By Raymond Ramcharitar

Sunday Express

Section 2

December 21, 1997

Pages 26 and 27

In the late 1960s, recounts Terry Springer, a Cuban dancer, Ramido Guerra, "went to New York with nothing, no money, nothing, and just spent a few years learning everything (about dance). He studied with Ailey, Graham, everybody."

Then he went back to Cuba, and, incorporating what he had learned with what he knew of African dancing from his native Cuba, developed what has come to be known as the "Cuban technique" which combines African dance movements with balletic and modern movements.

Springer, a Trinidadian dancer who has been dancing with the Coreoarte Company in Venezuela for the last six years, has been studying the technique for the last three years. This year, on his annual trip home, he decided to conduct open workshops in the technique.

He had, he says, taught the technique on previous trips back, but to students of Noble Douglas's and Carol La Chapelle's dance studios, "because they were the people who I worked with before I left". This was the first time he has taught an open workshop. The classes were conducted at Linda Pollard-Lake's dance studio in Woodbrook.

There are currently about 880 dancers attached to traditional studios in Trinidad, about 400 if you count the Best Village dancers, says Springer, and about 15 turned out for the workshop.

On Wednesday evening, the day of the final workshop at the Pollard-Lake studio on Bell-Smythe Street, Springer is early and accompanied by Allan Balfour, a dancer with the Noble Douglas Company.

"Knowing dancers as I do," says Springer, "15 is not a bad turnout, it being so close to Christmas and all."

The workshops were also surprisingly low-priced - a mere $25. This was because, says Springer, he simply wanted to see the technique disseminated. Although it has been admired and widely used throughout the world, the Cuban technique has never been used in any choreography in Trinidad. Balfour said that both Douglas and La Chapelle were keen on it, but the method was so difficult that it would be several years before locals acquired enough proficiency to put on a show.

"The technique is very difficult to learn," says Balfour, "so we try to make the workshops as 'dancey' as possible, let people have fun, you know? The students are very enthusiastic. A lot of them are ballet (students) and even for people who do modern it's difficult to get."

The movements of the technique, when Springer did a short demonstration, showed very clearly their antecedents.

There were the geometrically precise pirouettes and poses of ballet, the freer but tightly controlled whiplash coiling and uncoiling of the body of modern dance, and the raw, energetic arm, waist and head gestures that anyone who's ever seen a Best Village or traditional African dancer would immediately recognize.

Even if the technique weren't so difficult, though, the dance community in Trinidad still would not be able to use it because, says Balfour, there is no group of young male dancers coming up in Trinidad to take his and Springer's places. They are 34 and 29 respectively. This, says, Springer is one of the reasons he makes his living dancing with his Venezuelan company - an opportunity which came to him quite accidentally, the way he tells it. "A few Venezuelan dancers, Carlos Orta and Norris Ugueto, came here in 1991 looking for male dancers to take across there… for the exposure, you know. I didn't really want to go, but I auditioned anyway. And I got in."

Even so, says Springer, even the Venezuelan Company's time is not fully used up in Venezuela. The company travels to Europe every year, and there is no dance season in Venezuela,

In fact the mecca of Caribbean dance, if one were engaged in such a search, would be Cuba, according to Springer. "Dance is really developed in Cuba. In Latin America it is still developing."

He learns the Cuban technique from Isabelle Blanca of the National Modern Dance Company of Cuba.

The workshops of four classes each were completed on December 16, but Springer says he will return to Trinidad, as usual, next year to continue to teach the technique.

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