The internationally acclaimed National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica (NDTC) returns to the Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts for performances on March 6 and 7. The Company will dedicate these performances to its founder and artistic director, Professor Rex Nettleford, who passed away on February 2.

The NDTC tours with a cast of new-generation artistes who, since the last visit to the Brooklyn Center two years ago, have been giving shape and substance to the Company's drive towards renewal, even while retaining the element of continuity. This is rooted in a sensitive hold on the ancestral legacy of music, movement and rituals, but with ready response to contemporary life and living, in a region which has produced not only the fastest track and field athletes, but also iconic musical artistes like Bob Marley and Jimmy Cliff.

The Haitian earthquake will find artistic comment in
Incantation
, the work of Jeanguy Saintus, Haitian choreographer, dancer and educator, who was awarded a Prince Claus Award in 2008 for his exciting contemporary work that connects the spiritual and the physical, and honours the human body, and for inspiring pride in the strength, beauty and richness of Haitian identity. Saintus draws on the music of Toto Bissainthe, Martha Jean Claude and Zoa. The Company will also perform Asi Somos, a work by one of its in-house choreographer/dancers, Arsenio Andrade. This all-male dance-work, strong and athletic, has won audience appeal at home and abroad.
Reflections
, a solo choreographed by Andrade, celebrates the "spirit of the Incas".

Modernesque suite

The repertoire also includes Tintinnabulum, Nettleford's social commentary on sons and mothers, peer group pressure and youth violence, which is no less entertaining for its serious subject matter. Clive Thompson's
Vignettes of Life
is a modernesque suite of solos and duets which ratifies the branding of the talented Jamaican ensemble as a Caribbean company with a modern dance impulse.

The performances at Brooklyn Center will also showcase Nettleford's last choreographic work,
Apocalypse
- a story of ostentation, rejection and abuse, retribution and redemption.

The dancers will be accompanied by NDTC musical director, Marjorie Whylie and the NDTC Singers, who act as choral orchestra in many works by the Company.