Maroon chief Colonel Wallace Sterling and researcher David Brown gave glimpses into the mysteries of Maroon culture to a packed library at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts (EMCVPA). They heard about esoteric phenomena,...
With the new year comes a new phase for those entering the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission (JCDC) drama and creative writing competitions. Parish auditions begin this month for participants in the drama competition, but writers have until...
Veteran educator Kenny Salmon subscribes to the school of thought that the most effective way to teach is to make learning enjoyable. And so, for the past 22 years, he has been teaching CSEC literature to hundreds of students annually with a two-...
Arguing that the community of Trench Town has stronger international recognition than Jamaica's capital city of Kingston, and that Bob Marley's contribution to music is greater than Elvis Presley's, social entrepreneur Dr Henley Morgan recently...
A special benefit that young choreographers and dancers get from the National Dance Theatre Company (NDTC) Young Choreographers Showcase is verbal feedback.The annual event is staged in the NDTC studio, and the audience, give comments and ask...
After walking the straight, safe road of orthodoxy for the past decade, St Lucian film-maker Michelle Serieux has swerved towards the cliff of idealism and experimentation. Will the turn take her to the fame and fortune that most in her profession...
Since mid-October, scores of teachers and students across the island havebeen attending workshops onthe performing and literaryarts conducted by theJamaica Cultural Development Commission (JCDC).On Tuesday, the sessions were in central Jamaica (...
The Jamaica Philharmonic Orchestra received a very long and loud round of applause at the end of Sunday's concert at the University of the West Indies Mona Chapel.The applause was for the superb presentations in the concert's two parts - the first...
Ironically, when the University of Technology was the College of Arts, Science and Technology (CAST), there were no courses in the arts for which students could get academic credit. Yet, soon after the name and status change in 1995 (to become...
Come next year, there will be more options for those wishing to enter jazz pieces in the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission's (JCDC) dance competition. The current 'jazz' category, will be broken down into three areas - traditional jazz,...
Jamaican theatre was greatly augmented with the formation of the Sistren Theatre Collective in 1977. It saw female street cleaners in the Government's Crash programme crashing into a brand-new, undreamt-of career as they transformed themselves into...
Malachi Smith knows firsthand both the ugly, destructive side of humanity, and the creative beauty of the arts. That's because the former policeman (in Jamaica and Florida) is now a full-time activist and poet.Disgusted, he says, with the crime and...
Ironically, there was very little toughness, and absolutely no roughness, in the Cry Tough concert staged by the faculty of the School of Music at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts on Sunday.The performers' hearts were...
One theory holds that drama had its beginning in religious ritual, with one branch - entertainment drama - eventually becoming the largest. That would mean that theatre and religion have been linked for thousands of years. Certainly, they have been...
Among the enthusiastic audience watching From Den Till Now, Jamaica's first dancehall musical, was 20 university students who were there to do research. That would've been good news to the show's writer/director/producer/performer Orville Hall, for...
When it comes to the work of the National Gallery of Jamaica and Quilt Performing Arts, the use of space is crucial. Both entities are currently exploring the use of non-traditional spaces.This was explained to me by Quilt's founder and artistic...
Today being the final Friday of the month, the free monthly Bank of Jamaica (BOJ) lunch-hour concert - featuring drama, dance or music - would normally be on. Instead, it was held a week earlier as a musical show, Mikey Bennett and Friends in...
Last Friday was the 99th birthday of cultural icon Louise Bennett-Coverley. A birthday celebration held in her honour at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts (EMCVPA) was attended by only a handful of the college's...
Retired communications specialist and current agricultural journalist Hugh Martin has started a third career - novel writing.His first novel, For All My Pains, a 82,000-word work, came out earlier this year. His second, the JCDC medal-winning...
"Professor Sylvia Wynter is offering us in the early 21st Century, her vision of a new understanding of what it means to be human," says Dr Anthony Bayani Rodriguez - Scholar-in-Residence (2017-18) at The Schomburg Center for Research in Black...
David Tulloch was in his office in the Phoenix Theatre complex on Haining Road, and still in his church clothes on the Sunday morning when I interviewed him about The Blue Room. He has turned the small space - originally a conference room - into a...
After being involved in theatre for 26 years, including working in commercial theatre for 19, David Tulloch has at last decided to "own" the profession.At his desk in the Phoenix Theatre complex on Haining Road, he told me, "In the past, I just said...
When Barbadian singer and saxophonist Arturo Tappin played Bill Clinton, a lover and player of the saxophone, the former United States president was "impressed". This was relayed to The Gleaner on Sunday, shortly before Tappin took to the stage set...
The past weekend gave fans of the terpsichorean art a chance to see two well-established dance groups in concert - the Tivoli Dance Troupe at the Little Theatre, and L'Acadco: A United Caribbean Dance Force at the Philip Sherlock Centre for the...
Today and tomorrow (July 12 and 13, will be two important days - perhaps the most important so far, in the life of the nearly 10-year-old Jamaica Youth Chorale (JYC). On those days, the group will be competing in the 2018 World Choir Games in...
