Yet [Dennis Morris]'s `funny' speech not only attracted [Bob Marley] but helped to open a door into the exciting world of photography that would soon spiral him towards success. Now people will be able to get an eyeful of Morris's talent in Growing up Black, an exhibition in London depicting his life as a '70s teenager. "My black friends couldn't understand why I wanted to associate with a white punk band," Morris says.
"Back then," says [Glean], "Irie! was probably the first black dance theatre company to actually work to reggae music on stage, and to use traditional Caribbean folk dances as part of a performance piece. And everybody was really excited by it." "Our rehearsal period was like a training session, and so by the time you got to present the work on stage, the poor dancers were still trying to get to grips with the different styles and how they could fuse that with their contemporary training," recalls Glean. "So sometimes the essence of the artistic content could easily get lost." "You have to know about the culture and you have to have some kind of understanding and experience in order to execute the dance forms, because it really it about style," she explains. "And if you're talking about the traditional forms as well, it's about the traditional forms as well, it's about religion, it's about the rituals - you need to know all of that because that's the only way you'll be able to represent it fully and truthfully on stage. Everything is integral."
