The L’Acadco dance company was honoured for its contributions to dance and culture in Jamaica and the wider Caribbean by Jamaica Dance Umbrella (JDU) at the launch of its 2024 festival.

The event was held at Philip Sherlock Centre for the Creative Arts, on the very stage that L’Acadco held its first audition some 40 years ago.

L’Acadco’s founder and Creative Director Dr L’Antoinette Stines accepted the award on behalf of the company. She said that her work was made possible by many dancers, choreographers, drummers, and volunteers who supported her over the four decades of the life of the dance company.

The group is the foremost proponent of L’Antech, the unique dance technique which was developed by Stines, who holds a PhD in cultural studies.

L’Antech fuses classical and modern dance techniques with Caribbean forms of movement, creating a genre that is internationally recognised as a formal technique in its own right — a first for the English-speaking Caribbean.

L’Antech has been academically recognised and students sit exams each year in the discipline. Stines and the company have toured extensively in the Africa, Europe, UK, US, Canada, Mexico, Cuba, and the Caribbean.

From its inception the company has been committed to dance theatre as the primary style of production, developing a varied and popular repertoire. The company has represented Jamaica at several international festivals and L’Antoinette directed choreography for the launch of Cricket World Cup in 2007.

Established in 2009, the Jamaica Dance Umbrella is an annual festival of dance workshops and performances organised by Philip Sherlock Centre for the Performing Arts. The festival brings together members of the dance community in Jamaica under a veritable umbrella to perform, teach and learn. It is the brainchild of Michael Holgate, who heads the Philip Sherlock Centre and is the artistic director of The Ashe Company.