Founding Members

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FOUNDING PATRONS

The Honorable Louise Bennet Coverley O.J.
The Honorable Edna Manley O.M.
The Honorable Edward Seaga P.C.
Mr. Robert Verity C.D.
Ms Martha Graham

In terms of technical range and performing skill the founding dancers’ versatility figured prominently in the early responses to the Company. Quite properly the Company was judged primarily in its dances and dancing rather than on its philosophy. The richness of the offerings was undoubtedly augmented by the diverse backgrounds of the dancers themselves. They had proven their technical capabilities as well as their powers of concentration and physical stamina. At the time the Company was formed many of the members were teaching dance and had already created their own dances. All of them had a separate profession: graphic artist, school teacher, university lecturer, laboratory technician, stenotypist, clerk, telephone operator, or civil servant. But they were all linked by the challenge of the dance in more than one of its many dimensions. Not all of them grasped the full import of the historical and philosophical implications of the effort, but none of them would have missed the excitement of the challenge, or the sense of occasion, that Jamaican independence offered that branch of the arts to which they had devoted so much of their time and energy for much of their young lives.