TT DANCER IS A 'STAR' ON THE SET OF

ABC TV - MOVIE

STEPHEN HANKEY SET TO MAKE IT BIG

AFTER CHOREOGRAPHING

'THE CREATURE'

There aren't that many choreographers who would say that they actually prefer working with non-dancers.

Stephen Hankey has worked with professionals, and people who had no training, and says that as a choreographer he finds non-dancers more inspiring.

After working on several musicals where the actors had to dance, he finds that trying to keep the movements simple enough for them to handle, but still look good, encourages him to come up with more creative means of achieving his work. His most recent project allowed him to work with people who did the hit movie "Jurassic Park" and will be aired on ABC next February as a TV miniseries called "The Creature", with his choreography.

The challenge of making non-dancers dance well enough to please an audience is what helps his creativity grow and he says that he builds a whole new vocabulary as he goes along, doing workshops with them.

Stephen Hankey has been dancing for years, and in more recent times has done the choreography for Rhoma Spencer's musical on the Mighty Shadow "The Bassman", Baggasse Company's Carnival production "Road March", and "The Hewanorra Story" in St Lucia.

Adrian Augier, the St Lucian who wrote the epic poem that became the musical, wants to open a creative arts centre there, with Hankey as one of the instructors.

"The Hewanorra Story" was commissioned to open the St Lucia Jazz Festival on May 6^th this year after its first run, then it was redone in July with a slightly altered storyline. Hankey explains that he went to see it again, and scouts from a company called Trilogy Entertainment North ltd. in the audience were impressed with the choreography they saw. They called him at home in Trinidad to ask him to come back to St Lucia for an interview while they were holding auditions for a choreographer for the "The Creature" (by "Jaws" and "The Deep" author Peter Benchley) directed by Stuart Gillard and produced by Michael Gallant.

He said that even teacher/choreographer Noble Douglas went to the audition, and when she heard that they wanted a voodoo scene she recommended him.

Hankey has extensive knowledge and understanding of Caribbean rituals and folk dance, making him really "the rightest man for the job". He was also the High Priest in the scene, with local drummer Julien Straker, and they did the last shoot in the Pigeon Island ruins in August before the cast and crew went to Vancouver to finish filming.

For the scene, Hankey had a week to do workshops with the 12 people he chose through auditions, and he helped decide on the set, costumes and makeup. He chose all St Lucian dancers, saying that they were relatively unexposed, and had no preconceptions about the dance and ritual they were portraying. He explained that the basic story is about a creature formed through a research scientist's efforts to cure cancer, with the fusion of human and shark.

Hankey, who is (surprisingly) a woodwork assistant at San Juan Senior Comprehensive, has gone as far as Ireland and Moscow with the artform, and his next venture will probably be back in St Lucia, for Creole Day on October 18. Christine Samuel will be having a Caribbean dance workshop for the occasion, and asked him to go over to share the Trinidad Bele with the other participants.

Working with the St Lucians has definitely been different for him, because they have more sheltered lives than most Trinbagonians according to him, and have not learned as wide a range of things. He says they are more conservative and need to be led more, but their willingness to learn eases the situation. He enjoyed his time there, and is looking forward to going back.

For now, Stephen Hankey would like to continue building choreography on non-dancers, so that he can grow as a creator, finding other ways to do things that aren't necessary when professional dancers are involved. More musicals would be the perfect thing for him to do, so that he could work with actors who have a sense of movement without being trained in the art.

The cast and crew of "The Creature" were extremely happy with his work, and some of them who watched the shoot were amazed, saying they had never seen anything like it before. The producer took his name and contact, maybe for work in the future, and for the present it seems that Stephen Hankey's path is already written in the books.

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