Dancers perform during last year's National Dance Theatre Company's 'Season of Dance' at the Little Theatre. - photos by Winston Sill/ Freelance Photographer

A capacity audience attending a recent benefit performance by the National Dance Theatre Company (NDTC) in the Broward Center for the Performing Arts in Florida, rose to its feet at the end of Rex Nettleford's dramatic commentary on the 2005 New Orleans disaster entitled 'Katrina' and commissioned by Jamaica's Capital and Credit Merchant Bank Limited.

Special sponsor event

The occasion was a special performance sponsored by Jamaica Awareness Inc. under the direction of Jamaican impresario Sydney Roberts in collaboration with the Jamaican Diaspora Foundation of Southern Florida chaired by attorney Marlon Hill. The Honourable Ricardo Allicott, Jamaican Consul-General in Miami, was the patron.

The dance-work was one in a highly-acclaimed programme which included Christopher Walker's young-generation 'Variations A Ska' commissioned by Jamaican National Building Society, and the brilliantly-executed solo performed by Marlon Simms, the upcoming lead male dancer of the new generation corps in the NDTC.

Tributes to Bob

Also on the bill was Clive Thompson's tribute to Bob Marley entitled 'Ode', with music by a group of Jamaican-Canadians and dressed by Cedella Marley, the daughter of Bob. A duet, 'Dimension', choreographed by Arsenio Andrade and performed by himself and Kerry-Ann Henry (recently returned from engagement in the London production of the Disney musical The Lion King, received prolonged applause while the closing dance-work 'Gerrehbenta' (also by Nettleford) brought the audience once more to its feet.

The NDTC Singers led by Marjorie Whylie regaled the audience with a specially-arranged suite of Money Songs and an instrumental interlude which received enthusiastic response from the audience.

In addition, Barry Moncrieffe, NDTC's associate director, conducted two workshops respectively for dancers and dance teachers in Fort Lauderdale and at the Florida International University with the latter covered by the Miami Herald newspaper.

The South Florida appearance by the NDTC is the first overseas tour in the company's 45th anniversary year when a number of other such tours are being planned, including one to the United Kingdom as part of the London Mayoralty's commemorative programme for the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the trans-Atlantic trade in enslaved Africans.