Co-founder of Jamaican dance company, Eddy Thomas, dies at 82

KINGSTON, Jamaica – The co-founder of a prominent Jamaican dance company that sought to promote African heritage in a country emerging from under British rule has died.

The National Dance Theatre Company says that Eddy Thomas died at his home Thursday in Montego Bay in Jamaica. He was 82.

The statement released Friday didn’t give a cause of death.

Thomas, along with scholar and choreographer Rex Nettleford, formed the dance company in 1962, the year Jamaica gained independence from Britain. It was Jamaica’s first major dance company.

The pair wanted to create a dance group that reflected the African heritage of Jamaica’s black majority through the use of African Caribbean folk traditions and modern dance. Thomas had already worked as a dancer in New York at the prestigious Martha Graham Company.

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