By Tanya Batson, Staff Reporter 
THE CARL Campbell Dance Company (CCDC) 7 is currently on the shores of Jamaica, conducting its 25th anniversary tour. Dubbed 'Respect: Jamaican Youth' the tour, which began on February 3, will culminate in a performance at the Phillip Sherlock Centre for the Creative Arts Centre at the University of the West Indies on February 27.
The 'Respect' tour involves residencies at varying schools in Kingston and in St. Mary. The schools from the Corporate Area which are involved are The School of Dance at the Edna Manley College of the Performing Arts, Excelsior Community College and Tivoli Comprehensive High. The two St. Mary schools are Clonmel Primary and Junior High and Epsom All-Age.
It is particularly important that the schools from St. Mary are involved because the founder and artistic director of CCDC 7, Carl Campbell, was born in Epsom, St. Mary. In an interview with The Sunday Gleaner, Campbell pointed out that if all that comes out of the tour is a regular dance programme at his alma mater, he will consider it a success.
Each school will be partaking in the final concert and they are currently in rehearsals with CCDC 7 on the choreography of individual pieces. Clonmel Primary and Junior High, which has a history of success in the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission National Folk Forms Festival, is slated to perform The Hunt. Campbell explained that their dance teacher, Jeanette Walters, had requested he teach them an African dance. The Hunt is based on the African coming of age tradition, where the young man attempts to gain the strength of an animal he kills.
The Tivoli Dancers will perform Call To Flight (Homage to the Black Swan), which deals with the unity of all Blacks around the world. EXED will perform Concrete Jungle, a dance which will blend the ideas behind Bob Marley's Concrete Jungle and Edwin Starr's War.
Campbell left the island when he was 16 years old to live with his father, George Campbell, in the late 1960s. He notes that as in his youth his interest was in cars, the call to dance was more God's doing than his own. In his youth what he wanted to become was a mechanic.
"I think it's a choice that's offered to me without my making it," he explained. "If I had become a mechanic I wouldn't make any money." He further explained that he would have been a financial failure because his sinusitis would keep him from doing any work.
Despite this earlier love, Campbell believes that being born feet first was a sign that he was born to dance, though he had not known it. "I did come feet first and my mother never made me forget that," he said with a laugh.
Believing in the need to train in all the performing arts, he went to New York School of Modern Dance, the London School of Contemporary Dance and the Central School of Speech and Drama. During his time in the professional dance world, he performed in West End musicals such as Hair and Jesus Christ Superstar. Currently CCDC 7 does not have a cadre of dancers. Campbell explained that it is far too financially taxing to employ dancers on a full-time basis the year round. He noted that there are currently four persons in the company (himself included).
Campbell explains that he simply depends on dancers he has worked with in the past for particular projects. CCDC 7 is essentially a community dance group which becomes involved in varying projects annually. One of their latest was the 'Recycled Teenager' programme, which was a dance class for person over 50 years old.
It is this aspect of the programme which interested the main sponsor of the Respect tour, The British Council. The manager of the Council, Nikki Johnson, explained that the CCDC 7's aims coincided with the Council's own interest in the arts and the belief that it can have a great positive impact.
Campbell noted that his original aim when he started the company was to help young black dancers prepare for entry into traditional dance schools or the professional world of dance. He noted that it is for that reason that the Respect tour includes a session at the Edna Manley College, targeting dance management.
He notes, however, that it is essential that dancers recognise that they need much more than dance to survive.
