The seriousness of art and its working: An artistic experience

DAVID BOOTHMAN

I HAD become a delinquent until I had been saved, relieved from my self-reprimanding for my transgressions. Back in the day in high school, the penance written was “the way of the transgressor is exceedingly difficult." I did not understand at the time. I wrote a couple times not knowing the significance of what it meant. Now I know.

Long story short, in this layered attempt to capture the essence, the gist of my intention, here is the story. You see I am an artist who was close to being burnt out. Burnt from an environment on the other side of art. .. an illiteracy that thinks it knows. A robust environment in itself-development that had not paid attention to its Elders and maybe never wrote the lines or picked up on the lines it’s Elders left.

Fortunately, I was raised in the presence of those Elders – figures like Geoffrey Holder, Molly Ahye, Rex Nettleford, Trevor Rhone, Leroy Clarke, Clive Zanda and Andre Tanker, to name a few, with living legends – the likes of Garth Fagan, Marta Vega, Peter Minshal and others.

These were not just artists, but keepers of integrity, expression, and authenticity. Their work was rooted in a sensibility that transcended mere performance. The lines though not the same as above mentioned, were about true art: its sensibility, integrity, it’s expression, and manifestation. I did not pay attention that there were artistic independent organisations like CoCo carrying on with fervour along the lines of true art – in the lineage of our cultural elders. So I was a delinquent for not paying attention to those who are carrying on the legacy of the elders.

You see, in this country, Carib country, art has become a tourist product and all of its packaging and investment are towards that end. The integrity of true art had been compromised by the noise. I became a disheartened artist staying in my own lane, in my sanctuary.

So, recently, I saw the advertisement for CoCo’s production in collaboration with Garth Fagan's Dance Company at the Winifred Atwell Auditorium. CoCo Contemporary Choreographers Collective has been in existence for the past 15 years. This was their “sweet 16th year” of seasons. All the while I kept missing their seasons. Yes, a delinquent I was and penance well deserved. Wow, Garth Fagan is in town, I needed to reconnect with Garth. I had met him at the Lincoln Center's celebration The Genius of Geoffrey Holder ten years ago – Lincoln Center’s Summer Festival 2015. He had choreographed and performed a dedication to Geoffrey at a filled-tocapacity outdoor Lincoln Center. At the Lincoln Festival, he expressed interest in my compositions and renditions of some Calypso Jazz. Delinquent again I did not follow through to reconnect.

So my going to the concert was originally for that reason. In entering the auditorium before the concert, CoCo's co-founder choreographer Dave Williams informed me that Garth had not made it, only his company. My expectations were somewhat damped. So I proceeded with a clean slate towards the fairly filled auditorium two weeks ago. Most of the audience were art patrons, friends and colleagues. I invited myself to join my friend and art patron/educator Valerie Taylor. A true art experience is more nourishing when there is someone you can share it with. As a neophyte in the age of technology, downloading the programme was new to me. I did not download the programme to follow the sequence of the performance. I was somewhat amiss.

The show started on time with host and co-founder Sonia Dumas, who eloquently introduced CoCo’s Sweet Sixteen season with the celebratory GFD.

She explained: “Fagan Dance (GFD) principal dancer Natalie Rogers who is also a high school contemporary of two the CoCo directors (Sonja Dumas and Nancy Herrera), contacted us to propose a collaboration to bring the masterful work of celebrated Jamaican-American choreographer, Garth Fagan, to TT for the very first time. Garth Fagan is widely known as the Tony Award-winning choreographer of the ageless and highly celebrated Broadway production, The Lion King, but he is also one of the top contemporary choreographers of the United States and his work has changed the face of modern dance”.

Hats off to the Bishop Anstey sorority cited here.

The show started, and from the get-go, I was literally hypnotised ... from beginning to end. GFD opening with Discipline is Freedom. Choreography: Garth Fagan; music by Abdullah Ibrahim (Dollar Brand) and Max Roach prepared me for a serious repertoire that followed. Trinidadian Natalie Rogers-Cropper’s choreography followed with Spoken Word by Derek Walcott’s Omeros against the backdrop of DJ Leo Large, Ed Nabb, Brian Hand and Laventille Rhythm Section.

All the selected pieces here, were brilliantly and professionally performed, fused with grace, and swift precision within sound, and movement. The unending de-ja-vu’s transported me into spaces of the dream world. A world that was familiar to me. Works I had been trained to see and reflect on its symbolism and language – I’d gone in and out of being and reflecting. Which amounts to a true art experience – the power of art. The non-duality of spirit and the reflection of subconscious affirmation is the essence of the transcendental. This experience is too sacred to be misrepresented by mere entertainment. This is the art of dance at its best. The tonal music lends itself to an abstract interactive space in which the dancers lose their human form becoming nature elementals of gnomes, undines, sylphs, and salamanders – the language of earth, water, air and fire.

Most of the works were post-modernist abstract bordering a quasi-ritualism with Afro-Caribbean energy. The Geoffrey Holder Life …Fete …Bacchanal was representational leaning towards a cameo of a Carnival band movement – caricatures of stick figures, the abstract of a montage deconstruction in rhythm takes place.

The Carnival music was Fitz Vaughn Bryan’s Tan Tan, a rendition by Robert Greenidge. This, I had experienced at the Lincoln Center in New York. The lighting design was just as magical, casting, the tone, mood, time, and space illusion of all the various works.

CoCo season with Garth Fagan Dance was an awesome experience. Thank you CoCo.

I thought, what an opportunity – that all TT students of arts and their various disciplines should have experienced this. Art, in all its seriousness, has the power to shape, reveal, and redeem. I know this firsthand. I was once a delinquent.

My story is one of rediscovery. I’m an artist, and for a time, I was dangerously close to burning out – not because of a lack of passion, but because of an environment that suffocated true art. I found myself lost in a world where art had become commodified, stripped of its essence, and packaged for tourism.

David Boothman is founder of Caribbean Renaissance Foundation. He is also master artist in residence at UTT.