Choreographer Conchita Ming has a way of inspiring everyone she meets with her infectious passion for dance and the arts.
A few years ago, she met a group of Berkeley Institute staff and students at the airport. They were headed abroad to take part in the UK Shakespeare Schools Festival. The drama teacher thought that it would be great to have a similar Festival in Bermuda. Conchita offered to help. Before she could blink she was knee-deep in organising such a festival for Island students.
Today, students from six high schools take part in the Bermuda Shakespeare Schools Festival and summer drama workshops. It was initially supposed to be a biannual performance, but students and staff were so enthusiastic about Hamlet, The Tempest and other Shakespeare plays that it is now an annual, much-anticipated event.
She first started dance training at nine at the Sylvia Dale School of Dancing in the United Kingdom and continued with the Jackson School of Dance in Bermuda from age 11. Jackson’s founder, Louise Jackson, has been one of her lifelong mentors, and has encouraged and sometimes pushed her throughout her dance career. A career in dance was not an option for her as education was paramount in her family. Getting a professional degree was important and dancing was considered a hobby.
“Now it is just so wonderful to see how dancers can pursue it as a career,” she said.
She studied Sociology at Wagner College in New York, and obtained her teacher’s certification in early childhood education and Master’s degree in counseling from the University of Manitoba. All the while she kept up her dancing, performing with the dance company, Contemporary Dancers of Winnipeg from 1970 to 1972.
When she returned to Bermuda, she worked at the Child Development Project as its Coordinator from inception until 2003 and also taught modern dance at the Jackson School of Performing Arts until 2002.
Over the years she has choreographed for various local theatre productions and charities. In 1977 she became a co-founder, dancer and choreographer with the Bermuda Dance Theatre, forerunner to the National Dance Theatre of Bermuda (NDTB). Many of her dance works have been presented through NDTB. She has also choreographed several works for the Department of Culture’s annual Emancipation Service and for Ruth Thomas’ Mosaics productions about Bermuda culture.
Several of Conchita’s works have been performed by the NDTB in Philadelphia, New York and Trinidad. Her work, Bermuda Tapestry, was the first local performance featured in the Bermuda Festival in 1979. Her works, Tubular Images, Out of the Shadows and Earth Tones have been showcased in NDTB performances for the Bermuda Festival and performed for Queen Elizabeth II in 1994.
In 2001 Conchita was invited to choreograph a work for the Department of Tourism to celebrate the Quincentennial founding of Bermuda, a nine minute multi-media presentation which covered Bermuda’s history to the present day through dance and film. The work was the opening for several travel industry conferences.
Some of her many other accomplishments include choreographing the 2004 Bermuda Festival for the Russian National Orchestra Quintet. In 2007 she was Artistic Coordinator for the Ministry of Community & Cultural Affairs’ contingent to the Virginia International Tattoo performed in Norfolk, Virginia in April of that year.
Her parents were the late Coleridge Williams and Connie Cann Williams. Her father was a lawyer and a member of the Progressive Group. He also worked on the Committee for Universal Suffrage. Her mother was a teacher at Prospect Secondary School. Her parents believed strongly in giving back to the community. For this reason, she feels, it has always been very natural to volunteer.
In 2010 she was made a member of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) and received her award directly from Queen Elizabeth II. The award was for her work as Chairman for Bermuda’s 400th Anniversary Committee in 2009, and also for the work she has done with dance and the community. She is on the board of the Bermuda Festival and a board member of Masterworks Foundation.
Out of all this, she considers her greatest achievement to be her wonderful family consisting of her husband Henry Ming and two children Alana Anderson and Ari Ming and two grandchildren.
“When I look back, I loved being involved in dance,” she said, “and I loved my career at the Child Development Programme, but it is my family I am most proud of.”
She is currently working on a book about the history of dance in Bermuda.
