Me in a nutshell…
Emilie Jabouin (Zila for stage), is a curious intuitive dance artist and researcher who uses her story-telling abilities for collective liberation, and engages in performance and research projects that focus on social transformation, reparations and collective healing. Trained in Ballet, Jazz, Modern, and Caribbean dance forms, Emilie has performed with Ballet Creole, Kashedance, Ronald Taylor Dance, Mafa Dance Village, Esie Mensah, and Lua Shayenne Dance Company. She has also worked with award-winning performer and researcher Dr. Camille Turner, and has partnered with Odd Side Arts on different projects. She is a doctor in communication studies with research interests in the Black Americas, black women writers and organizers, black feminisms, performance, and liberation movements of the early twentieth-century. Under the mentorship of master drummer, Haitian teacher and choreographer Peniel Guerrier, Emilie has committed herself to learning, sharing and living Haitian culture through folk drumming, singing and dancing; a journey home. She now offers a series of Haitian dance workshops to heal the body, mind and spirit through movement, chanting and rhythm exploration for various levels and abilities; an approach she describes during a CTV interview with the Social, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poPoDaVHtGA. In 2020, she merged her art and research practices and founded a multi-faceted research, performance, and creative consulting company, Do Gwe dance & research (Emirj Projects), which offers research, creation guidance and artistic services to support creatives in manifesting their vision. Emilie is the author of an article on Black women jazz dancers in mid-twentieth-century in Montréal, published in the Winter 2021 Special Issue of the Canadian Journal of History on Black creative practices and is currently working on her first solo performance piece, “The Release.”