UWI held it's 3rd annual Vernon Leslie distinguished lecture today at the Bliss. The lecture is in honor of Belizean Vernon Leslie, the first Belizean resident tutor for UWI from the 1950's to the late 70's. In that time, he also founded the Festival of the Arts - and, in that, his legacy lives on as a showcase for young talents. The topic for today's lecture was a subject that would have been dear to him: dance education in Belize. We dropped by to find out more.
Jane Bennett, Head, UWI Open Campus
"Mr. Vernon Leslie was the first Belizean resident tutor for the University of the West Indies in Belize and I always say with much pride that the University of the West Indies has been here for 70 years."
"So we want to also celebrate the life of Mr. Vernon Leslie who made huge contributions to the festival of the Arts here in Belize and that is why we are honoring him and again this is the third time we are doing this and for today there is a panel that will be addressing dance education. I think a lot of us just think of dance of just getting up on a stage and performing but there is the education aspect of it and so the whole purpose is to bring that together and so we have panelist like Mr. Greg Vernon here as part of NICH, we have Ms. Althea Sealy who is the director of the Belize Dance Company and also Dr. Clara Cuellar talking about youth education and development within the YMCA, so you can see they are trying to bring it all together to emphasize that dancing is more than just getting on the stage and performing beautifully but how does that affect and how does education push that envelop and so we have students here who we will hopefully walk away with that understanding of how important education part of dancing is for their development and for their enjoyment."
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