Trinidad and To­ba­go's pre­mier con­tem­po­rary mod­ern dance com­pa­ny, the No­ble Dou­glas Dance Com­pa­ny Inc (ND­D­CI), will cel­e­brate its 25th an­niver­sary with its 2010 dance sea­son–DAM 25–gala per­for­mance on Sep­tem­ber 25, at Queen's Hall, St Ann's. A pri­vate func­tion for me­dia and spe­cial­ly in­vit­ed guests was held on Au­gust 29, at Veni Mange, Wood­brook, to launch the event, and pay ku­dos to alent­ed dancer/chore­o­g­ra­ph­er No­ble Dou­glas. DAM 25 will ho­n­our ND­D­CI's founder and artis­tic di­rec­tor, No­ble Dou­glas, as well as dancers and mu­si­cians who have ded­i­cat­ed their lives to mu­sic and dance in T &T.

For more than half a cen­tu­ry, Dou­glas has worked tire­less­ly in her ded­i­ca­tion to dance and the arts in T&T. The dancer, teacher and chore­o­g­ra­ph­er at­tend­ed the Martha Gra­ham School of Con­tem­po­rary Dance and the Alvin Ai­ley Amer­i­can Dance Cen­tre in the USA, which set the stage for her pro­fes­sion­al dance ca­reer in the Unit­ed States dur­ing the sev­en­ties.

In 1985, she es­tab­lished her own com­pa­ny of strong, dis­ci­plined and fo­cused dancers, this soon pro­pelled ND­D­CI in­to the fore as one of the lead­ing con­tem­po­rary mod­ern dance com­pa­nies in the land.

Un­der Dou­glas' artis­tic di­rec­tion, the com­pa­ny has toured lo­cal­ly, re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly per­form­ing on stages in the Unit­ed States and South­ern Africa. The col­lab­o­ra­tive pro­duc­tion will shine a light on both icon­ic and new dance pieces. Au­di­ences will be of­fered the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­pe­ri­ence some of the com­pa­ny's most pro­lif­ic works on one stage, in­clud­ing Hys­ter­ics (1986, chore­og­ra­phy by Dou­glas); Red Clay (1987, chore­og­ra­phy by Al­lan Bal­four); Shades of Blue (1987, chore­og­ra­phy by An­dre George); and, Pas­sage (1988, chore­og­ra­phy by Dou­glas).

In sig­na­ture ND­D­CI style on show night, live mu­sic will be wo­ven through­out the pro­duc­tion with Willard "Re­la­tor" Har­ris, 3 Canal, The Mar­i­onettes Chorale and Len "Boogsie" Sharpe join­ing in the cel­e­bra­tion. Re­flect­ing on 3 Canal's con­tri­bu­tion to this project, Wen­dell Man­war­ren shared, "It is an ho­n­our to be part of some­thing so icon­ic." DAM 25 will be re­peat­ed on Sep­tem­ber 26, at 6.30 pm, at the same venue.

Tick­et In­fo

Tick­ets went on sale from yes­ter­day (Au­gust 25) at Cros­by's Mu­sic Cen­tre, West­ern Main Road, St James, at the price of $300 for Sil­ver gala tick­ets (re­served seat­ing); $250 for Bronze gala tick­ets; and, $200 for the Sun­day per­for­mance.

Un­til Sep­tem­ber 8, DAM 25 pa­trons can look for­ward to an ear­ly bird ten per cent dis­count off reg­u­lar­ly priced tick­ets.

Part of the pro­ceeds from the gala tick­et sales will ben­e­fit the No­ble Dou­glas Lil­liput Foun­da­tion For The Arts.

For more in­for­ma­tion vis­it the ND­D­CI Face­book page at www.face­book.com/nd­d­ci or send e-mail to nd­d­ci@ya­hoo.com or liza@es­tu­arypr.com or call 761-1195.