Ronan Critchlow
Ronan Critchlow, the brother of Sheila Barnett, was for some years a leading dancer with the Ivy Baxter Creative Dance Group. He was the first highly acclaimed male dancer in the creative, or modern dance idiom in Jamaica. He was a civil servant but taught dance as well, not only in Jamaica but also in Antigua and Grenada, and in 1961 he had revived his historic role of the stow-away in Rat Passage on tour to Washington, D.C., and Baltimore. Critchlow studied the technique of hand drumming with Haiti’s master drummer Tiroro during Jamaica’s 1955 tercentenary celebrations. Thus, it was a natural that he became the Company’s principal drummer when he gave up dancing soon after the Company’s formation.