IRMA KIRTON THOMPSON
RETURN OF THE BRONZE GODDESS
By Halcian Pierre
Express
February 28, 2001
Page 26
The slim, elegant lady standing before me received the Bahamas' first Art and Culture Seashell Award in 1977.
She has headed the Bahamas Association of Administrative Professionals since 1990, and in 1996 was made president of the Secretaries' Association.
Back home, for she's a Trini, she was a member of the Hampton's Athletic Club in the 1950s and played netball with Lystra Lewis. She's traveled the world and met Emperor Haile Selassi.
She eats fire.
In various dance troupes touring the Caribbean, she has danced on a bed of nails, and on broken bottles and hot coals. And she has danced the limbo.
"And I can still do it," she says cheekily. "Only age has caught up with me so I can't go as low as I used to in the limbo dance."
Irma Rita Kirton Thompson tells all in her autobiography, Life of a Scarlet Ibis, a fitting title to describe the life of this multifaceted woman.
"It wasn't easy, but I wrote it just as I would speak to someone. People say I love to talk, but that's just me, I guess," she says with a laugh.
Talker or not, she has been one of the flagbearers for one of Trinidad's most famous dances - the limbo.
"I tell you, when I heard Black Stalin sing 'Whey limbo gone' and I trembled. The young people aren't interested in the culture anymore, and it's sad. We always say, 'Home of the steelband, calypso and limbo,' yet the number of limbo dancers is smaller now. This is why I've written this book; hopefully they'll become interested again, reading about me."
There is a Jamaican lilt in her voice, the result of many years there. She now lives in the Bahamas, and is here to promote the book.
She was born in 1933, the fourth of nine children. Her mother worked as a servant for a Portuguese family. During this time Thompson attended the Duke Street EC school, from which she graduated aged fourteen and was given a two-year scholarship in administrative procedures. She completed it in one.
"I was offered a teaching position at the school at age 16 because of this. I was so happy to get to take care of my mother; she worked very hard to take care of all of us."
While still a child she visited the Shango tents on the hills. She learned the bongo, limbo, fire eating, stick-fighting and broken glass acts. The upper and middle class folk scoffed, calling them "African peasant arts" but she blossomed.
In fact, she was already dancing to the drumming of Jeffrey Beddeau from age ten in Laventille "I never understood why they weren't enthusiastic about the Shango drumming and so on' some said it delved too deep into the spiritual, but I didi feel a call in my heart when the drums played."
Eventually, after combining ballet steps and putting on amateur shows at the Roxy theatre in the early 1950s, she was invited to visit Jamaica to promote the limbo. Her performance went so well she was asked to return again in 1957, and it was on her third trip in 1959 that she met Emperor Haile Selassi of Ethiopia. "I'll never forget that night. After the show he presented the entire troupe with medals, but before giving me mine, he said, 'You dance like a beautiful bronze goddess.' Since then, the name stuck."
Dance is only one facet of her life. Married to a police officer, she has a son and daughter and yes, she taught them the fire eating act too. She also teaches the act to young people in the island.
"People may think that because I have spent so many years away that I'm not close to my home any more, but all the years of hard work was all for Trinidad and Tobago. I never forsook my country. This project was long in coming and I always promised myself that when it was finished, not matter where in the world I may be, that Trinidad would get the first copies."
Life of a Scarlet Ibis is available at Mohammed's Bookstore, Henry Street, Port of Spain.
In closing she says, "My blood is Trinidad, my heart and soul is Trinidad. No matter where I go, this is my home. I was born at 48 Charlotte Street; that's where my navel string is."