“Intense competition with friendly rivalry” best describes the ongoing preliminaries of the Prime Minister’s Best Village Trophy Competition. This year, it is safe to say that the finals will be one for the record books. Regardless of the category, Dance, Tassa, Drumology, Folk Medley Songs, Poetry, Spoken Word or the Self-Expression and Talent of La Reine Rive competition, young people dominate this year’s competition and have performed their hearts out to the delight of the packed audiences at each event.
Over the last two weekends the competition went to St Madeleine Regional Complex, North Eastern College, Barataria South Secondary School and Egypt Village Government Primary School, Point Fortin.
Dr Nyan Gadsby-Dolly, Minister of Community Development, Culture and the Arts, attended over the two weekends and marvelled at the talent, commenting, “how can people say Best Village is dying, look at the number of young people dominating the stage in every single category.
“Look at the audience and see how the communities come out to support each other in friendly rivalry; the Best Village competition is very much alive.”
For 2018, the Best Village preliminary competition forms part of Community Festivals celebrating All that is We—We Craft, We Food, We Drama, We Dance, We Music—and features all the elements of T&T’s culture inclusive of food, craft and farmers markets and other family friendly, fun-filled activities.
The competition moved to Preysal Secondary School last Saturday, with the last of the preliminaries of Folk Presentation going to the Mayaro Learning Resource Centre on May 26.
The finals of the Prime Minister’s Best Village Trophy Competition will take place in July/August at both the National Academy for the Performing Arts (NAPA), Port-of-Spain and the Southern Academy for the Performing Arts (SAPA), San Fernando.
All events are free and the full schedule of event dates, times and locations is available on the ministry’s Facebook page, the CultureTT app and at www.cdca.gov.tt
