Issue in Context

Roots/Crossroutes was created to address the multi-faceted impact of immigration within the Carribean, yet it addresses issues found in all communities in which immigrant populations live. As a territory of the Unitied States, the Virgin Islands are an attractive immigration option to those from neighboring Carribean islands. Given that land and other natural resources - as well as jobs - are finite, the influx of people to St. Thomas has been the source of much ill will. This is particularly puzzling to an outsider who, basing an opinion on visual information only, might consider St. Thomas homogeneous. Yet the differences between Jamaicans and Trinidadians are as real as the differences between, for example, French and Germans.


About the Event

Roots/Crossroutes was commissioned by the Reichhold Center for the Performing Arts at the University of the Virgin Islands in St. Thomas. The work was created collaboratively by Tinidadian musician and composer Leroy Calliste (aka Black Stalin), and Pittsburg-based choreographer Mark Taylor, artistic director of Dance Alloy. The lyrics in the music and the motivation for the choreography were drawn from oral histories gathered in St. Thomas by sociolinguist Dr. Vincent Cooper of the University of the Virgin Islands. Shown in its early stages as a work-in-progress at the Arts in Society Conference at Dickinson College in September, Roots/Crossroutespremiered in November 1998 in St.Thomas. The performances at Dickinson are the first on the mainland.