Volume 44: THE CARIBBEAN AS A POLE OF THE AFRICAN DIASPORA

Guest Editors: Karla Etienne and Emilie Jabouin, PhD 

This issue of Conversations Across the Field of Dance Studies seeks to highlight the importance of the Caribbean as a crucial portal/entryway to understanding Africaneity today, particularly through dance and the performing arts, which are integral to both Caribbean and African life. The Caribbean preserves Africa’s presence within the Americas, serving as a cultural bridge on the world stage unmatched by any other region. With the third-largest Black population outside Africa, Haiti stands as a powerful example of this connection. As labor activist, dance artist, and researcher, Nadine Mondestin, who contributed to the curation of this special issue, explains, “Haiti represents what happens when Africa takes over the West.” Haiti's birth as a proto Pan-African nation, articulated through the federative nature of Vodou, laid the groundwork for the formal birth of Pan-Africanism a century later. The enduring legacy of this movement is further reflected in the historical significance of the first Pan-African Conference organized by the Committee of the African Association in London in 1900. This international gathering of Black people from around the globe, convened to address the “Native Races” Question, played a defining role in crystallizing the Pan-Africanism we recognize today, while also cementing the Caribbean's pivotal and transformative role in this narrative. 

Furthermore, le mouvement de la Négritude (the Negritude movement), led by artists and dreamers, has deep roots in Haiti and La Martinique, in dialogue with l’Afrique de l’ouest francophone (Francophone West Africa). Another example of the Caribbean's impact in celebrating the importance of Africa, African cultures, and Blacknesses is Bob Marley’s global popularization of reggae, rooted in a Pan-Africanist ideology. 

Through dance, Caribbean nations have preserved a deep connection to the African continent, celebrating and sustaining ways of being and knowing that make the Caribbean a space of profound cultural resonance. This unique relationship allows the Caribbean to serve as a place where people—including Africans—can reconnect with the past, engage with the present, and witness the continuous evolution and exchange of traditions within the “New World,” all at once. The Caribbean has always been of the world and is home to a very large percentage of the Black/African population worldwide. This embodied journal project is a call to share what we know of the Caribbean’s centrality in the articulations of Blackness intertwined with Africa.

The issue aims to reignite and continue conversations about the exchanges between the Caribbean and Africa, focusing on the prolific production, sharing, and preservation of cultures. This includes connections through transnational genres (rumba, jazz, reggae, zouk) as developed between Cuba and Central Africa (Cameroon and Congo), and the myriad ways in which we move our bodies and dance. Additionally, we seek to debunk the erroneous notion that the Caribbean is merely a derivative of Africa. Instead, we aim to highlight the Caribbean as a continued, and at times original, source of conversations about all that “Africa” is, was, and will be. 

Please note that we want your submission to reflect you fully. All publication formats are welcome, whether it be traditional essays, poetry and song, creative writing, roundtable dialogues, interviews, recorded performances, photo and video essays. Contributions may address, but need not be limited to, subjects such as:

1. “Tout se Pa” (Everything is a step) - What is our dance? And experiences of dance and political articulations in our artistic practices
2. Transcending technique, and “making” technique in the 21st century
3. At the core of the “authentic” movement - the creative, the erotic, the imaginative, the human/the natural
4. Movement and dancing - from the/our environment, in tune with who we are/or land-based movement
5. Conversations between past, present, and future: (non)distinctions, (non)amalgamations, (non)collapses in the body
6. Epistemologies of the body: “Re-Indigenizing,” Caribbeanizing, Africanizing - How do we as Black/Caribbean/African bodies story-tell ourselves? OR the matter of culturally-centered story-telling
7. Being whole and spiritual - with/in the body and nurturing

Potential contributors, please include: 

1. You and your collaborators or co-authors names (if applicable)
2. State the genre and format of your submission (photo essay, video performance, roundtable discussion whether video or transcribed, written essay, reflection, academic article, song, poetry, etc.) and why?
3. A 500 word-abstract describing your work, main ideas/arguments, your contribution, and where your intervention is in conversation, departs, or maybe brings together multiple components
4. A short 100-word biography
5. Your needs, accessibility, and translation preferences. We kindly ask that you submit your work in English. However, if you would prefer to write or submit your work in another language, please let us know your preference. Depending on the translation services available to us, we will inform you whether we can assist in translating your work/text into English. If translation support is possible, both versions—your original and the English translation—will be included in the final issue. 

Proposals should be submitted to Karla Etienne and Emilie Jabouin at dsajournal.caribbean@gmail.com by December 22, 2024. 

After guest editors announce selected contributors on January 22nd, 2025 full contributions will be asked to be submitted by March 7th, 2025 and a collaborative editing process will ensue. We expect to publish Volume 44 in the Winter of 2025.

Please email dsajournal.caribbean@gmail.com for questions and comments.

Guest Editor Bios:

KARLA ETIENNE (English translation follows) 

D’origine haïtienne, vivant à Tiohtià:ke, Montréal, Karla Etienne s’intéresse à la persistance du corps dans l'espace comme acte de résistance et de sublimation de soi. Diplômée émérite en gestion des organismes culturels (DESS de HEC Montréal, en sciences de l’environnement (Maitrîse - UQAM) et en littérature (Université de Montréal), Karla Etienne, une marathonienne dans tous les sens du terme, a su parcourir les chemins et emprunter les pistes, plurielles, qui ont conduit à une meilleure et plus juste appréciation de ce qui constitue, aujourd’hui, les forces et le potentiel du milieu artistique et culturel canadien. 

Karla Etienne est directrice générale de l'Assemblée canadienne de la danse et co-directrice artistique de Furies - Festival de danse contemporaine, après avoir tenu les rênes de Nyata Nyata comme danseuse et gestionnaire auprès de sa fondatrice Zab Maboungou. Elle a notamment collaboré comme danseuse aux projets de George Stamos, Katya Montaignac, Sophie Corriveau, Kimberley de Jong et Priscilla Guy. 

Elle vient tout juste d’écrire un texte sur la danse émancipatrice de Bill Robinson dans Lo: Tech: Pop: Cult: Screendance Remixed publié aux éditions Routledge en 2024 dirigé par Priscilla Guy et Alanna Thain et a dirigé un recueil de textes féministes autoproduit en compagnie de Élise Ross-Nadié, Priscilla Guy et Emma Desgens paru en août 2023 et intitulé Je garde mes lunettes fumées près de moi. Elle poursuit sa contribution comme artiste en danse, commissaire, médiatrice, mentore et conseillère auprès d’artistes et d’organisations artistiques. Karla est commissaire invitée au Fonds National de création et siège présentement sur les conseils d’administration de Ebnfloh, de 100Lux et du Théâtre La Chapelle. 

Karla reçoit en 2021 le Prix Stellaire de Nyata Nyata pour le service à la grande communauté de la danse. 

--English translation—

Karla Etienne, of Haitian origin living in Tiohtià:ke (Montreal) is interested in the persistence of the body in space as an act of resistance and of sublimation of self. She has a Master’s degree in arts management (Diplômée émérite en gestion des organismes culturels (DESS de HEC Montréal, en sciences de l’environnement (Maitrîse - UQAM)) and literature (Université de Montréal). Karla Etienne is a marathon runner in all senses of the term, and has completed many paths that have led to better and more appreciation for the strengths and potential of the artistic and cultural Canadian scene. 

Karla Etienne is the general director of the Canadian Assembly of Dance and co-artistic director of the Festival Furies of contemporary dance, after leading Nyata Nyata as dancer interpreter and manager of the organization alongside the founder, Zab Maboungou. As dancer, she collaborated especially on projects with George Stamos, Katya Montaignac, Sophie Corriveau, Kimberley de Jong and Priscilla Guy. 

Karla just completed a writtentext on the emancipatory dance of Bill Robinson in Lo: Tech: Pop: Cult: Screendance Remixed published with Routledge in 2024, and directed by Priscilla Guy and Alanna Thain. She also directed a compilation of feminist texts self-produced with Élise Ross Nadié, Priscilla Guy and Emma Desgens which appeared in August 2023 and is entitled Je garde mes lunettes fumées près de moi. She pursues her contribution as artist in dance, commissionner, mediator, mentor, and counsellor for artists and arts organizations. Karla is invited commissionner for the National Creation Fund and is presently sitting on the administrative council of Ebnfloh, of 100Lux and of the Theater La Chapelle. 

In 2021, Karla receives the Stellar Prize of Nyata Nyata for her service to the wider dance community. 

EMILIE JABOUIN, PhD 

Emilie Jabouin (Zila for stage), is an international dance artist and researcher living in Tkáron:to, Turtle Island (Toronto, Canada), 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. Emilie has trained and performed with multiple dance companies in Toronto and traveled internationally to present. She has worked in award-winning collaborations, including Dr. Camille Turner’s NAVE, and partnered with arts organizations on different projects centering Afro-Caribbean dance and artistic expressions. 

Emilie 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, newspapers and archives, and is part of various dance and performance networks in North America, across the Caribbean and also in Africa. Under the mentorship of master drummer, Haitian teacher and choreographer Peniel Guerrier, Emilie has committed herself to re-connecting to, 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. 

In 2020, Emilie merged her art and research practices and founded a multi-faceted research, performance, production, and creative consulting company, Do Gwe dance & research (formerly Emirj Projects), which merges performance and historical research, while offering research services, 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, which earned an honorable mention for the Canadian Historical Association Jean Fecteau Prize 2022. She is also the author of other peer-reviewed articles, blogs, and magazine articles on various platforms including Spacing and Dance Collection Danse magazine. Emilie is currently working on her first dance production piece, The Release.