Belize Dance Company presents Dance Fusion

[Linked Image] And the Belize National Dance Company has been in existence for over fifteen years under the artistic directorship of veteran classical and contemporary dancer, Althea Sealy. The company is known nationally and internationally for its style of dancing—mainly Belizean folk style and modern dancing. Sealy says the company has a busy schedule putting off concerts in Europe, U.S. the Caribbean and Mexico. This Saturday at eight p.m., the Belize National Dance Company is having its annual concert at the Bliss Centre for the Performing Arts. The concert entitled “Fusion” will feature over one hundred senior and junior dancers with intricate performances of the life story of Garifuna chief, Joseph Chatoyer, who led a revolt against the British colonial government in Saint Vincent back in 1795. According to Sealy, the two-hour show will be packed with entertainment for entire public.

Althea Sealy, Artistic Director, Belize National Dance Company
“Official the name Belize Dance company was started in 1990 by professor Eduardo Rivero. From that period until now, we have had a lot of changes, but my seniors stay the same, the older folks are the same. So I always try to find space for not to discourage them because they are the background for this all. So I don’t really leave them out, but we have children that have grown up from the age of four and are now eighteen-nineteen and they are the ones that are carrying the show right now.”

“I named the show fusion this year because of the mixture that we are going to have. We are going to have two parts—we are going to have an hour show of modern and contemporary style—our usual, you know, there is classic, there is tap dancing, there is carnival, every little thing blend in. So even that first half makes me feel like it’s a fusion with all the style of dancing. Then the second half, Rosita is choreographing a whole hour of the death of Chatoyer. Chatoyer has connections with the Garifuna—how they arrived in Belize. So she did the story from the beginning to the end of when the Garifunas settled in Belize. So we are dedicating that portion to the Garifuna settlement day. We did not do traditional, traditional Garifuna, we did it the contemporary style way where the kids can relate and other people can enjoy it on the stage rather than just looking at it in the traditional—we leave the traditional for the Garifunas to do.”

Tickets are available at the Bliss Centre at fifteen dollars for reserve and ten dollars for general admission. There will be an encore presentation on Sunday where kids will enter for five dollars.

http://www.channel5belize.com/archive_detail_story.php?story_id=25818

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