I.DANCE:A wholistic dance movement
Published:Friday | July 12, 2019 | 12:00 AMKeisha Hill/Senior Gleaner Writer
Dance has always been integral elements of a people’s culture, and in Jamaica, this is no different. Jamaica’s dance forms are rich, powerful, and vibrant, and reflect both the high and low points in the society.
I.DANCE, a wholistic dance movement, has created a space based on the precepts of the art form, embodying, and characterising a unique style steeped in creativity and creative expression.
According to Michelle Patterson, the Mind Behind The MVMNT, as a mode of creative expression, dance is used within the I.DANCE context, provide opportunities for artistic experiences that are uniquely subjective and suited to the individualistic creative needs, yet equally fashioned to provide the collective experience that is largely part of the artistic expression.
“Dance is the art form in which human movement becomes the medium for sensing, exploring, understanding, and communicating ideas, feelings, and experiences; through the subjective and collective engagement of intellectual and the emotional, the physical and the spiritual,” Patterson said.
“Based on this conception, dance clearly holistically embodies and characterises the expressed definition of creativity, and is therefore unequivocally a mode of creative expression,” she added.
Patterson is an artiste and educator with more than 25 years of training and expertise in the field of art and education. Currently serving as adjunct faculty at the University of Technology, Jamaica, and adjunct faculty and chief external examiner at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts, she is a consummate proactive educator and advocate for the inclusion of the arts in the educative processes of children and youth; recognising the inherent value of the arts in engendering wholistic development.
I.DANCE was established in February 2018 under the leadership of Patterson as Mind Behind the MVMNT. It is a cutting-edge 21st-century MVMNT driven by highly skilled artisans, and passionate, nurturing minds. It provides intimate, contextually rich and diverse experiences of dance as art, movement as wellness, and an atmosphere for wholistic transformation.
From its studio located at the Excelsior High School, I.DANCE offers weekly adult classes in a variety of dance and wellness frameworks.
Patterson indicated that the I.DANCE experience is diversely rich in its dance offerings and include urban pop, afrobeats, contemporary folk technique in addition to improvisation and contemporary dance, resulting in the amalgamation of several cultural worlds.