Rubadiri Vic­tor

Queen's Hall in St Ann's was treat­ed to a de­light­ful cul­tur­al show over the CHOGM week­end. No­vem­ber 22 marked the first ma­jor event of the Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing (CHOGM) with the open­ing of the Peo­ple's Fo­rum at Queen's Hall at 6 pm. The Peo­ple's Fo­rum was one of three civil­ian Fo­rums held with­in the CHOGM um­brel­la–the oth­ers be­ing a Youth and Busi­ness Fo­rum. Apart from the speech­es by the Head of the Com­mon­wealth Foun­da­tion and an ad­dress by Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, the artistes of T&T be­gan to show their ex­cel­lence to our vis­i­tors. This would have launched a week of lo­cal artis­tic ex­cel­lence which cli­maxed with the ex­trav­a­gan­za for the of­fi­cial launch lat­er in the week.

The Sun­day show pushed the en­ve­lope in terms of lo­cal stage pre­sen­ta­tions, fea­tur­ing the­atri­cal per­for­mances in­ter­act­ing with dig­i­tal an­i­ma­tion. It al­so fea­tured com­mu­ni­ty folk fes­ti­vals trans­ferred to the West­ern stage. It was pro­duced by the Artist Coali­tion of T&T (Actt). Vis­i­tors were greet­ed in the lob­by by the kaiso-jazz sound of The Sean Thomas Quar­tet. The young jazz ge­nius host­ed three el­ders–trust­ed bass gui­tarist Dou­glas Re­don; pan vir­tu­oso Len "Boogsie" Sharpe; and vet­er­an mu­si­cian Michael Booth­man. Lat­er on, at the cock­tail re­cep­tion in the lav­ish tent, the CHOGM del­e­gates heard Mun­gal Patas­sar and his band Pan­tar with their sitar-fu­sion sounds.

LEFT: Dave Williams as Anan­si in �nan­si and Sky God.

RIGHT: Elsha Bar­tels as Moa­t­ia-the-Fairy-No-Man-Has-Ever-Seen.

The au­di­ence knew they were in for quite a show with a dif­fer­ence when they re­alised the Mas­ters of Cer­e­monies for the event was cham­pi­on To­bag­on­ian Speech Band the Ply­mouth Speech War­riors. The Speech Band is a mag­i­cal oral per­for­mance tra­di­tion made up of masked cos­tumed per­form­ers who re­cite com­bat­ive po­ems in mea­sured verse on a range of top­ics. The show then took off with a pi­o­neer­ing piece called Anan­si and Sky God, which paired vet­er­an lo­cal folk sto­ry­teller Aun­ty Thea with Dave Williams, the coun­try's top avant-garde chore­o­g­ra­ph­er, and his dance troupe. This an­cient West African sto­ry was per­formed against an in­ter­ac­tive dig­i­tal­ly an­i­mat­ed back­drop, cre­at­ed by young artist An­der­son Mitchell.

Next came an­oth­er in­no­va­tion, with an adap­ta­tion of the Hin­du epic The Ra­mayana as per­formed by one of the great vil­lage troupes, Ravi Ji's Prachar Kendra. The en­tire cast was made up of chil­dren. This was per­formed against an an­i­mat­ed back­drop that was il­lus­trat­ed by Tanya Williams. The next act was Lord Su­pe­ri­or. He had the au­di­ence eat­ing out of the palm of his hand with pieces like Michael Jack­son and Pres­i­dent Oba­ma. The show cli­maxed with rap­so artiste Atak­lan, one of the great young tal­ents of the con­tem­po­rary gen­er­a­tion.