‘Peeling Back the Layers’: Reflections of a Jamaican dance artist in London
By: Shelley-Ann Maxwell

Artists thrive on change. We seek ways of improving our skills and expanding our talents. In our efforts to reinvent and regenerate, we do whatever it takes! In my case that entailed packing my belongings and leaving my native island of Jamaica to experience the dance scene in London, a story not at all new in the Caribbean community and one that has repeated itself many times over during the past decades.

I found myself at a crossroads in Jamaica, wanting to explore other methods of creating dance and needing to change my creative environment. My journey took me to the Laban centre where I opted to pursue a Masters Degree in Choreography. Having had ten years choreographic experience working with dance companies such as the National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica and the L’Acadco Dance Company I saw the course as an opportunity to learn new techniques and methods of creating dance - a course that would hopefully expose me to new styles, art forms and theories which would, I had hoped, help ignite a rebirth in my creativity. Now two and a half years later I find myself still in London and still going through my ongoing journey of reinvention and adaptation.

As a Caribbean artist I found it hard surviving in a course which seemed to restrict one’s freedom of expression and one which did not facilitate the artist’s need to explore regardless of direction or intent. The course, though it did not leave me exuberant or revived, did open my eyes to what I knew I did not want to do or become. It strengthened within me the desire to create work with meaning and depth and to make work that not only tickled the artistic intellect but also provided entertainment for the audience, a consideration that I have found is steadily being placed on the back-burner in the current dance scene.

I was able to regroup and maintain my identity during that challenging year holding firmly onto my Caribbean roots and heritage and exploring various black themes in my research and development projects while in the program. The result is my work “Cry Haiti” which was featured in Resolution! 2008 and is currently under consideration for commission by a London based Dance company.

Thankfully my journey was not to end with the completion of my Degree and I found myself expanding my performance persona through a year on contract as a dancer with the Tavaziva Dance Company. Here I would once again be able to reconnect with movement that resonated from beats, rhythms and the syncopation of the drum. That year would further lead me to audition for my current role of Dancer Swing in the Disney production of the Lion King where as we embody a simple story, I am reminded of the sense of community and the importance of determination.

My journey of self-renewal continues and, thankfully, I do not feel alienated in this country where I am considered foreign. I feel comfortable in my skin and welcome this watershed period in my life where I am peeling back the layers of my old self to embrace a new, rising phoenix self.

In this field of dance and the arts in general, we must battle to maintain identity and to hold on to our artistic integrity and when the pressures of conforming come, we must hold on to our inner heritage, embrace it, and use it to educate others, for if we don’t, who else my brothers and sisters will?