National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica principal dancer Tamara Noel. Lucy Gellman Photos.
In a school cafeteria just off the Boston Post Road, Jamaica had come to West Haven. A propulsive, rolling drumbeat soared over the stage and out toward the windows, transforming the space into a theater soaked in history and storytelling. In front, dance captain Paul Newman clapped in time with the music, counting students in as his braids bounced and swayed across his back.
In the back row, high school junior Danielle Grant let her toes grip the ground beneath her feet, and started to reconnect with her roots step by step.
Dance and music bridged time and space Friday morning, as members of the National Dance Theatre Company (NDTC) of Jamaica arrived at Engineering and Science University Magnet School (ESUMS) to teach a master class in the school’s cafeteria. Friday and Saturday, the group brought their work to the Shubert Theatre, gracing New Haven for the first time in their 61-year history.
The group was founded in 1962, the same year that Jamaica declared independence from British colonial rule. Friday marked the first time in 19 years that the company was back in Connecticut; dancers were last at the Bushnell’s Belden Theater for the Performing Arts in 2004.
“[It’s] the fact that we can share our culture through dance, in person,” said Newman, who hails from St. Catherine Parish and has been dancing seriously since he was nine. “I used to watch Ailey on YouTube. The first time I went, I was blown away. [At every workshop] you have persons who say, ‘I can’t dance,’ and I tell them, ‘If you can walk you can dance.’”
Just past 9 a.m., that spirit sprang to life as students filed into the cafeteria, kicked off their sneakers and began to warm up. On stage, half of the class included middle- and high school students in ESUMS’ after-school dance club, which Grant teaches each week after a full day of classes. The other half included third through sixth graders from C.R. and Co., a Hamden-based dance company helmed by Chelsea Hughes.
Seventh grader Leilani Mieles (at right) said it was the first time she could remember dancing with classmates. Lucy Gellman Photos.
When Hughes isn’t dancing, she is a social worker at ESUMS, where she was originally a part-time dance teacher. Friday, she and fellow dance instructor Talima Harris beamed as their students took the stage, ready to move. Harris kept an eye on her nine-year-old daughter, who eased into warmups as dancer Phillip Earle called out instructions.
“We’re going to bounce!” he announced, and students allowed their joints to relax, knees and shoulders unlocking as their bodies shook off that end-of-week fatigue. “When you bounce, you drop from the pelvis down to the floor.” For a moment, he and Newman bounced in place, then called out a countdown.
Without ever needing the verbal cue, musicians Jesse Golding and Henry Miller came in on the congas, the sound singsong and resonant as dancers began to bounce. On stage, NDTC members Tamara Noel and Joelle Flimn looked around, coaching dancers through what to do in a language of head nods, pointed toes and quick glances. Newman hopped onto the stage, weaving among dancers to inspect form.
Newman (at the center, looking out): "We can share our culture through dance, in person." Lucy Gellman Photos.
Every so often, he called out a direction, and dancers would shift automatically to the side, to the back, and to the front. Even as he floated through the space, he never seemed to take his eyes off the group.
It became a back-and-forth between the drums and dancers’ legs and pointed feet. Toes hit the floor, and as if the congas were singing along. Somewhere in the back row, freshman Nataliya Perez found her footing, hair flying wildly around her shoulders, and stuck with it.
As she entered the cafeteria, ESUMS Principal Medria Blue-Ellis let herself sink into the sound, which wrapped around everything in its path. For Blue-Ellis, who has led ESUMS since 2011, it was a rare chance for the school’s focus on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) education to become STEAM learning—that’s STEM, with the addition of the arts—for the day.
Lucy Gellman Photos.
“To be able to engage with the Shubert, to have our students know about the Shubert Theatre, is amazing,” she said. She stressed how rare it is for students at the school to collaborate with nearby professional arts organizations, because ESUMS is recognized for its STEM reputation.
Back on stage, it felt as though the class was just getting started, and had already covered so much ground. Dancers carefully practiced the steps to the Dinki Mini, a traditional folk dance that comes out of the history of the Afro-Caribbean slave trade.
According to the Jamaica Gleaner, “the Dinki Mini has its roots in the Congo region of Africa, and it comes from the Congolese word, 'ndingi', which is a song of lamentation played at funerals or during the periods leading up to them.” Once danced as a show of resilience in the face of death and atrocity, it now feels triumphant, joyous in a world that is still often upside down.
As they moved, watching Tamara Noel carefully for guidance, students stepped to the right, their arms traveling as their feet flew across the floor. To a slow, steady beat from the drums, they popped their hips and pointed their toes, nearly going airborne for a moment. They moved to the left, kicking out their legs as they moved. Then they stood tall, and began to roll their shoulders with the sound.
“And one! Two! Three! Four! Again!” Newman shouted at the front, moving the whole time. In the front row, seventh grader Leilani Mieles burst into a smile, moving as her whole face glowed.
It was just one of the ways company members gave students a taste of what they would later bring, in brilliant color and dazzling sound, to the Shubert over the weekend. Just beyond the stage, Shane Wright stepped forward and began to sing, coaching students through a call-and-response as he lifted his voice to the ceiling.
As if they had appeared out of thin air, fellow vocalists Deborah Miller and Toni Barrett joined in, the harmony crystalline as it hit the air.
The three sang a line, and students responded with a cry of Don-der! In unison that got Wright bursting into a smile. “The English equivalent is down there,” Wright said slowly and to a few giggles. That didn’t matter, he added—he wasn't concerned with equivalents today.
As dancers split into four groups to work on choreography, multiple members of the company echoed the importance of preserving Jamaican culture through dance and music. In six decades, the NDTC has brought together Jamaican folk and cultural traditions, elements of the African and Afro-Caribbean diaspora, rich vocal and instrumental music, and a focus on new work.
Deborah Miller, Shane Wright and Toni Barrett. Lucy Gellman Photos.
The last solidifies them as at the creative forefront of dance, rather than preserved in the amber of any one tradition.
“I’ve seen the National Dance Theatre in action, and I said, ‘I want to do that,’” remembered Wright, who is marking his fourth year singing with NDTC, and joked that he was originally “dragged in” to the group. “For me, it’s because I love the performing arts. Music is my life.”
“I’m helping to preserve the culture as a means of self-expression,” Earle said. “It’s energy. It keeps you active, and in general, it’s a way of sharing who you are.”
Golding, who has been with the company formally since the early 2000s and informally “for as long as I can remember,” called it a chance to teach the arts and culture of Jamaica—about which students may know very little—in a way that brings them into it and asks them to participate. He understands the importance of that mission intimately, he said: his parents were both members of the company, where his mother danced and his father drummed, for years.
Lucy Gellman Photos.
As young dancers returned to the stage, a dozen bodies flew through space, arms pumping as students kicked out their back legs and moved forward. To cheers, they turned to the audience, drums hammering beneath them. At the first strains of vocal music, they began to move from side to side, arms extended all the way to the right. As Miller and Barrett harmonized, they turned to face the back wall, then gathered in a circle, still moving.
In the cafeteria-turned-theater, their classmates and teachers cheered them on, waiting for their turn to take the stage. With the second ensemble, intricate footwork carried a dozen young New Haveners hundreds of miles across the ocean, transforming the space into a Caribbean celebration. By the third ensemble, cries of “yes!” and “get it!” joined applause.
In a conversation after the class, several ESUMS students said they were grateful for the opportunity to ring in the weekend with movement, and hoped that more chances to dance would come through the school. While there is an after-school dance club, the school’s focus on STEM means that arts electives are few and far between.
Lucy Gellman Photos.
Leilani Mieles, a seventh grader at the school, said that it marked the first time she had danced formally with her peers. While she was in the dance club for a short time, she ultimately dropped it to focus on her academic work and other extracurriculars.
Although she loves dance and “I do TikTok and all that stuff,” she said, she hasn’t had time between cheer squad and a baseball team in Fair Haven. She said that this class was particularly special not only because she got to learn new choreography, but also do it through a cultural lens.
“It’s actually really enjoyable because it’s like I’m learning a new culture,” he said.
Grant, a junior at the school who runs the dance club, said that she was excited to attend the master class as both a longtime dancer and a proud Jamaican American. At home, Grant’s dad is Jamaican, as are her grandparents. “Culture in my home is music,” she said. “We don’t watch tv. We listen to reggae.”
For her, culture is also about movement. When she was seven, Grant started dancing, and never stopped. It’s a skill that she’s since taught at ESUMS and the Boys & Girls Club. “I like the creativity of it,” she said. Friday, “I was really interested to see” the style that NDTC members brought to the stage. She described it as a way to build on her knowledge of the Caribbean island, from which she feels far away.
“It was really fun,” chimed in Natalya Perez, a freshman at the school. “I really loved dancing. It’s a way to express your emotion without saying anything. It just makes me feel alive.”