Ballet Black
Stephen Dwoskin brings together members of the Ballet Negres dance company, founded in London in 1946.
Stephen Dwoskin's Arts Council film tells the story of Ballet Negres, an innovative all-black dance troupe founded by Jamaican dancer Berto Pasuka and active in Europe from 1946 to 1952. Exploring the company through archive film and photographs, as well as a reunion of the original members after 35 years, it climaxes with a vibrant performance of Pasuka's They Came by young black dancers. The film's fragmented style and lack of traditional talking heads can be challenging, but its historic value and rhythmic blend of sound and image reward the persistent viewer.
Berto Pasuka was a gay Jamaican who loved to dance. When he made Britain his home in 1939, he took a ballet course and found opportunities to dance in cabaret shows in West End night clubs during WWII. He also modelled for sculptors, painters and photographers, including Angus McBean, who admired his physique. After the war, while working with several other black dancers in the film Men of Two Worlds, Pasuka established Ballet Negres, Britain's first black ballet company. Bringing together dancers from the Caribbean and musicians from West Africa, the company sought to create and showcase dances based on black folklore, life in the West Indies and colonialism. Pasuka wrote and choreographed the ballets and mime was an integral part of his work. He died in Surrey in 1963 at the age of 43.
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Black & S. Asian Arts Filmmaking
Exploring the rich and extensive shared history of Black and South Asian filmmaking.
Collaboration has been at the heart of the work of Black and South Asian artists, from the Black theatre movement of the 60s and 70s to the film and video workshops of the 80s and 90s. This reflects an emphasis on collectivism as a way of sharing resources, as well as a political expression.
Britain's Black and South Asian communities have long shared similar themes and dealt with shared experiences in the present, while often making potent creative connections with artistic traditions in Africa, South Asia and Caribbean. This selection of videos, mostly drawn from the 1980s and 90s, encompasses a rich variety of genres and forms.
