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Monday, February 24, 2025

Les Enfants celebrates 50 years of dance

by

20120712

The phe­nom­e­nal Joyce Kir­ton, con­sid­ered to be the "Grand Dame" of dance in San Fer­nan­do, cel­e­brates her gold­en ju­bilee in dance and the for­ma­tion of her dance com­pa­ny, Les En­fants, this month. She has planned a week­end of spe­cial events at the Na­pari­ma Bowl, San Fer­nan­do to com­mem­o­rate the sym­bol­ic oc­ca­sion. The fes­tiv­i­ties will be­gin with a prayer ses­sion to­day at 10 am and will cul­mi­nate with a dance con­cert on Sun­day at 6 pm. An all day dance work­shop has been card­ed for Fri­day and a gala awards cer­e­mo­ny on Sat­ur­day night. In a tele­phone in­ter­view on Tues­day, Kir­ton said the cel­e­bra­tion is a way of "thank­ing God for the 50 years at Les En­fants. Thank­ing him in song in move­ment and in word."

Over the years

She ex­tend­ed an open in­vi­ta­tion for all dance lovers to be part of the cel­e­bra­tions. Look­ing back over the past 50 years, Kir­ton said she is proud of her lega­cy of dance and of her hun­dreds of dance stu­dents. She said dance be­gan as a hob­by but quick­ly be­came an all en­com­pass­ing part of her life. "Why do peo­ple like singing? Why do peo­ple like any­thing? I just like dance. This is my way of ex­press­ing my­self. It was some­thing I was drawn to," she said. At the age of 19 while at­tend­ing the Teach­ers' Train­ing Col­lege she was bit­ten by the dance bug. "I had some very good teach­ers at Train­ing Col­lege. Beryl Mc Bernie and an­oth­er Eng­lish teacher. Be­tween these two women they re­al­ly turned me on to dance," she said. As T&T was mak­ing its first foot steps in­to na­tion­hood in 1962 Kir­ton said she was mak­ing her first steps in­to form­ing the Les En­fants Dance com­pa­ny. She start­ed with small class­es at the St Paul's An­gli­can Church, Har­ris Prom­e­nade. "It was a lot of fun, a lot of ad­ven­ture. Every In­de­pen­dence we would be ex­cit­ed. Chil­dren would have been per­form­ing in ral­lies. There were a lot of or­gan­i­sa­tions com­ing up at that time. The San Fer­nan­do Bor­ough Coun­cil did a lot of stuff and we were al­so in­volved in a lot of their projects."

Back then, she said, the so­ci­ety was very dif­fer­ent. "When peo­ple came to see our shows they paid $3 per show and they were filled. Now shows cost $350. We do not have a very big dance au­di­ence in San Fer­nan­do. Peo­ple do not sup­port the dance very will­ing­ly. They pre­fer to go to com­e­dy shows," she said. She lament­ed that in­ter­est in dance has been de­clin­ing and in­vi­ta­tions to per­form at func­tions be­ing with it re­quests for "jump up and wave" en­ter­tain­ment. "Arts are not be­ing re­spect­ed. They (peo­ple) go for su­per­fi­cial. They do not go for what you pro­duce. When you pro­duce any piece of art it is a piece of your­self, whether it is a paint­ing or per­form­ing in a play. You are mak­ing a state­ment about your­self and your coun­try," Kir­ton said. She said stu­dents at Les En­fants were not on­ly taught move­ment but al­so about T&T cul­ture through the art of dance. "Dance is a way to reach an au­di­ence, to tell a sto­ry. That sto­ry may be sad, maybe hap­py. It might be fear­ful. You al­so want to make a com­ment about the things that go on to your so­ci­ety or keep the cul­ture go­ing," she said. "We have a very rich her­itage and every­one who oc­cu­pied this coun­try left a sto­ry and very of­ten when we are danc­ing we are telling their sto­ries, the African, the In­di­an. They all left their mark in so­ci­ety."


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