The Bermuda Dance Company?s new show, ?Conflict Resolution?, opens tomorrow at the City Hall Theatre.

A second performance takes place on Saturday. Both shows begin at 8 p.m.

?Conflict Resolution? is a reflection of the times said artistic director Suzette Harvey.

?We are doing a piece on war, because that is obviously where the world is right now,? she said. ?Every time you switch on the TV you see it and that is why we are bringing it to the theatre.

?Our signature piece is ?Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl?. It was one of the first pieces that was choreographed for the Company.

?We are also doing two new pieces one called ?Foula?and another piece called Moon over Neptune?.

United Dance Production teacher Keira Martin has choreographed a piece for this show.

?This is her second piece that she has done for the Company,? said Ms Harvey. ?It is called ?Tower Villages?.

?It is nice and it has an international flavour. It brings something different to the table.

?I want the Company to be culturally diverse and for one day for people to say ?wow?.?

Ms Harvey said the Bermuda Dance Company is a charitable organisation and that there is a difference between the Company and the United Dance Productions.

?When we train, we are not training like a student ? we are already trained. We take classes because we have to keep our body tuned. We realise that our body is our instrument and we have to play it.

?At the same time there are people coming in with a different mindset and after the same goal. No one is being dragged in here, instead you are here because you have made a commitment.?

United Dance Production assistant Debbie DeSilva added: ?Many dancers have a full day of work before coming here, some are teaching and some are in the business sector.?

?We have seven female and two male dancers and four Capoeira performers,? said Ms Harvey.

?The Capoeira dancers will perform in the piece called ?Fula?, which I choreographed. What we know today as break dancing comes from Angola, West Africa, and is known as Fula. It was a good thing that they train here.?

The dancers are Ms Harvey, Zalika Millet, Shanyea Trott, Keira Martin, Shomeiko Ingham, Nikia Manders, Jesse Jones and the two apprentices, Sierra-Renae Robinson and Takai Tota.

Ivan Outerbridge, Otero Smith, Chioke Lodge and Garon Wilkinson make up the Axe-Capoeira group.

Ms Harvey said most of the dancers have one thing in common.

?The beautiful thing about most of the dancers is that because of our age, most of us trained at the Jackson School of Dance,? she said. ?Because at that point there was only one school of dance here.

?We?ve all come home after educating ourselves at different universities and find ourselves stuck because the only thing we can do is teach and we want to perform.

?Usually you teach when your legs are tired, or some people have a real passion for teaching. At this age you can?t go and perform in your school?s recital, I?ve grown too much and my world of dance is bigger.

?It is not a one or two minute ?shake my bootie piece? ? you want to dance where it tells a story and shows emotion.

?I think it is nice because we all teach at different schools and we all trained at different schools.?

The Bermuda Dance Company was founded in 2000 to give jobs to professional dancers who have been trained overseas.

?They are at a very high calibre and not necessarily a local dancer,? said Ms Harvey.

?Anyone can audition if your level is high and if you are a modern dancer, because right now we are a modern dance company.

?Not that a ballerina couldn?t be in it, but they are trained differently.?

Ms Harvey added that the dancers give up a lot of time for their passion.

?Because it is not all about the money,? she said, ?It is just trying to get people to respect that. We know there are limited resources, but it is the only thing that can keep us together and sane artists ? to have people around us who understand what we are about.

?Because for the average person, no disrespect, they are clueless.

?We are a community that needs to have some sort of culture whether it is through our own music, our own sound and artists are people who do that. They write books, poetry, create dance.

?But we are taking to dance to another level.?

Although most of the dancers in the Company are university graduates, two are student dancers.

?One of our youngest dancers, Sierra-Renae Robinson, will be going to University of the Arts in Philadelphia to start her degree,? she said.

?That is where I went and it is the path that most are taking, although they don?t have to go there.

?I usually take them there for a summer programme, so they get a feel for the school, and the professors get a chance to look at them and ripen them up.

?It is pretty much how I was trained, and it is pretty much under the iron of it.

?Visiting male dancer Jesse Jones is performing with Takai Tota, who goes to university next year. I like having the international dancers come in, because just when you relax it keeps the calibre high.?

The Company would like the public to come and see what they are doing for a few reasons.

?We are constantly going around dealing with schools,? she said.

?But, what happens at the next level is that they have nowhere to go.

?We are losing everyone to international (dance) companies. We want people to pay attention to not just dance, but the arts in general.

?We are complaining about all these kids and there is a lot of talent being lost because we are not tuned in to them because we are tuned into things that make money faster, but you have to look at things that embrace and bring communities and cultures together and the arts are something that do that.?

She said that within dance there were so many different careers besides dance.

?Choreography costs a lot of money. They don?t just have to study dance,? she said.

?They can become a rehearsal director and critique dance all day. But they do not give money to children who want to go and study art so they are stuck. We don?t support artists and without artists the world would be black and white.

?We couldn?t watch TV, couldn?t read books or listen to music without artists.?

Besides the Bermuda Dance Company, United Dance Productions has a junior company that they hope will eventually feed dancers into the BDC.

?We hope that they will go and further their education abroad and when they return this Company is available to give you work,? said Ms Harvey.

?Unfortunately, what happens to many of us is that we go off to school and we don?t just want to teach. Many people want a career in dance.

?So, they end up not coming home and many join Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre and all these other fabulous companies that are set up all over the world.

?The reason why I say this is because we have a voice and we have young dancers who are going off and taking dance seriously. And we need to have something that they can come back to and say, ?I want to do this and I need a paycheque at the end of the week as a dancer?.

?It is educating people on it and what goes into the making of a dance company ? from the choreographer, the artistic directors, the managers, the technicians. It is not just about giving work to dancers, it?s about giving work to other people. It is a steady mission that we are on.?