Dance Ritual and Healing

Dance Ritual and Healing:The National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica in the 21st Century is a focused study of the National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica in the 21st century as it expands over sixty years of repertoire into new stories about emerging artistic practices, shifting socio-political economies, and the evolving pursuit of sovereignty.

Foregrounding ritual as praxis in institution building, Dance Ritual and Healing explores the efficacy of NDTC as a living archive, an institution of embodied memory that activates sentience and spirit for those who seek community in theatre. Chapters intervene in key conversations about reparative and affective archives, the impact of technology in live performance, responses to un/natural disaster and climate change, gender and representation, and the losses, isolations, and artistic pivots of COVID. Grounded in over fifteen years of fieldwork, with interviews that give voice to the artists, descriptions of dance that capture the liveness of theatre, and contextualization within literature, visual arts, current events, and popular culture, the book illuminates NDTC’s ongoing commitment to positively transform how Jamaicans see themselves, offering analysis for global audiences to interpret the choreography through that same lens of excellence and innovation.

The book is ideal for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students of dance studies. It is also essential interdisciplinary reading for scholars and practitioners of dance, performance studies, memory studies, and Caribbean studies, as well as all aficionados of Jamaican culture.