Mayaro dancer wins new Best Village contest

SELWYN COPPIN created history Friday night when he won the inaugural “Papa Rabbat” competition. The contest formed part of this year’s Folk Fair activities at the Queen’s Park Savannah, Port-of-Spain. Appearing first among five contestants in this segment of the presentation, Coppin, who is the founding member of Mayaro-based Phoenix Performing Arts, danced his way into winner’s row in the 2004 Prime Minister’s Best Village Trophy Competition. “Miss Folk Fair” was the other competitive item on the evening’s playbill.

Accompanied by African drummers, Coppin, 40, a choreographer and drummer delivered a routine that won favour with the adjudicators. Speaking to Sunday Newsday, Coppin said, “Only when I went up to collect the prize and the announcer said to me that I had made history I realised what had happened. It feels good. I believe it can help me along with my dance career.” Coppin is an auto finisher by profession. Programme manager Norvan Fullerton told Sunday Newsday that for some time now there had been talk about the lack of male participation in Best Village, except in the area of drumming. He explained, “The men said we didn’t care about them. La Reine Rive has been around for the past 35 years, but there was no contest to showcase male talent. “We came up with ‘La Reroi Rive,’ which meant ‘The King Arrives’, but this title had a feminine feel, so it was thrown out the window. Then ‘Papa Rabbat’ was born. It would be a saga-man styled event. The villages liked the idea as a type of renaissance for male dancers,” said Fullerton.