Joanne Brig­gs

Nan­cy Her­rera has vi­sions of Steven Spiel­berg, to have lights in all forms of fash­ion on the Queen’s Hall stage when Meta­mor­pho­sis Dance Com­pa­ny presents Il­lu­mi­na­tion– A Jour­ney of Light and Be­com­ing on April 18 and 19. Think of his sci-fi clas­sic Close En­coun­ters of the Third Kind, in which he used in­tense, colour­ful lights and shafts of blind­ing white light to rep­re­sent the alien pres­ence. While Il­lu­mi­na­tion has noth­ing to do with ex­trater­res­tri­al be­ings, the spec­tac­u­lar use of light a la Spiel­berg would have been fas­ci­nat­ing for Her­rera.

“I al­ways have these great ideas,” Her­rera laughed. “I re­al­ly wish I were Spiel­berg, and I had the mon­ey, be­cause we could have had a light show. But we will make do with what we have avail­able to us in our space.”

Il­lu­mi­na­tion is Meta­mor­pho­sis’ 32nd pro­duc­tion since the dance com­pa­ny was found­ed in 1994. It is an ex­ten­sion of the Caribbean School of Dance, where the com­pa­ny’s founders, Her­rera, Car­ol Yip Choy, and Chris­tel de Souza, were then teach­ers.

The com­pa­ny was meant as an out­let for pas­sion­ate, tal­ent­ed dancers, which al­lowed for con­tin­ued growth and evo­lu­tion. While clas­si­cal bal­let trains the body, Her­rera is of the firm view that there is a need for Caribbean rep­re­sen­ta­tion in dance.

This year’s theme ac­tu­al­ly start­ed as a chal­lenge to find a way to do a pro­duc­tion that was dif­fer­ent but have the au­di­ence en­gaged. “We thought ‘what would we as dancers miss the most?’ and I worked it out that it was light,” said Her­rera, who is the artis­tic di­rec­tor of the dance com­pa­ny. In this case, she said, light is con­sid­ered more than a back­ground or a spot­light on a dancer.

“We want­ed to do what ap­peared to be sight-spe­cif­ic work, push­ing the bound­aries of chore­og­ra­phy and what the con­cept of light means to dance. So, each chore­o­g­ra­ph­er went in­to a dif­fer­ent area,” Her­rera said. “Light lit­er­al­ly means light over dark­ness, the metaphor for be­com­ing. An­oth­er was, ‘what if there were lights in the cos­tume’, an­oth­er was “what if the lights were com­ing on and off - now I see you, now you don’t’. That de­vel­oped in­to so many dif­fer­ent ideas and we just de­cid­ed we liked the jour­ney of be­com­ing that il­lu­mi­na­tion gives you.”

This al­so meant be­com­ing a more in­ter­ac­tive, mul­ti-dis­ci­pli­nary pro­duc­tion, mov­ing to an ex­pe­ri­ence not on­ly for the dancers on and off stage, but for the au­di­ence as well. For ex­am­ple, the open­ing act is not go­ing to be on Queen’s Hall stage. The first piece will take place in the lob­by while pa­trons are wait­ing for the show to start.

“Be­fore you get let in the au­di­to­ri­um, the dancers are go­ing to be lit­er­al­ly above you and be­hind and dance through you and lead you, whether it’s down or up,” Her­rera ex­plained. “That one is by Yia-Loren Gomez, and she is a very in­ter­est­ing artist in that she makes sculp­tures that are light fix­tures, so this was an in­ter­est­ing pair­ing. So, her dance in the foy­er has one of her small pieces mount­ed and il­lu­mi­nat­ed, while the dancers dance around it.”

The week­end pre­sen­ta­tions al­so in­clude work from Brid­gette Wil­son, the prin­ci­pal of Caribbean School of Dance, ti­tled Sa­ha­ran Dust – an in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the Nut­crack­er’s Dance of the Snowflakes. While the dancers are cre­at­ing ed­dies and sand pat­terns on stage, the back­drop screen com­ple­ments as an ab­stract, pre­sent­ing big­ger sand swirls. Meta’s two artis­tic as­so­ciates, An­na Maria De Fre­itas, who now dances in Eng­land, and Zi­dane Roop­nar­ine, who is in Bei­jing, Chi­na, will al­so present pieces.

There are dif­fer­ent lev­els of sight and ex­pe­ri­ence in this year’s pro­duc­tion, Her­rera ex­plained. “In this show, you would lit­er­al­ly see peo­ple danc­ing en pointe and then you would see pieces so far re­moved that you would go “what?” It’s re­al­ly edgy, it’s much more con­tem­po­rary. It’s even post-mod­ern,” she said.

With an­oth­er pro­duc­tion un­der Meta’s belt, Her­rera con­sid­ers the role sus­tain­abil­i­ty plays in the dance com­pa­ny. For her, it works two ways, even as they both are meant to lead to fi­nan­cial se­cu­ri­ty. The first is the op­por­tu­ni­ty for com­mu­ni­ty col­lab­o­ra­tion –the ex­change of tal­ent among fel­low cre­atives. “The fact that we have some of the best de­sign­ers for cos­tumes, for light and for stag­ing, and the chore­o­g­ra­phers are con­nect­ed, then the mu­si­cians. Every­body lifts every­body’s game and it’s love­ly, shared ideas. You can­not put a price tag on that,” Her­rera said.

Sec­ond, is the re­pur­pos­ing of old­er cos­tumes. “Those big dance com­pa­nies would up­cy­cle a cos­tume with­out sig­nif­i­cant­ly chang­ing the struc­ture of it. You might have a flow­ing skirt and ei­ther it be­comes a cape, or the skirt is stitched in such a way that it be­comes a flow­ing pants. It means when you’re fin­ished, you could un­do what you’ve done, and you get back your skirt,” she said. Al­though fi­nan­cial se­cu­ri­ty is still an on­go­ing chal­lenge, a chal­lenge which ap­plies to many artis­tic fields in T&T, pas­sion and de­ter­mi­na­tion con­tin­ue to be the dri­ver of cre­at­ing work and high­light­ing the tal­ent that ex­ists here.

Il­lu­mi­na­tion – Meta­mor­pho­sis Dace Com­pa­ny’s 2026 sea­son takes place on Sat­ur­day, April 18 and Sun­day, April 19 at Queen’s Hall, St Ann’s, Port-of-Spain. For tick­et­ing and gen­er­al in­fo, vis­it Queen’s Hall Box Of­fice or the Meta­mor­pho­sis Dance Com­pa­ny’s so­cial me­dia pages.