when we are grown. Right. So, we, when, when you're comfortable like put on your mother shoes and your mother dress are very, very as a youth you couldn't do these things. But then as you get older and you start to research especially for me as a dancer you put a dancer people don't do hardcore dancer people. We start realizing it is something that goes way back in our culture because Jamaica was the hub for buck breaking. When they used to rape, yeah, but breaking when they used to rape, but breaking is when they used to rape the male slaves in front of their families. Now if a lot of people don't know that happened here in Jamaica was the hub for buck breaking in the Caribbean. So when the slaves were running away, and the slave masters would capture them and kill them and lynch them. The slave master said don't kill them, break them, and how they would break them is that they would spread them out and they would use a board and rock barbed wire and it and sodomize them in front of their families. And so this was passed down to a generation that anything that anything that looks effeminate young men young young Jamaican men must not take it on. It's not until my big money can my my my my finances purse, she couldn't give me a purse for whole. A youth couldn't walk and flip him on so in in my site with me and broke into the inner city. If I would go so with him, he might get beaten. That is what stopped me from the first time I got to Stella Maris I got a scholarship to go to Stella Maris and just the fact that we got your answer the monument at tights and say it was a year after that I decided that. The Stella Maris thing but no anything that look effeminate. So it, they were not broken where they wouldn't pass it down to their kids. They decided no whining, no breaking, no effeminate movement, no high squeaky voice, no. So that was taken away from us a certain freedom of movement in the city youth, half of us cannot articulate why we are not why we are so homophobic we can truly articulated. It was maybe six years ago that I was able to articulate it because I started to research about what working and understood what was happening here in Jamaica. And why Jamaica men just decided say before me do this, me just to direct here, I met my waistline move this way rather than a full circle. Yeah, but we were still able to tell that story through our waistline because I cannot break the waistline. Now, when we got to this was what was happening in the 80s. It was the figure eight waistline that was happening. And then no, when Boge came in 1992, Boge gave us a different waistline. Boge was a very popular choreographer of Jamaican dancehall. All of the dancing elephant man doing created by. Yeah, yeah man. So Boge came out and Boge said waistline, we're going to use waistline and Boge started with the bones from left to right. So a part of the history of what I want to put it in, even used to associated with Boge was moving in the big up for the man, never realized that Boge will come from Donga. Well, they knew that Boge come from Arnett Garden, but remember, when the people come from out of St. Thomas and come in a town, I don't know Arnett Garden with him. Boge saw these kind of movements. A ghetto of Kingston, right? Yeah man. One of the hardcore inner city areas. So when Boge started watching the people who come in a dance and hold a waistline, he started giving that bones. So when people even misrepresent Boge by focusing on the hands doing this, it wasn't that Boge waistline. Some movements like Stuckey dance and other things that come out of the Boge type waistline. And if you know what, when Bujubantan dance, when in a deep gear, at a big waistline movement there, Boge, because the first thing is nobody saw Boge dance coming. That's some from Bujubantan. Nobody saw that coming. But he was so impressed as a dancer, a DJ, getting into Rastafarian with just how Boge's movement was more spiritual than effeminate. So that is how we get a Bujubantan to do Boge dance. I'm going to, I'm going to step into a little bit of what may be our aunts' nest. But me, me as a Karamanthi woman, so I'm a strong, I can, I can, I'm about to come out now. We talk about, you mentioned St. Thomas and what you, you, you, you were speaking a little bit in code, so I have to decode for those who don't know what you're talking about. You said St. Thomas and the people, them doing their dance, the kumina. What we're talking about are the people who retain the practices of kumina and which is an African religious practice that involves in dancing and connecting to the ancestors through dance. And it's frowned upon because Jamaica is, in addition to many things, it is a parochial society, right, a patriarchal parochial society. So the African, many, many things are suppressed in Jamaica, the Africanism's expression of, of, of, you know, the culture does have a lot of homophobia. And when you talk about Buju, Buju's known, he has become the kind of poster child, unfortunately, of homophobia in dance hall and a sewer spot for many people, a soren sewer spot, no matter where you are. Even as people of Jamaica, queer Jamaicans love his music, but there is that song, the song that he has also demonetized. He no longer plays the song, no longer receives any funding. And we won't talk about the song because the song is extremely harsh. But those who know what we're talking about, you know, and if you don't know, we'll look it up. So when we talk about that, there are two places that you just hit on in our Arvela, we can make, we can just, we can just make it it and don't speak to it. No one reason. Africanism and one thing is the blatant homophobia of Jamaica that has to stop because it's limiting us in, it's limiting us on so many levels. I'm going to talk on my own and talk to us as men, how do we fix it? Because it's there. There's a suppression of our African culture and there's a suppression and this very violent homophobia that shows up unfortunately in the dance hall and it is suppressing us. And on black men's bodies, talk to that. How do we fix it? How do we move forward from it? I'll go to Marlon and then come in with it again, Arvela and Nila. I'm going to turn this over to the Q&A. Yes, sir. Alright, so you've taken us there. I, how do we fix it? I mean, let me go back a little bit and I'll talk to an experience that I had, which is similar to what Orvis experience has been growing up in Jamaica, doing very well at your homophobic environment, and certain activities or certain behaviors will draw negative attention and it may evoke certain things in other persons around you, which could end up harming you in several ways, physically, mentally, that kind of a thing based on the backlash that you will receive. Some of it you are not even fully aware of what you are doing or what you might be offensive to someone else, but it just ends up being because of certain things that are acceptable within certain spaces, based on who has a dominant voice in that space. Now, I remember when I was a student at the University of West Indies and I was learning, I was coming up to the dancehall experience because it was all I knew and all I cared about. And then we had to learn dances or the forms of dances, modern, as we really got into learning modern dance. And I go in where my step pants, I remember I had one black sweat pants, that was my dance gear. But we were learning pieces. I remember we were learning prophets and it, but I think it wasn't ritual or the sunrise, it was. I remember the name of the piece now taught by Arlene Richard back then he sent her over to the company to teach us this work, and we had to wear tights. And I remember the males in the dance were so uncomfortable, but we're tights, but we're tights, but we're tights. I remember we call it informal meeting. It wasn't an issue, Nila was president then. Sorry Marlon, Marlon is flash of the spirit. The spirit. Yes, Rex Knight of the piece. And we had an informal meeting about it because we talked to the choreographer, because the costumes are being made. And we just could not reveal ourselves to the audience in a particular light because we know that once the magic of the art form is finished and the show is over, we have to leave the stage and re-engage the public. And if we're going to go out into society. Yeah, we're going to go out into society. We may face an awful backlash. And so we brought our concerns to the chorus. Listen, the dance is nice, we love it. But reality is society may not accept us on stage in a particular way. And the interesting thing was she was very, she was very understanding. And she went and she created this brown patch that covered the front of the costume. So it became more of a very tribal African look, which made us feel more secure in wearing it. And then of course, the fabric was skin tones. It looked like skin and we look like tribesmen. We were able to wrap our mind around that representation without feeling as though people were drawn to the fact that we are wearing tights. So today, how do we change that is through conversation. And I'm not going to go as far as to say that Jamaica is the most comfortable country in the world, as some persons in the press may want to advocate or say that we are because I believe that Jamaica is far more tolerant to know than when we when I grew up in the 70s, 80s and stuff like that. And I think this changing through globalization information, families that have accepted certain things or behaviors is just about the space you're in, culture within that space, and the kind of conversations that happen in that space. What kind of conversations do I have with my students? And then young people in general, I have these conversations. How do you feel about wearing tights? They may reject it and they may say it's perfectly okay. And one of the things I asked him is, but if you don't want to wear tights because you're so self-conscious about your body, then how then can you support Anasaka, and Usain Bolt, don't they wear tights on the track? And then they're able to cross-reference that viewpoint to say, well, if they can wear it, so can I, because they look at those individuals as the epitome of masculinity. Masculinity, yeah. Usain Bolt and Anasaka are powerful, of course. Right, and so if they're comfortable wearing tights, then I guess nothing is wrong with wearing it. And very soon... It's a man thing. Right, it's a man thing, you know. That's how you get to run fast. That's how you get to show the body. You look strong. If you wear big baggy sweatpants, you probably won't see the problem half as fast. And so you use that kind of perspective to kind of get them to understand how certain gears that you wear are important for certain kinds of activities that you do, and it has nothing to do with your sexuality. That's exactly what it comes down to. Trying to demarcate where does sexuality stop and where does the art form begin? And it is really through education. Whilst you may use the art form to express elements of sexuality because it is a part of life, we can't deny it. It is, it does not make you what people perceive you to be. Who you are in your personal life can be completely different from who you are in the practice of the art form too. Because to be quite honest, sexualities are in every profession, not only in dance. And so the idea of it just being confined to dance as an art form is quite an unfair perception. And that only happens because of the visibility of the art forms. So I believe that in order to address the issue head on, we would have to have critical conversations within different stakeholders or different social groupings about identity, about dance as an art form, about people's rights, individual rights, about justice, about creating space for people to be themselves and to be individuals. And these are all difficult and uncomfortable conversations. But if there is no dialogue about it, then what has happened in the past will be perpetuated. And I believe that in 2020, there's far more room now to have certain kinds of conversation that I would have never, never envisioned having in the 1980s when I was growing up. The kind of discomfort and the kind of rigid approach to understanding each other and accepting each other. There was no space for that to happen. And I go back to my earlier point, the only way that we can change the state of school or the ideas or the beliefs or the perception is to have meaningful dialogue in the spaces where this is a major issue that directly impacts people's lives. Livelihood, identity, and their ability to be themselves. Orville, how do we, how do we fix it? The constrictions around the black male body. And also the genderization of movement, woman movement, man movement. Tell this belongs to every human being. So how do we deal with that first point of life? Yes, sir. You're muted. You're muted, sir. Okay, yeah. I agree with Marlon holistically when we talk about the conversation, having conversation. Setting the platform for these conversations is also very important. All right, indulge me a little bit, Camille, go around the place. Yes, because of classism in Jamaica, it shut down a whole heap of things that should happen. I should have, I should have certain conversations and certain education of the young black male here in Jamaica. So we are restricted to a certain sector of society where we think that what we're saying, how we say it will not be listened to because we are not seen as educated. No, let's just go back to. I was introduced to the power of Rex nettleford's work in maybe 2003, when a big minority, I was already an adult same, and that came through patsy rickets and money colorance from Stella Mars. Now, even Rex nettleford and NDTC, they're, to me as a young man growing up and the friends that were around me, their portrayal of dance hall was what we saw as a watered down version. Because we felt that the focus was more on modern contemporary or ballet than dance hall. There was a run is to dance hall that we feel was never a part of the application is almost like we want pretty top for the rest of the world watching. So instead of a wine with the pelvis and instead of NDTC people and one with them pelvis them one would appear or so, and they never want to get deep rooted in. So, and this know I'm saying this to say that it was because of the division because when my link can see Professor nettleford as a man who is just always busy. And I saw him as an elite, where we could never get to your site so there was a difference now this is where we saw classes in and realize okay, that's why, if, if anybody for up on tour. I like a dance group down to the inner city and where because it is reserved for these elite people, well spoken man. A man with that influence a whole lot of people, but because of this marginalization that is happening in our society. The inner city that should be listening to a Rex nettleford did not get that chance to listen to him and know the power of what he's bringing. Now, everything with me do when we start when I got introduced because parts of it said to me because I put parts circuits. When I went wrong to still am as the first time and saw that the men in tights. I go to answer by anti parts in the early battle to know cause you want to come back. If any of my friend them sitting in a tights in the summer leave the partner, as she said to me, you can never be a student of dance by thinking that dance is the only thing that is going to take you there. Now, when I started to. I wanted to do a merge between what was modern contemporary and what was done so and she wanted to use me to represent it because she thought as a raw down south person, I was able to do it, but it wasn't an original idea that this is what was coming out of Professor nettleford. And then when I finally got into Stella Maris now I saw again what money colorings was doing with dance all and merging it to give it give it this international feel merging what we did here in dance all with a little bit of modern and I realized again that this is something that was coming from Professor nettleford so why was there this gap between us that stop young men like myself coming up from understanding the power of what this man was doing. It was because of classism. It was because one set of people did seem elite and because of that know the lack of education for the community in a city that understood only that homosexuality is wrong. That's one way them see, and if homosexuality is wrong, and it means that if you're wearing a waistline, you will be representing a woman. They're not supposed to be none at all. There's no way that I should be representing myself like that. So not just saying that we need conversation. We absolutely have to set platforms and insist that us as educators reach out there to the grassroots people, put them into the space to have that conversation. And I know I'm one of that medium because I work on both sides of the fence and understand it, we need to bring them together to have this conversation. I can freely wind my waistline now as a dance. I get to you to still live in the inner city. I can freely do it because I know what to explain and how to explain it. Let me tell you what I, how I talk to these dance. I started learning about modern contemporary and ballet. I understood because it was explained to me that it deals with lines and angles. So putting yourself in the close meeting tights. You get a chance to see what is happening with the body in terms of the contractions and the water. So we know that this is what how the body moves, we have to sit in tights and ready. So these dance all dancers are wearing tight jeans. And me asked them the question, what is your explanation for wearing tight jeans? Why would you wear tights? Look at the jeans look like a tights. So this is, this is my argument. Okay. So now, so you're saying it's, it's based on fashion, but how do I get to see the body? How do I get to see the body to correct the body? If the body of a movie for the pelvis in action. Logic. So this is where we want to go with it, but we need to call them into the space. And I have to let me have a pop my color and have a pop a Neela Ibangs color because we did a lot of this in for dancing dynamite. You get the answer. So we were able to bring them into the Edna Manila space. So a little inner city you could say, All right, this is first position. This is how you pull up. This is how you get the body to look tall. This is what a contraction is. This is. So what we need to do is pass it on and make sure that we are reaching not just think that we're reaching them, but make sure we're reaching them. I want to understand what I'm saying. It's not for you. Don't worry about it. But what you're actually saying. And I'm going to toss this to Neela is it's conversation, but it's access for people, marginalized people, people of different classes, people, because homophobia is not just among the poor marginalized ghetto people. The homophobia is among the elite. The homophobia is among the middle class, the petty bourgeois. It's among the bourgeois. It's among the people. It is a consciousness. We are programmed against ourselves. The class system, the homophobia, the genderization is a consciousness of the collective that is programmed against the people. It's one of the things that is oppressing us. So what you're speaking to Orville and Marlon, and I'm going to toss this to Neela because I know Neela is about to beat us real bad with it now. Is that conversation, we need access and we need to move the barriers, yes, right, that allow us to face each other, to see each other and to understand the fullness of our humanity. I understand that badmine on all levels suppresses everything about ourselves. You can't say beat us Christ, but you're going to burn a bat in mine. It just don't work. Listen, let me tell you, and it is, it is, it is so intertwined. It is so, so deeply intertwined. But when you have a knot what you do. You're unpick it one part at a time and you figure what is going on. In conversation here we have my brothers have spoken about things that are part of the unpicking of the knot, right. And that knot is at the center of us not really knowing all of ourselves because if you're programmed to hate yourself that mean you hate other parts. Yeah, that you think are not you, but we're all the same. Right. There is there's a way in which it is it is tied to these larger ideas is larger system is larger social systems is larger conversations about gender where those happening. Interesting in the dance hall is where a lot of conversation is happening around gender. So maybe that is where we have to really have the access the openness, so that that can feed into the larger populace. The church also has a lot of conversation about gender or beating up in a quieter sort of voice or different under with a different rhythm under it, but it's still there. How can those conversations happen, because when people are ready they draw for the Bible, but they can't tell you every single thing they can that they're going by in terms of the Bible. So, these conversations are important because we have inherited particularly a lot of gender, as you said, generalizations, generalisms that are binary in a certain kind of way when human experience is not really binary. And the categorization is not binary. Yes, it's not binary. No, not at all. So, I mean, for example, with masculinity, what has happened is that the masculinity is are seen as opposite to femininities. When the truth is within masculinity, if it is really balanced is a topsof femininity there has to be because there's humanity, a crying must happen feelings must happen. Those things that people consider to be feminine, but I just traits must happen. So suppose you can go 360 degrees, though, because you're built that way. And it might be good for your partner also if you can do that. Hey, that's something I'm just, you know, throwing out there. So, you know, so, which is something interesting is that Eastern Caribbean men have always wondered why Jamaican men don't just loosen up, because Eastern Caribbean men don't have no issues necessarily about them gender masculinity and stuff. So, so, so, so even within the region there are all these different kind of ideas where Orville spoke about the book breaking and Jamaica centrality in that so we kind of understand the resistance. But I will tell you even that when somebody's the dance are you them talented enough to come to school and dance. When you work with anatomy, we have to do some extra work with them in terms of unlocking them pelvis, you know, is not a joke. Because the pelvis is so tightly held that the other things that they want to be able to excel at the length that they want to the back of the hamstrings to get an extension to kick up the leg to do the full expression of themselves as dancers. It can happen because of my luck and the pelvis. And so there's as Marlon said there's this constant dialogue that we have we work with that at the school of dance a lot. Right. But what is that happening in other dance spaces. Is that happening in dance spaces besides Orville space that he has a sphere of influence over is there a national conversation about genders and gender dynamics and understanding of sexual orientation versus sexualities. Is that really happening. And that that maybe some pressure that we have to put on our minister ministry of gender affairs now, because we're at a time where you're finding that those those sorts of consciousnesses are moving us away from the possibility to evolve and to really get back to the center of ourselves and to live authentically and centrally you have to be able to unpick and say okay so I inherited that from there. Do I want to keep that as a legacy. Is that painful for us is that helpful. We have a choice. We have a choice and dance all gives it that that's part is a perfect capsule to make a determination for ourselves. This is what we are presented with. This is a crucible we have now is everything to be kept well because you know. Interestingly, I think it was stood out most recently, banned female genital mutilation and child marriage like really like like last week or something it was announced. That's an ingrained part of their cultural and religious experience. It has taken years of dialogue, political work, activism for that to be unpicked for it to actually go to a parliament and they say okay we are doing it. We have to choose. It's a cultural retention is something that was was handed down, but it's not for the good of everyone. There are people who are marginalized and hurt because of it and so they made a decision. We can make the same decision regarding some of our cultural things that are not serving us into the future. It's a place about it's a center of light for us. It's a light that shines around the world. We never intended for it to do so but it did so. And so we have to allow it to shine in our own selves again and really see for what it is, put it on a particular track is empowering for everyone. That is that is all encompassing that is honourable, authentic, full of integrity, joyous, joyful, rich, raucous, no bad. Ratchet. Yes ratchet, honest. All of those kinds of things, but let us let us let us not let us make some choices now. Let us make some choices that are not capital driven either because sometimes best believe I talked about hip hop culture too. The man behind the machine in the Wizard of Oz machine, you think you are running the show, but there are puppets, because those people behind are making you turn out what they want you to turn up because they know it's low private vibration stuff. That's our vibration too high to be low. It's too high to be low and we have to take it back. And it's a serious thing. Yeah man change the narrative we can do it. We can do it. The Africans, it believes it's believed that the African proverb says, you know, the lion will always lose the fight when the hunter tells of the game. Right. Exactly. I think it's a good point about how capital forms what we see and how we can help, you know, but for that too. Wow, I told this, I told the speakers I said listen guys, we're going to do 60 minutes and then 30 minutes of Q&A, but be I warn you the conversation is going to get sweet. And you may not realize that we're going to be over time. It's a good overtime. It's the kind of overtime that put you into the mind of those Chicago Bulls games back in 1994. It's the kind of overtime you want to see. So we're going to close out, but my time limited now though. I want to share. I want to just hear one one quick comment that my brother Marlon wants to say and then I'm going to share a couple because the speakers can't see the Q&A. I want to just give just share a couple of the comments from our live chat, but Marlon give us a quick. You wanted to share some comments on what was what was extra and then I just want to quickly acknowledge some of what's going on in the chat and then we're going to wrap up it with we're going into Bulls overtime today. Let's go. Thank you for that. I mean, I thank Orville and Anita for expressing some points that I agree with. And I think that it is very important that we, I mean, we're all working where we do have a sphere of influence basically. And it is very small when you think about the entire island. And for the change that we're, we need in the Jamaican society now, there has to be a lot of voice and this is where it comes at a policy level. The education system has to be reformed. And take its rightful role and not in the fringes we're seen as a hobby or an extra curricula activity. Right. And 100 curriculum, which is mainly focused on it's very product driven. Yeah, I can do it. I can't. It's a traditional. And then to this stress, you can have a dance store afterwards, really, dance, drama, music, the theater as general does not become a central focus of the curriculum where you help to build a caricature of the individual in a well rounded way from early on, from grade 9 or grade 10 or 11, when you would have needed the formative years to help to shape the identity of the individual. So it has to happen at a policy level. The government has been fundamental and integral to shaping the Jamaican society and the way we behave and interact with each other, the way we see each other, and the way we come together to achieve a perspective or a goal or an idea. It has to be the education system. I believe that if the education system delivers on the curriculum the way it should, by putting the performing arts in its rightful place and dance will be matized, be a dance student in the schools across the country. Yes. Bringing the dance, the arts, the music teachers, let them help with teaching maths and English and social jambayah and all those kinds of things. Where is a cross-disciplinary approach to learning that is needed so that dance is not seen as something other on a stage inaccessible in leases but something that is fundamental to your experience of the curriculum in totality. And I think that will help to destigmatize the dance. It will bring into the conversation ideas about sexuality which are completely different from the perceptions that are not true. And it will bring to the conversation gender identity so that we understand each other. Yes. I see you and you see me and recognize that we need each other in terms of having an impact on this world in the way we should. Shea, shea, oh. Word song, powah. In the comments we have Cheryl Alid. We're going to shout out Cheryl Alid every week. She's in the audience, so we have a bigger amount of questions down. All right. So we said Cheryl wants to know if you all collaborate. Now I know Orville and Neela, you all collaborate. Will there be any any invitations of Orville Hall choreography at NDTC? Can we get some Orville expressions at NDTC? Marlon, what's going on? Let me tell you. I did a dance art piece like from yesterday. Chris Walker, who is one of our choreographers, did a dance art piece called Senof. And Senof was looking at the contemporary way of a contemporary week in Jamaica where we no longer have the traditional send off with the coming on and the garabanta. What we have is a dance art speaker box is coming in. And that is how the person sent out. I remember when I was growing up, the number one song system. I don't know if Neela and Orville were based at NDTC and still in love. Still in love, of course. Yeah. Now there are so many others. I mean, I think the representation of song system is not as it was when I was growing up, where those traveling songs, when the song system come out of your ear and box them unpack and stack up on top of each other, you know, so big things are going on. And that's why we use this for the, that's the reason why we use, that's a picture of a stone love song system on the flyer. No speakers set up in the yard. It's all over. I know. It's an event. Yes. Neela and I know, Neela and I, as she's director of studies at the School of Dance, we're also working on a dance program coming up. So that's going to be in our curriculum at the Edna Manley College coming up soon, more on that later. But in terms of moving from the dance all piece at Chris Walker had done in 2005, I think it was 2006, they're both, and Professor had done a dance all. Do you remember the song? Look into my eye. Tell me what it is. Tell me what you see. Professor, Professor, love the dance all rhythm so much and dance all rhythm of that particular time when he did that work. It was called Apocalypse in 2009. That was a year before he died. That's Professor, so Professor Nettleford Choreograph appeased to look into my eyes by Bounty Killer. He did more than that. What Professor used to say, Professor, he said in one of his writings that if an artist is going to put, like for instance, a painter, is going to give you a likeness of your image on canvas, then he may as well take a photograph. For him, it was about listening and distilling and abstracting and manipulating what's around him to create something that is fresh and visually interesting. So Professor, for months, with this little we know was out there listening to dance all. Now Professor would normally immerse himself in the music at home and also in his car. So when he's driving around to the studio to have his classes, you'd hear the music before he's approaching. So can you just, for years, we've been hearing the music by all the different arts, African artists and reggae. One, when he started working on his dance out piece, that was a song that greeted us in the parking lot when he was driving into a class. We're like, oh, Jesus, what is Professor coming with now? Professor worked with Margie Wiley, used the dance all rhythms at about four or five or six tracks from dance all, gave the musical director at the time Margie Wiley to work on the vocal intonations of sounds, tribal ancestral sounds on top of a dance all rhythm to create the visual, the oral nuances of the work that he was trying to express. And guess what he did? He built a dance based on an inner-city domestic situation where a rebel, a dance all youth, had a girlfriend out there who decided she wasn't leaving and go to the Revival Church and join the church. And he went in there to get her to come out of the church and go back into the world. And guess what happened to him? He was converted and he became the shepherd and leader of the flock. I think there's a there's a larger message that is in a dance all piece that he choreographed. But yes, Orville to answer your question about Orville, Orville, we're gonna talk, we're gonna talk. All right. So there'll be a, what's happening here is I'm having a little technical difficulty. My mac is cutting us off. It's about, I'm not plugged in and my mac is gonna cut out real soon. So I'm gonna wrap, I can let y'all keep talking but you're gonna lose me. And that may not be a bad thing, but let's wrap. You know, I'm gonna do something. I know Orville, you want to say something quick. The issue is my laptop is gonna go out. No, I really have to run. No, that's what I'm trying to say. We're gonna wrap now. Let me just close out by saying this has been an incredible, let's see if I can do this in one second because that's all I have left. It's been an incredible time talking with you all. But Marley says in his one drop, now see it, seal it in a drum beat, play in the rhythm, resistant against the system. That is what dancehall is about. It's about resisting any system that suppresses the people. Next week, we will be talking December 6th with the playwrights as they answer George Bernard Shaw, David Tullock, Fabian Thomas, and Basil Dawkins. Listen, Jamaican people said, walk good. Artists, we act as we say, see you on the board. Listen, walk good on the board. All right.