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Founded in 1993 by Ronald Anthony Taylor, Canboulay Dance Theatre is a key example of contemporary cultural production in Toronto, as their vision as a company is to promote and enhance collaboration between artists with different ethnic and cultural backgrounds. As a Trinidadian who now lives in Toronto, he experiences the integration of Canadian culture with his Caribbean heritage. Similarly, the objectives of his work reflect this, creating new artistic tradition, by fusing traditional and contemporary dance styles such as Caribbean, modern, and ballet. "If you see a black man from the Caribbean go up and dance, you think he'll be snapping and moving his waist to a drum in the background. Sure, those elements are in my work. But I like to infuse other elements to make everything richer,"1 say Ron Taylor.
Canboulay, with the visions of Ronald A. Taylor, has created a very innovative and unique style. “It is all in the way you present it…take something, reconfigure it and present it in a format people haven't seen before."2 He also stresses that a lot of people hold stereotypes about Caribbean dance, and that’s why he always tries to show audiences something new. Additionally, he takes on the challenge to convey the dancer’s attitudes towards life and their history through movement, stressing the importance of emotional expressiveness.
Memory
Ronald Taylor mixes memory and history in his choreography. In a show entitled “In The Depths of My Palais,” Taylor looks back to his childhood in Trinidad and Tobago, by displaying memory of this name-giving ritualistic gathering when a child is born, that engages different aspects of the cultural tradition in the celebration. Additionally, his memory and representation of his African-Caribbean rooted history is occupied by emotion, as it is one inspired by a memory he has from his mother.
Footnotes
1 http://www.nowtoronto.com/issues/2000-12-07/theatre_feature.html, “Taylor-Made Moves” NOW, Dec 7 - 13, 2000, Vol. 20, No. 14 Ibid.
2 Ibid.