Dance: Moving Through Healing
Emilie Jabouin blends contemporary dance with the foundations of Haitian folk dance, drumming and singing.
An Ayisyen (Haitian) folk dancer, Emilie/Zila uses the foundations of Haitian folklore to develop methods of moving that promote exploration and healing of the body.
She uses the completeness of Haitian dance techniques to explore everyday movements and the way in which they help people reflect on and process their daily lives. Exploring and telling stories through the body gives added layers of information to oral, written, interpersonal research.
Movement that emerges from the body speaks true to a past relevant to the present and future. Moving intuitively allows for people to access new information they need in the moment and is a way to express feeling whole.
Photo credit: Michael Mortley, 2020
“Dance is my life, it is a spiritual map to my inner-self, it is like my water, earth, fire, air and minerals. Dance is my language. Dance is life.” — Emilie Jabouin
Video credit by Shaira Boursiquot, 2020
Drumming is a language that has helped me be more in tune with my body and my movement. My mentor, Peniel Guerrier taught me that that if I “really want to know how to dance folk,” I have to know the rhythm, be able to sing and play it back. I often feel as though I am singing the rhythm of my body to the music and harmonizing it—creating an intimate dialogue that manifests in dance.
Playing the drums has changed my relationship to sound and to time. I feel as though time has slowed down, and the rhythm dictates or guides me through all of these different layers of movement. I can understand Ayisyen (Haitian) traditional dances at a deeper level, perform the folk in a way that is more in tune with culture, and create a world of stories with my body that more authentically reflect who I am. Drumming carries me deeply into my creative grounds.
“Drumming is a calling of the spirit, a welcome, and most of all, drumming heals through its vibrations, which is why I have embraced it in my dance journey to complement my work as a healer.” — Emilie Jabouin
Solo Works
The Torch Bearer
In collaboration with Dr. Lynnette Overby at University of Delaware, Emilie Jabouin started giving life to her research on Mary Ann Shadd Cary, the first female publisher in North America, journalist, abolitionist, teacher, mother, fervent defender of integrated schools in the 1850s in Southwestern Ontario, when segregation was taking root. Below, Emilie performs a solo piece on Glenis Redmond’s poem “Torch Bearer” in honor of black Canadian female pioneers.
‘The Torch Bearer’ is a 5-minute Contemporary dance solo work performed by Emilie Jabouin.
Co-choreographed by Dr. Lynnette Overby and Emilie Jabouin.
‘The Torch Bearer’ is available for presentation. Contact Do GWE dance & research.
The Release
Photo credit by Shaira Bousiquot, 2022
'The Release' uses Ayisyen (Haitian) Folk dance, drumming and singing to challenge misconceptions of interrupted pregnancies. 'The Release' explores the multiple and complex emotions, social and personal pressures of black women and Afro-descendant Caribbean child bearers’ experiences with bodily autonomy and the question of choice. This will be a full-length piece based on family history and interviews in Caribbean communities in the Caribbean and in the Canadian diaspora.
Choreography and Performance by Emilie Zila Jabouin
Workshop Performance at NAfro’s Moving Inspirations Dance Festival and Symposium in November 2022
Workshop Performance at dance Immersion’s ‘Connectively Moving Our Dance’ in Toronto in advance of the 33rd Annual International Conference and Festival of Blacks in Dance in January 2023
Workshop Performance at Collegium for African Diaspora Dance (CADD) February 2024
Showcase-Ready Excerpts Available, 10-20 minutes
Full Production Available Starting 2026, 60 minutes
Dance Collaborations
NAVE by Dr. Camille Turner
Photo still: Esery Mondésir, 2022
‘Nave’ by Dr. Camille Turner featuring Emilie Jabouin won the Artist Award at the 2022 Toronto Bienniale and is currently featured at Central Art Garage in Ottawa until January 15, 2023. Dr. Camille's brilliant and visionary work makes her one of Canada's acclaimed, but also under-celebrated artists. In 'Nave', Emilie embodies an ancestor who emerges from the sea to dedicate a song and dance of resistance and perseverance.
Camille's award-winning immersive multimedia installation explores the entanglement of colonial Canada, in the unearthing of 19 ships built in Newfoundland connecting the province directly to TransAtlantic slavery through links between the nave of a church, the hold of the ship, the tomb, and the womb of the world.
PSYCHOSIS by Ronald Taylor Dance
Dance Immersion interviews choreographer and artistic director Ronald Taylor of Ronald Taylor Dance, along with Emilie Jabouin, one of the dancers in PSYCHOSIS, a piece about mental health, resilience, loss and paths to healing and coping that is set to premiere in June 2022. The interview is followed by a short segment of the new unseen segment of Emilie and Michael’s duet.
Awakening by Dr. Camille Turner
Awakening, a film by Camille Turner presents a conversation that takes place in the future on a spaceship. Two African Diasporic travellers encounter Gloria Smith, a Black woman from present day Canada who is an activist on a mission to travel back in time to stop transatlantic slavery. Gloria has ruptured the security of the space ship and has bypassed the rules of space/time to ask for their help in carrying out her plans.
Awakening was shown at and commissioned by Art Gallery of Alberta as part of Nests for the End of the World in Edmonton, 2020; and screened during Nuit Blanche in Toronto, 2020.
Thoughts about DO GWE’s dance classes…
“This class literally filled my cup!“ - Participant, March 31, 2024
“I really like the way you teach, because it’s not only about learning a new move, we learn about the heritage, about the culture, and allow us to connect to our heritage, allow us to connect together, so I really love it.“ - Participant, March 31, 2024
“The space is amazing, I came in not knowing to expect… it’s definitely a workout, for me, I felt a reconnection to my roots, and that was beautiful, … it was almost like a rememberance of the body, a rememberance of reconnection. And ya, I find that a lot of the movements were not necessarily new, but my body hadn’t done them in a really long time. And the warm-up, I felt you broke it down in a way that at the end of the class I was able to do the full practice , so I was like, “ok, I learned something, I am able to do something”, so that was really nice. And there was enough time also for the body to relax into the movement, to flow into the movement.“ - Participant, March 17, 2024
“I really enjoyed this [song] particularly, there was a beautiful connect, you could really hear the movement in the rhythm, so I liked how it was a little bit slower. It gave me room to breathe and really articulate without controlling so much, and I really appreciated your demonstrations and the verbage, to “let go of the pelvis”, because I feel I hold a lot of tension here.“ -Participant, August 20, 2023
Photo credits: “Womb Secrets,“ dance Immersion: Connectively Moving Our Dance, by Dawit Tibebu (Dawit Photo), 2023
“I wanted to learn about Yanvalou because it ties into my research and my arts practice, researching Middle Passage memory… I was wanted to feel the embrace of Yemaya, because I feel I need that mothering support, and I was really feeling the current, and it was challenging for me because I am having a pull in my life that I am trying to sort out, so I was thinking about those things.“ - Participant, August 20, 2023
“I have done Yanvalou before, but not from Ayiti, so just to hear you speak about it and, I thought, “wow it’s very different!” And what you said and giving us the context, to me this giving and taking, and this like relationship… I thought about giving birth, it reminded me of that pull and things that the body just wants… to go that way if we allow it. And I was just grateful for the space that you created for that to happen. And particularly for that last rhythm, for that last space to move.“ - Participant August 20, 2023