Bal­let and ball­room, jazz and Latin, mod­ern and folk. On Ju­ly 23-25, the Eu­gene Joseph Trinidad Dance The­atre will ex­plore man's search for self-re­al­i­sa­tion through move­ment and mu­sic in the pro­duc­tion Imag­ine at Na­pari­ma Bowl, San Fer­nan­do. With a cast of more than 200, Imag­ine is the lat­est in­stal­ment in a se­ries of con­certs to show­case the tal­ent and skill of the com­pa­ny's young and ma­ture stu­dents. Founder of the 38-year-old dance com­pa­ny, Eu­gene Joseph, ex­plained that while very few dance schools opt­ed for full-blown pro­duc­tions, his group had made it a pri­or­i­ty.

He said such pre­sen­ta­tions make a case for the in­creased sup­port of arts ed­u­ca­tion. There are many ex­cel­lent plat­forms, he said, but they are not enough. "Dance is not pro­mot­ed in the way it should be. There are in­sti­tu­tions and or­gan­i­sa­tions that have been in ex­is­tence for many years. "The pow­ers that be could sup­port them through the pro­vi­sion of grants to pro­duce pro­grammes that could per­me­ate so­ci­ety through com­mu­ni­ties," Joseph said. The Hon­orary Dis­tin­guished Fel­low of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UTT) has been a leader in the area of dance cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, team­ing with in­ter­na­tion­al al­lies to en­hance lo­cal un­der­stand­ing of the tech­nique of teach­ing.

Imag­ine pairs the dance the­atre's em­pha­sis on meth­ods with an in­ves­ti­ga­tion of life's mean­ing. Through var­i­ous dis­ci­plines stu­dents will ex­plore the chan­nel­ing of our state of con­scious­ness "to get to the holy space for which we're all search­ing." "What we do is not based sole­ly on tech­nique. Peo­ple must leave with some­thing. "Through art we can help one an­oth­er to see hu­man­i­ty in a dif­fer­ent way. And if you change the way you look at things, things would change," Joseph said. Tick­ets for the event are avail­able at any of the Eu­gene Joseph Dance The­atre branch­es at Port-of-Spain, Curepe, or 24 Tor­rance Street, Mon Re­pos, San Fer­nan­do. They are al­so be­ing sold at the Aber­crom­by Street, Port-of-Spain branch (with­in the TTPOST Build­ing) and Yard Street in Ch­agua­nas. The Fri­day and Sat­ur­day shows be­gin at 8 pm while the Sun­day event comes off at 6 pm.

For more in­for­ma­tion on this event, please call 652-4826