11 Dave Rodney/ Gleaner Writer “JAMAICA A go sell off this year”, screamed a man in his mid-40s with a Jamaican accent. HE WAS attending the Travel & Adventure Expo at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in Manhattan over the weekend. He lives inWhite Plains, New York, and after an absence from the island for five years, he made a decision to return to his homeland this summer. Although he grew up in St Elizabeth, he has never been to Dunn’s River Falls, in St Ann, and knows virtually nothing about the country’s capital city, Kingston. He admits he pretends to knowHalf-Way Tree and Cross Roads in group discussions with friends. But after visiting the Jamaica Tourist Board booth at the travel expo on Sunday, he will now do his first around-the-island tour on his visit later this year with his family of four. Together, they will share the joy of discovering new places. The Santa Cruz native is one of hundreds of thousands of New York TriState residents who will go on overseas vacations this year. The annual Travel and Adventure Expo typically provides the inspiration and information for new global travel adventures, and the record-breaking number of attendees over the weekend was testament to a renewed interest in travel after the COVID-19 lockdown. “I attended the show on Saturday and I was thrilled with the energy and excitement at the expo,” another New York-based Jamaican, Ray McKayle from Flatlands, Brooklyn, told The Gleaner. McKayle is an event promoter doing a house music Jamboree in Negril in May, and he revealed that he built some productive new bridges at the expo that will further expand the size of his party group travelling to Hedonism 11 in Jamaica. ICONIC LANDMARKS This year’s travel expo was open to the public on Saturday and Sunday, and it showcased hundreds of vendors from all over the world selling and promoting an astonishing variety of products— fromhot and cold weather destinations and beach resorts to river cruises, ski trips to snow-cappedmountains, health retreats, shopping sprees, mountain escapes, African safaris, airlines, luggage, travel insurance and travel credit cards. To increase traffic, some destinations offered complimentary food and beverage sampling, and gift bags loaded with booklets, brochures, T-shirts and promotional goodies. Amid the multitude of curious travel devotees, Jamaica was able to stand out and shine with a strategic location and eye-popping displays that riveted with images of iconic landmarks. And a team of friendly, knowledgeable Jamaica Tourist Board representatives led by Chris Wright and Carey Dennis engaged the crowds with information, gifts and trip giveaways. The teamwas supported by representatives from Couples Resorts, Grand Palladium and Grand Bahia Principe, as well as two top 50 travel specialists from Northeast USA. “The interest in Jamaica is huge and sustained,” Carey Dennis, business development officer at the Jamaica Tourist Board, stated, dressed in national black, green and gold colours. “Jamaica is on the lips of everyone. We’re expecting a phenomenal 2023.” Brand Jamaica strong in the New York travel market Dave Rodney/Contributor IT IS astonishing that the small island of Jamaica offers such a big array of resort areas, each one with its own unique charm. Both north and south coast resort areas lavish in trademark luxuries to varying degrees – pristine beaches, romantic hideaways, audacious adventures, pulsating nightlife, and ravishing beauty spots. But Kingston, the island’s capital located on the southeastern coast, offers a little of all the elements that make Jamaica a magic magnet, plus a huge slice of exciting, colourful culture. Kingston is seen as the cultural capital of the Caribbean. It is also a bustling metropolis that has become the epitome of Jamaica’s national motto, ‘Out of many, one people’. A drive around town will quickly show evidence of a multicultural mosaic with important contributions from West Africans, Europeans, Indians, Chinese, and Middle Easterners. The city has been rocking to ska, rock steady, reggae, and dancehall beats for decades. Visitors to the city can check out the Bob Marley and the Peter Tosh museums. There are almost as many recording studios as churches, and early music pioneers like BobMarley, Peter Tosh, Millie Small, and Desmond Decker took Jamaica’s music to international markets, where it quickly became a devout obsession for music fans worldwide. Nowadays, recording artists from all corners of the globe, including France, Brazil, and Japan, come to Kingston to take advantage of that mystical studio sound. And music fans can enjoy the rhythms of the city seven days a week at bars, bistros, nightclubs, parties, and concerts. DANCE GROUPS Wherever there is music, there is dance, and Kingston abounds with indigenous dance groups that showcase their gravity-defying creativity throughout the year. The National Dance Theatre Company (NDTC) has been around for over sixty years, and it has established itself as Jamaica’s premier dance company. But there are several other dance groups that can be seen, too, including L’Acadco, Movements Dance Company, and The Company Dance Theatre, and they generally incorporate traditional African forms like Dinka-mini, Ettu, and Kumina with modern expressions. In conjunction with a trained cadre of dancers from professional groups, there is also a wave of sizzling street dancers, mostly teenagers and young adults who glide to the beat of the latest dancehall songs. They are the ones who will most likely appear in music videos, and they continuously invent new dances that are quickly imitated and embraced by global reggae communities. Art lovers visiting Kingston will be thrilled by a solid tradition of high-quality Jamaican visual art that goes back to the first half of the last century, with intuitive masters John Dunkley and Mallica Kapo Reynolds leading the way. Since then, aided in part by Edna Manley, the wife of a former premier (and in whose honour the School of Visual and Performing Arts is named), worked assiduously to deliver to Jamaica and the wider world a steady stream of superbly brilliant artists, many of whom are showcased in the National Gallery of Art in downtown Kingston. RENAISSANCE The National Gallery also hosts themed exhibitions throughout the year. And as we move into 2023, an exciting new generation of versatile, entrepreneurial, and interactive artists are leading a new renaissance of visual art that has already changed the face of downtown Kingston with an explosion of tropical colours on almost 200 inner-city murals. The movement is called Kingston Creative. The City of Kingston is home to one of the oldest performance theatres in the Americas, the Ward Theatre. For decades, the capital has enjoyed a robust array of theatrical performances, from Shakespeare to serious and salacious local plays, to roots comedy theatre. Over the past two years, COVID slowed it all down. But the curtains are up again. At least four new productions are on the entertainment schedule in Kingston right now. Among them is a play called ‘Guilty with Explanation’, starring Caribbean comedy icon Oliver Samuels at the Little Theatre. Next door is the Little Little Theatre, a Basil Dawkins high drama ‘No Hope for Hopie’ that opened two weeks ago to rave reviews. The Jamaica Musical Theatre Company (JMTC) kicked off the new year with ‘Nesta’s Rock’ at the Sir Phillip Sherlock Centre for the Performing Arts at Mona. And a fourth exciting production, Anancy and Pinocchio, is playing at the Courtleigh Auditorium, right in the heart of the New Kingston. Team Jamaica at the Travel & Adventure Expo at the Jacob Javits Convention Centre in New York City this past weekend. From left: Carlos Perez, Bahia Principe; Alyssa J. Stevens, Travel by Alyssa; Ann Andreas, Couples Resorts; Carey Dennis, JTB; Laura Liriano, Blue Diamond Resorts and Christopher Wright, JTB. PHOTO BY DAVE RODNEY Kingston – Caribbean’s cultural capital Members of the NDTC performing an excerpt of ‘Blood Canticles’ at A Morning of Music and Movement 2019. FILE HE WEEKLY GLEANER | FEBRUARY 5 - MARCH 2, 2023 | www.jamaica-gleaner.com | NEWS
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