Er­line An­drews

The Elle NYTT dance stu­dio, which of­fers train­ing in bal­let, dance­hall, hip hop and so­ca, has staged two pro­duc­tions aimed at show­cas­ing the di­verse abil­i­ties of its tu­tors and stu­dents. Its third pro­duc­tion, En Route, pre­mier­ing Ju­ly 12 at the Lit­tle Carib The­atre, will take a dif­fer­ent ap­proach, hold­ing the spot­light on an­oth­er of the com­pa­ny's spe­cial­ties, mod­ern and con­tem­po­rary dance."This time we want­ed to show the more cre­ative side and the more artis­tic side (of the com­pa­ny). We have re­al­ly strong mod­ern/con­tem­po­rary chore­o­g­ra­phers," said Elle di­rec­tor and founder La Shaun Prescott, who dances and chore­o­graphs for so­ca per­former Machel Mon­tano, but who has ex­pe­ri­ence in more tra­di­tion­al styles through train­ing and per­form­ing with La Chapelle, Meta­mor­pho­sis and oth­er com­pa­nies. She's cur­rent­ly work­ing on a mas­ter's de­gree in dance at New York Uni­ver­si­ty.

Oth­er En Route per­form­ers have sim­i­lar re­sum�s. Del­ton Frank stud­ied bal­let, mod­ern dance and jazz with La Chapelle and the Caribbean School of Danc­ing. Megan Navar­ro, who made the sug­ges­tion that mod­ern dance should be the fo­cus of Elle's third pro­duc­tion, al­so stud­ied with the Caribbean School and com­plet­ed the School of Toron­to Dance The­atre pro­fes­sion­al train­ing pro­gramme.Can­dice Ho Wong dances with Kes the Band but has con­tem­po­rary train­ing and ex­pe­ri­ence with As­tor John­ston Reper­to­ry Dance The­atre and the Trin­i­ty Dance The­atre. Ani­ka Mar­celle trained at Lon­don Con­tem­po­rary Dance School.The pieces in En Route are meant to il­lus­trate emo­tion­al ex­pe­ri­ences at var­i­ous stages in the per­form­ers' lives."Life is a jour­ney for all of us. We all go through the same things at dif­fer­ent times," reads the En Route event page on Face­book."And even the com­pa­ny it­self is al­so on a jour­ney," said Prescott, fur­ther ex­plain­ing the ra­tio­nale be­hind the name."Be­cause we are de­vel­op­ing as chore­o­g­ra­phers and as dancers."

Elle start­ed in 2007 as Elle In­cor­po­rat­ed. As the com­pa­ny's reach ex­pand­ed to in­clude New York a name change be­came nec­es­sary. Prescott had tak­en up an of­fer to lead so­ca-danc­ing work­shops in the city. "I think it's a step for­ward in terms of get­ting so­ca as a dance recog­nised in­ter­na­tion­al­ly," she said, "and I think it's al­so a way of pro­mot­ing Trinidad cul­ture out­side of T&T."

Prescott has video from her so­ca work­shops on her YouTube chan­nel, and a look at any one of them shows that so­ca danc­ing can be as in­tri­cate as any oth­er form of dance. Nev­er­the­less, Prescott wel­comes the op­por­tu­ni­ty to show off the full ca­pa­bil­i­ties of per­form­ers au­di­ences may have dis­missed as just at­trac­tive back­ups to so­ca, dance­hall and hip hop artists."This is go­ing to be an op­por­tu­ni­ty for peo­ple that may not have known us in that light, that on­ly know us in the light of danc­ing with artists on stage, to say, 'Hey, they can ac­tu­al­ly do oth­er things,'" she said.

Elle dancers' in­volve­ment in pop­u­lar dance forms pro­vides at least one ad­van­tage."There have been mod­ern and con­tem­po­rary com­pa­nies in Trinidad for years, and they've been putting on shows every year," said Prescott. "But it would on­ly be peo­ple who are in the arts fra­ter­ni­ty who would know about it. We tap in­to an au­di­ence that is far ex­tend­ed be­yond the arts com­mu­ni­ty."

There are oth­er as­pects of En Route that will make it dif­fer­ent from sim­i­lar pro­duc­tions."The chore­o­g­ra­phers them­selves have such unique styles" that each stands out, said Prescott. "You see a piece by Ani­ka Mar­celle, and you know that is dis­tinct­ly her style. It's dif­fer­ent from any­thing else in Trinidad. Del­ton al­so has a lot of in­ter­na­tion­al ex­pe­ri­ence that brings a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive to the ta­ble."Many of the pieces will be "very per­son­al," said Prescott. One of the three pieces she will be per­form­ing was based on her ex­pe­ri­ence in New York af­ter Hur­ri­cane Sandy dev­as­tat­ed parts of the US east coast last year and left many in the city with­out elec­tric­i­ty and wa­ter for weeks."I've nev­er ex­pe­ri­enced any­thing like that," said Prescott. "In their own life [mem­bers of the au­di­ence] would have gone through strug­gles, they would have gone through sac­ri­fices, so that when they look at the piece they could iden­ti­fy."The re­sponse has been good since Elle start­ed to pro­mote En Route, said Prescott. This may be a re­flec­tion of the in­creased at­ten­tion and re­spect dance has been get­ting in T&T."I feel like with dance in Trinidad we re­al­ly need to ed­u­cate peo­ple, but I feel we're get­ting there," she said. "They've in­tro­duced a dance pro­gramme at UTT. And there are a lot of stu­dents look­ing at it as a vi­able ca­reer op­tion."The En Route Face­book page was on­ly put up one day be­fore the in­ter­view, and al­ready, said Prescott, "There's a buzz. There's an ex­cite­ment. That is very re­fresh­ing for me. I feel that we're go­ing to live up to peo­ple's ex­pec­ta­tions."

En Route will run for three days at the Lit­tle Carib The­atre, cor­ner White and Roberts streets, Wood­brook, start­ing Ju­ly 12. For more in­for­ma­tion, check Elle NYTT's Face­book page or call 788- 3553 or 391-3553.