NDTC Easter concert gets new sounds

Michael Reckord, Gleaner WriterThe annual National Dance Theatre Company (NDTC) Easter celebration, Morning of Movement and Music, at The Little Theatre had a new look and some fresh sounds on Sunday. That's because a new musical director was in charge.
He is Ewan Simpson, who has replaced pianist-drummer-singer-composer Marjorie Whylie, who, until recently, officially held the post. She assumed it in 1967, but had been playing with the NDTC even before then.
The change in musical leadership follows only three years after Barry Moncrieffe took over as NDTC artistic director after the sudden death of founder and first artistic director, Rex Nettleford, in February 2010.
Just as the company has continued to thrive under Moncrieffe, the NDTC as a whole, and the NDTC Singers in particular, should continue to do well with the multitalented Simpson replacing the equally highly esteemed Whylie.
Though now retired from musical duties, she continues to be on the NDTC's management committee and, no doubt, many works she composed for the company will continue to be used in its productions. One, an excerpt from The Mass in A (Kyrie & Gloria), was featured on Sunday.
Among the concert's innovations were a new opening and closing dance, a speech item (Prof Edward Baugh reading a Claude McKay poem, The Easter Flower), and the joining of the audience and the Company in the singing of a hymn, Christ The Lord is Risen Today.
CHURCH DIRECTION
The hymn pushed the function even further toward its being a formal church service - a direction it has been taking for some time - and might have given some patrons an excuse not to attend their regular church. (However, this was not the case with Fae Ellington, who dashed to her car as the concert ended, headed straight to her own church's service.)
Yet another new feature of the Morning was the sudden bursting into song by a dancer, Patrick Earle. Simpson and Leighton Jones were the other two main singers in the dance and song piece, My Praise, to music by Tremaine Hawkins.
The other NDTC Singers supported the three from the sidelines. There was particularly strong applause for the item, suggesting the audience liked its novelty.
Appropriately for the concert's Easter/resurrection theme, the first item saw the company's dancers, singers and orchestra combining their particular talents to perform the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's Messiah. Choreography for the celebratory piece, which featured continual skyward movements by the dancers, was by Kevin Moore.
The printed programme indicated that the next dance was a 2013 creation, one of two new works staged that morning. Choreographed by Gene Carson, Sanctuary was danced by six women in flowing dresses. Rippling hand movements was a recurring feature of the piece.
A cheerful solo by Tamara Noel, clad in pink, was the next dance. The excerpt from Bert Rose's 1993 work, Interconnection, was created to an Africanised version of The Lord's Prayer.
Another Rose piece, Steal Away (1997), followed the appearance of the Singers, led by tenor Carl Bliss, for the Whylie composition mentioned earlier. Dressed in black, with a red head tie, Kerry-Ann Henry was particularly good in the generally slow-moving, solemn work, and she and the other four dancers deserved the extra-loud applause they received at the end.
Both Singers and Dancers were on stage for Peace Be Still, Marlon Simms' moving tribute to the late theatre personality, Maud Fuller. (Incidentally, the Morning of Movement and Music as a whole was dedicated to the late Monica McGowan and Eduardo Rivero-Walker, who both contributed much to the NDTC.)
Henry again shone in her next dance, A Prayer, a solo in which the choreographer, Arsenio Andrade-Calderon, restricted her to a fairly small, horse-shoe shaped area up stage. The area was delineated by a length of cloth, which, after the angst-filled dance beseeching God for a sign ended, she picked up and carried off the stage.
The new musical director's interestingly arranged item for the Singers, Were you There?, which features four soloists singing different verses of the spiritual, was followed by Clive Thompson's Of Prophecy and Song. This layered work alternates between joy and sadness and was beautifully executed by Tamara Noel, Terry-Ann Dennison and Paul Newman.
The second new dance performed was Enchanted, Earle's brief, cheery work to The Love of My Son, a Father HoLung & Friends composition. Moore's 2012 work, The Beloved, the next dance, was equally brief and, appropriately for the name, featured a couple (Terry-Ann Dennison and Mark Phinn) dancing with a lot of touching.
An excerpt from Nettleford's Tintinabulum (1997), which features much ensemble dancing by performers in black moving like a vast ocean in mourning - though there are three angels in white - was the penultimate dance. And excerpts from that choreographer's Revival, with a fresh staging by Moore, was the bouncy, colourful offering that closed the show on a cheerful note.
The Little Theatre was almost full, but as it holds only about 630 people, many missed the Morning. Happily, there will be a repeat at Scot's Kirk United Church on April 14.