Dance and the arts
her performing a dance and poetry with husband, Jonathan. reviews after. I was excited that my family was there to watch. Another dancer and I came out with two pieces of fabric which we had to do Chaînés [a ballet term for a sequence of fast turns from one foot to the other executed in a straight line]. We were supposed to work together, and I got a bit excited and I think she made an error at the same time because she turned the opposite way so basically the cloth wrapped from me from my knees up until I couldn’t see anymore… I looked like a mummy. I ended up into a chair and with the speed that I was going at I flipped into the air and landed really hard backstage. Everyone came running to see if I was okay and when they realized that I was everybody started laughing at me. The lesson learnt though is that you shouldn’t try to show off during rehearsals or during performances. You just try to keep it at the same level so that you become more consistent and don’t make errors like the one I made.”
Esther also attended National School of Theatre Arts and Drama, did first aid courses at the Guyana Red Cross and Caribbean Maritime Institute in Jamaica, was part of Georgetown School of Ballroom, Crystallite Dance Company, New Attitude Dance Group and Classique Dance Company. In fact, Esther met her partner in dance and life, Jonathan Hamer while they were both at Classique. Today they have four children. “It was always my dream to have a partner that I can work with, not necessarily a dance partner but a partner that would be involved and interested in the things I’m interested in. What I found is that even if Jonathan is on a project, he pulls me in on the project and if I’m on a project I pull him in on it. I have someone who understands where I’m coming from and can also constructively criticize my doing and give me a different perspective….
“Dancing together all these years, we pick up when the other isn’t well and put that extra effort in. Because we are always working together, we have learnt to schedule time away from each other so that we don’t overwhelm each other with our similar interests.”
Together the Hamers have founded their own dance company called Kreative Arts. All four of their children are involved in the arts, dance specifically. On more than one occasions they took home first prizes from competitions.
Apart from dancing, Esther was also designing while in high school. She transformed her clothing and shoes with fabric paint, nail polish and sewing. For many years, she handstitched her own outfits. Paying for costumes, she noted can be really expensive and with her children involved in school activities along with costumes needed for Kreative Arts, they couldn’t afford the additional expense, so they began designing and constructing their own costumes. Doing research, she would sketch either a design already existing or a formulated one. They have tried making almost anything from creatures to fairies to cartoon characters.