More than half a century after he first appeared on stage as a youngster in Portsmouth, England, theatre impresario Dusty Hind still gets a thrill just before curtain time.
“I am a Broadway and West End nut, and my favourite moment is when the lights go down and the audience hushes,” he said. “There’s a sense of expectation and excitement as you settle back and say ‘entertain me’.”
Hind began entertaining audiences on the island shortly after his arrival in Bermuda in 1962. Recruited to join the Bermuda Police Force, he founded the Police Drama Group in 1963—in the three years of its existence the group presented four shows at City Hall Theatre—and also began acting in productions staged by the Bermuda Musical and Dramatic Society. He later co-founded the Jabulani Repertory Company with Patricia Pogson Nesbitt, and the celebrated group presented some 23 productions, and 500 performances, in the Gazebo Lounge of the Princess Hotel.
Hind was born in Portsmouth to parents Joyce and William. His father was a violinist who headed his own philharmonic orchestra at the age of 18. An only child, he began acting in stage productions at the age of nine, and while studying at Portsmouth Grammar School acted in three George Bernard Shaw plays and a number of other productions.
He also developed a love of sculpture, and recalls a trip to Paris with his parents at the age of 15. “There was a Rodin exhibition, and there was a sign ‘please touch’,” he says. “Rodin felt that sculpture should be handled—and, at the age of 15, to run my hands over a Rodin was very impactful.”
Graduating from grammar school, Hind studied art for four years at Portsmouth College of Art, earning a National Degree in design, with a major in sculpture. While studying, he was part of the Hector Ross Repertory Company, acting in productions over the summer and during Christmas and Easter school breaks. Hind worked with famous British comedian Frankie Howerd and Sarah Churchill—daughter of former Prime Minister Winston Churchill—in Portsmouth as well as at venues such as the Grand Theatre in Southampton. “It paid my way through art college,” Hind says.
Upon graduation, he spent two years as a teacher. “The first year, I loved it—but in the second year, I realised I would be doing the same thing year after year.”
Bermuda was advertising for police recruits, and Hind was selected, and underwent police training once on the Island. After three years in the force, he left the island briefly—but returned, joining Advertising Associates. Three years later, in 1970, he formed Aardvark Communications and was managing director for 28 years, creating memorable advertising campaigns for Butterfield Bank, Cable & Wireless, Bacardi, Bluck’s, Princess Hotels, Crisson Jewellers and others. He sold the company to the employees in 1998.
Hind and Nesbitt formed Jabulani in 1993, presenting a wide variety of productions—musicals, murder mysteries, British farces, and drawing-room comedies—over a five-year run, including Broadway mainstays Driving Miss Daisy and Don’t Dress for Dinner. The group of more than 100 actors and technical staff were all paid professionals. A number of young Bermudians developed their acting skills in the company, including Daren A. Herbert—whose credits including a speaking part as Jimmy’s piano player in Dreamgirls—and Lana Young, who appeared as Mistress Rolfe in Bermudian director Lucinda Spurling’s film The Lion and The Mouse, and also as a nurse in the Hollywood film, Beginners. “We completely ignored race, and mixed everyone up, and that had not happened to that magnitude in Bermuda before,” he said. “There was total acceptance by audiences, and that was wonderful and satisfying.”
Meanwhile, Hind had viewed some African art in the new Rockefeller Wing of the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1983, and had what he calls an “epiphany”. A day later, he happened past the Wright Art Gallery, which displayed African art in its window. “The gallery was closed for stocktaking, but I banged on the door, and that night I bought my first piece of African art, a Baule mask, and African art has consumed me ever since.”
Ten years later, Hind was the driving force behind the Bermuda National Gallery’s first international exhibit of African art, called Secrecy—African Art that Conceals and Reveals. He joined the Gallery’s Board of Trustees in 1995, and in 1996 orchestrated the acquisition of the Gallery’s collection of African art. That same year, he curated the exhibit The Power and the Glory—Masks from Black Africa, which was compiled from his personal collection and, in 1997, he curated the exhibit, Hair in African Art.
In 1999, he opened the Crisson & Hind Fine Art Gallery, which displays more than 200 pieces, specialising in stone sculptures by the Shona Fine Artists of Zimbabwe. Shona sculpture, he says, is the most important art movement to emerge from Africa in the second half of the 20th century. Hind has travelled to Zimbabwe on more than 20 occasions. “I buy directly from about 30 different master sculptors, and travel to the mines and quarries to get the 10 different types of hard and beautiful stone that is used. Most of the artists specialise in a particular area, whether that is dancing girls, or mother and child, or perhaps giraffes. When they know I am coming, they prepare works for my arrival.”
The Crisson & Hind gallery has also donated a number of works to the Bermuda National Gallery, including the popular sculpture in spring stone, The Student by Jonathan Mhondorohuma, which is displayed in Par-la-Ville Park (now Queen Elizabeth Park) in Hamilton. The gallery also donated a large Shona work called Suffer Little Children to St. Paul AME Church to celebrate the completion of renovations in 2011.
