Namron Questions.
 
I interviewed by skype Namron at his home. I learned about his career through his website, which his son put up for him.

1. You have had a long and fruitful career. What do you consider to be the greatest gift your life as an artist has given you?

 What have I done and what I have achieved, having independence and freedom. To know that when I started that when I started in this adventure, there was no black artists say, on television (except one). I fell in love in with dance and dance fell in love with me and I’m still in love with it. I have this passion. Now that I am at this ancient age, what I have achieved is to pass on to other artists. People say that if it wasn’t for me, they wouldn’t have danced.
I have achieved something for myself and not just for myself. I have contributed to other artists of color. For example, I was with Nadine Senior at Leeds. I looked across and I saw a crowd and people and I thought God! 75% of them Nadine taught when they were kids and 50% I taught as students in dance. It was an amazing reception, with everyone coming up and talking to me: “Do you realize I saw you dancing when I was ten or eleven years old”.
They saw me when I was doing Troy Game and their eyes popped out and then they recreated Troy Game. Everyone wanted to play the part of Namron because he had the best part.
To hear these stories, for me, that was the greatest, the people lives that you have touched by showing them the ropes, getting them to do warm ups, helping them to “tune their instrument”. Telling then things like: “when you leave the theater leave it clean, not like a pig sty so that those places will ask you to come back again”. I’ve done many things for the industry, for dance, not just for black people. Now, recently, I am getting lots of work. People are asking me to talk about my career and how I started dancing. They want me to become patrons of their organization. I say: “What’s a patron, what do you want me to do?”

2. How important is family to your artistic work? (Who is your family?)
My wife, we met going to a performance at The Place in London. I met her, she was working next door and we used to hang out. I invited her to the pub across the road and she came over. She said it was a bet, a dare to speak to this man with dreadlocks. She came over and then…two kids, one girl and one boy. The girl is working on doctorate at the University of North Hampton in psychology, she is twenty-seven. My son, he does fine arts and is graduating from Canterbury University and he likes music and he is amazing at sketching.  My wife, she’s a driving instructor, she taught the kids to drive. My family, they support me in coming to see me perform. Recently, at Sadler’s Wells, they all came and saw me trying to kick a leg.

 3. On your website you describe four phases of your career: 

• your early work with the Willesden community-based dance company.

Amazing – that’ where I fell in love. The teacher was only a year are two older than me (18) and she taught ballet. Her hair fell out of a bun and her hair was so long it was in the middle of her ankle. What really affected me was the control she had over her legs and her being from the fingertips to her toe. She wouldn’t stop until she got me to take off my shoes and my clothes and join in the class. Colored people and white used to get together and mix. Dance was a vehicle to make us work and socialize together. It did more than that because dance was a way of communicating. We were getting along so well. I invited people. For every one boy there were six or seven women. I told them: “You want girls, come with me. You can’t find girls at cricket or football.” So all of these sixteen and seventeen year-old boys came. 

• ​your young professional work with London Contemporary Dance and other professional companies,

I fell in love again, Right place at the right time. Mary Graham. Mark Hinkson. Dudley Williams. With the company, I really had to work so hard because my body wasn’t built as such. I had to shape and train my body to make the grade. It was tough going. I was fortunate to have teachers. I didn’t have the best feet in the world so you used what you’ve got to the best of your ability and I really had to work hard. Eventually, things started to pay off. I gave up my engineering apprenticeship to become a dancer. I almost got thrown out of the house many times. I really started to get really good doing this barefoot dancing. I was fortunate to be at the very beginning of an embryotic situation. I was part of it, I was involved, I was growing in terms of performing. I gained in experience, I got good roles and became known as a soloist.
In 1973 I received a letter inviting me to join to Australian Dance theatre so I must have been good. Robin Dwyer shook his head and said “no I don’t think this is for you.” A week later my salary was doubled. I stayed until my retirement. My experience, working as a dancer, I became very popular and well known.  I didn’t have to worry because the parts I had were the starring roles. I was very strong.

• teaching at Northern School for Contemporary Dance

I had just retired from a career in dance at 40 years old, knees busted. We had people like Darshan Buller and Philip in the company who had talked about this lady in Leeds named Nadine Senior. One year I was there, and she invited me to come to the school. I accepted. After I went home from her first invitation, she wanted me to come back and do outreach work in the community for six weeks. I stayed at her house and we would sit and talk about dance. She wanted to start a school because she was sick of sending all of the local students to these good schools to London; we could keep this money in Leeds. She was very inspirational. This discussion led me to want to partake in this new adventure of going to teach at Northern School of Contemporary Dance in Leeds.
This was 1984, and part of my dancer’s resettlement. After you finish dancing, they help you to retrain for your next career. I did three months in the Caribbean to learn about where the students were coming from. I didn’t know Jamaica, Trinidad Montserrat, Barbados. I learned traditions and folk dances. When I came back, Nadine announced that he had found a place for me in March/April 1985. She arranged an interview with the interview pane and within three day I got the job. So there I was in Leeds.
There was a primary school with a rock hard floor, but the facility was OK and the next thing we knew we had auditions. We had only thirteen kids because we started late in the year. The following year it was more than twenty kids. I taught there for 15 years and had the marvelous time. Some of these students are now employing me. Now the school is state of the arts in Leeds.
​

•  your resurgence as a performer at the Royal Opera House and the Millennium dome.

It all started when they were looking for someone to play a father at the O2 theatre in London. I went along and did the show. That’s how we all started back again. After William Louther passed away, someone asked me to come to Edinburgh festival to do a performance based on older performers and I was the oldest. At home, I was freelancing, driving a taxi to earn some money. Last year, I got a call from Sadler Wells. 

4. What about international travel and relationships? Where do you go? 
I usually go to my favorite place. I go down to Alligator Pond in Jamaica, eat fish, drink rum and coke. I’m from Manchester Parrish in Jamaica There are three counties, Middlesex, Surrey and Cornwell. Mandeville is the capital of Manchester.
 
I like it because when I was kid it was the first time that I saw the sea. We were school kids and they took to the beach in a truck. Alligator pond. And I remember you could see out of the cracks of the truck and see this big expanse of water and it blew my head. I remember getting closer and closer in all of the excitement. And after that my mom and friends and I would go and collect fish and find fish.
 
Whenever I went back to Jamaica, and it started at age 21, I used to go down to Alligator Pond and just spend time there. There is a river that comes down into the sea. There was fresh water and we used to disappear up there and play and be afraid that the alligator would appear. There was no alligator there, but I always asked “why they call it Alligator Pond?”. Turn out, if you turn your back and look up the hills and look at the mountains you can see how the hills look like an alligator coming out of the sea. It’s because of the shape of the mountains with your back to the sea.
 
All the things that I like Fried fish and bammy or steamed fish and bammy. This captured Jamaica. Lots of hearts, lots of lobsters, crabs and fresh fish. 

5. What advice would you offer for you offer to young black dance artists entering the field today. 
Remember. Who you are. You are a human being. In the 60s it wasn’t easy entering a profession that was alien. One of the things ingrained in me, in all of the problems and all of the difficulties, I see myself as a human being. I know that I am black, but we’ve all been put on the earth, and we all have to survive. Some of us are Chinese, some of us or Indian, some of us are African and we all have to survive. We are all human being. Of course you will come up upon prejudice, but I wanted my piece of the action. I wanted to dance. There is prejudice -  because of color, because of dreadlocks - but you have to stand your ground. If you stand your ground, you will make it. I was so determined. I wanted my piece of the action. I was strong physically and I had to make myself even stronger mentally.
 
I used psychology. As my daughter was saying, you have to use your head. Open up your eyes. You have to work hard. It’s not going to be easy. I did so many things to my body. In the end I came out – what’s that term – “smelling of roses.”
 
There was the war. My father fought in it just like your father. I know many a man in Jamaica don’t have any arms, don’t have any legs and they lost their arms in America. They went to the fields and never came back. They had to fight for their lives. I didn’t. I went to university. I learned things as I developed as a young man. I listened. My mom used to say “Common sense will prevail.”  Common sense.  My mom could hardly read and write and she had a pension and built a comfortable house in Jamaica. Retired, went back and enjoyed a quiet life.  I’m a pensioner now. Are you a pensioner?
 
6. Final thoughts about the project? 
I didn’t like the term Black dance. Black dance came in the 70s and 80s. My first love was ballet. I didn’t do black dance. Years later in Jamaica, I learned the traditional dance where I came from. I do black dance? - no – I’m a black dancer. I do contemporary dance.