December 23, 2025

Conversations Across the Field of Dance Studies Volume 44:

The Caribbean as a Pole of the African Diaspora 

The Dance Studies Association (DSA) announces a new issue of its annual journal publication, Conversations Across the Field of Dance Studies, published on an open-access e-platform with Michigan Publishing Services. This issue, titled The Caribbean as a Pole of the African Diaspora, centers Ayiti (Haiti) as a locus for rethinking the entangled genealogies of African and Caribbean rhythms, dances, spiritualities, and identities. Curated by guest editors Emilie Jabouin and Karla Etienne, both Afro-descendant francophone women raised in Haitian households in Canada, the volume explores how dance acts as an embodied archive of belonging, resistance, and interconnection across the Black Atlantic. The editors frame this issue as a dialogue between the Caribbean and Africa—not as a one-directional flow from Africa to the Caribbean, but as a network of ongoing, reciprocal exchanges of rhythm, ritual, and philosophy. The collection draws together artists, scholars, and practitioners whose works trace how African aesthetics, cosmologies, and embodied practices persist, transform, and regenerate through Caribbean dance forms such as yanvalou, limbo, kokobalé, kumina, and in carnival. These dances articulate histories of displacement and liberation while foregrounding the drum, the body, and spirituality as central to life, memory, and revolution. 

Anchored in Ayiti’s revolutionary history—where the 1791 Bwa Kayiman ceremony, rooted in dance and Vodou ritual, catalyzed the world’s first successful revolt by formerly enslaved people—the issue expands that spirit of collective freedom into the present. It foregrounds how movement, rhythm, and spiritual practice continue to animate Afro-Caribbean identity amid contemporary political and social upheavals. As the editors note, Ayiti remains “a pole connecting various Afro-diasporic experiences,” a place where the sacred and social intersect through embodied knowledge. 

Across scholarly essays, a video performance, a map-based essay, an interview, and a personal reflection, contributors from the Caribbean, North America, and Europe engage with African performance aesthetics—circular formations, spiritual syncretism, the poetics of gesture, and the interplay between the material and spiritual worlds. Together, they illuminate how African-derived epistemologies continue to shape Caribbean modes of being, even when unspoken or obscured by colonial narratives.

As the guest editors write:

“Working on the larger question has revealed something profound—how, why, when, and through which articulations does the Caribbean continue to keep Africa alive in its lands, bodies, songs, rhythms, visual expressions, and cultural practices. The challenge of articulating Caribbean identity through its relationship with Africa remains open, and always in motion—like its dances, music, spirituality, and ways of living.”

In the face of ongoing resilience and continued political and social resistance to violence across the Caribbean, this volume affirms dance as both a site of memory and a method of survival—an ever-moving language of continuity, creativity, and liberation. Contributions include:

• “SIMBI: An Inner Transformation through Dance and Ancestral Heritage” (English; translated by the author) by Laura Beaubrun
• “SIMBI: Une Transformation Intérieure par la Danse et l’Héritage Ancestral” (French) by Laura Beaubrun
• “SELFPOLYFICATION AND ARRIVING ON CHOICE: Africana Dance Practice Revised” (Part 1) by Talawa Prestø
• “SELFPOLYFICATION AND ARRIVING ON CHOICE: Africana Dance Practice Revised” (Part 2) by Talawa Prestø
• “Si Tu No Sabe Kokobalé and the Reclamation of Collective Memory as a Praxis of Liberation” (English) by Isabel Padilla Carlo
• “Si Tú No Sabe Kokobalé y el reclamo por la memoria colectiva como praxis de liberación” (Spanish; translated by the author, with support from Eugenia Cadús) by Isabel Padilla Carlo
• “‘Pure’ Christianity, Revivalism, and Kumina: Toward a Queer Spiritual Praxis and the Destabilization of Colonial Epistemologies” by Webster Brandon McDonald
• “Sacred Expressions: Dance and Movements in the Realm of the Spirit” by Ireka Jelani
• “Du corps danseur à l’être écrivain : représenter les danses afrodescendantes dans le Spiralisme littéraire” (French) by Claire Massy-Paoli
• “From Dancers to Writers: Literary Representations of Afro-Descendant Dancing in Spiralism” (English; translated by the author, with support from Henrique Rochelle) by Claire Massy-Paoli
• “A Journey Through the UNITY ATLANTIC RHYTHM MAP” by Deirdre C. Molloy
• “Bending but Not Breaking: Awakening to Limbo” by Kieron Dwayne Sargeant
• “Freeform Bruk Up: A State of Being” by Annie E. Franklin
• “Un loc’ de riddims in meh body for liberation” by Collette Murray

The Conversations guest editor model plays a significant role in decreasing gatekeeping to knowledge production in the field of Dance Studies, and provides year-long support for the guest editors by the Conversations Editor and members of the Editorial Board. Conversations is a venue in which scholars, artists, and educators of dance and related disciplines can respond to current events and pressing issues in a range of formats, including some not typically welcomed in academic journals. The focus on emerging themes in the field has led to important and widely-cited issues on Latin@ Dance (2014), Talking Black Dance Inside Out/Outside In (2016), The Popular as Political (2018), and Decolonizing Dance Discourses (2020), which engages #BlackLivesMatter and #DalitLivesMatter. The Caribbean as a Pole of the African Diaspora marks the fourth issue published on the journal’s open-access e-platform, following Cyber-Rock Mixtape (2022), Dancing in the Aftermath of Anti-Asian Violence (2023), and Ethics, Risk, and Safety in the Field (2024). It continues the journal’s focus on personal histories and artistic practice as forms of knowledge production as well as calls to decolonize Dance Studies. 

This current issue, The Caribbean as a Pole of the African Diaspora, marks a significant milestone for Conversations publishing history—it is the first issue to appear in multiple languages, including English, Spanish, and French. Beyond being a gesture of inclusivity, this multilingual approach represents a critical commitment to reimagining what constitutes the field of dance studies and whose epistemologies shape it. By embracing linguistic plurality, the issue resists the dominance of Anglophone academic frameworks and instead affirms the intellectual, artistic, and spiritual traditions that have long flourished in non-English-speaking contexts of the Caribbean and African diaspora. Importantly, we also recognize that the very languages in which we publish—English, Spanish, and French—are themselves products of colonial imposition, rather than the Indigenous, Creole, or Afro-Caribbean languages that more fully hold the region’s ancestral memory. Our multilingual framework therefore does not presume to resolve these tensions; rather, it seeks to work consciously within and against them, honoring the linguistic histories shaped by colonialism while making space for broader forms of expression and knowledge-making. It acknowledges language not only as a medium of communication but as a carrier of embodied histories, rhythmic thought, and decolonial imagination. Publishing in multiple languages becomes, in this sense, an act of methodological and institutional transformation—an insistence that the study of dance must be attuned to the multilingual, diasporic, and transhistorical movements that influence its very terrain.

As a multi-media publication, The Caribbean as a Pole of the African Diaspora is a particularly accessible and useful teaching tool. Each essay/entry stands alone as an easily assigned viewing/reading to engender vibrant class discussion. Furthermore and as a continued act of investment in these histories and people, please reach out to DSA (info@dancestudiesassociation.org) for information on inviting contributors to give a lecture, master class, and/or lecture/demonstration. The Caribbean as a Pole of the African Diaspora weaves an intergenerational and interdisciplinary dialogue that bridges experiential and academic knowledge, offering textured and deeply situated insights into Caribbean and African diasporic movement practices. This area of inquiry remains critically underresearched and underpublished within the broader landscape of dance studies, where Caribbean and African diasporic epistemologies have too often been marginalized or interpreted through Euro-American frameworks. In this spirit, we encourage dance studies educators and scholars to engage with the contributors to this issue directly—as an act of political, pedagogical, and financial investment in the communities whose labor, artistry, and knowledge continue to sustain and transform the field.

Arushi Singh

Editor-in Chief, Conversations Across the Field of Dance Studies

Dance Studies Association

The Dance Studies Association (DSA) is a member-driven US based international organization of dance scholars, educators, and artists. The organization aims to strengthen the visibility and increase the reach of dance studies as a critical field of knowledge production, encompassing political, creative, and embodied practices at the intersection of the arts, humanities and social sciences. Formed in 2017 as the merged entity of the Congress on Research in Dance (CORD, founded 1969) and the Society of Dance History Scholars (SDHS, founded 1978), DSA is both grounded in and extends the work of those two organizations.

Conversations Across the Field of Dance Studies is an annual publication of DSA, dedicated to current themes and debates in the field of dance studies. In 2021 DSA began the work of moving Conversations to a fully open-access e-platform with Michigan Publishing Services. The e-platform allows editors and authors to think more broadly about the medium of dance scholarship itself – democratizing access in multiplicity. All past issues of Conversations (2008-present) are available on the website as PDFs: https://journals.publishing.umich.edu/conversations/ 

Arushi Singh serves as Editor of Conversations. Ana Paula Höfling serves as the Vice President of Publications and Research for the Dance Studies Association. Jill Nunes Jensen serves as the Executive Director of the Dance Studies Association. For more information on DSA please visit the website: www.dancestudiesassociatoin.org 

Guest Editor Biographies

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 - HEC Montréal, en sciences de l’environnement (Maîtrise - UQAM) et en littérature (BA - 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 a écrit 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 du Centre national des arts du Canada 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 degree in arts management (DESS - HEC Montréal), a degree in environmental sciences (Master - UQAM)) and in french literature (BA - 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 a dancer, she collaborated on projects with George Stamos, Katya Montaignac, Sophie Corriveau, Kimberley de Jong and Priscilla Guy. 

Karla completed a written text 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, curator, mediator, mentor, and counsellor for artists and arts organizations. Karla is guest curator for the National Arts Center of Canada Fund and is presently sitting on the administrative council of Ebnfloh, of 100Lux and of the Theatre La Chapelle. 

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

EMILIE JABOUIN, PhD (French translation follows)

Emilie “Zila” Jabouin, PhD is a dance artist and researcher living in Turtle Island (Canada), who uses story-telling 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 performed in Dr. Camille Turner’s award-winning multi-channel video installation NAVE, about Canada’s role in TransAtlantic enslavement of people of African descent and connections to the Caribbean. Emilie also partners with arts organizations on different projects centering Afro-Caribbean dance and artistic expressions. 

A doctor in communication studies, Emilie’s research spans from the Black Americas, Black women’s expressive cultures, and performance as a window into social histories and bodily archives. Under the mentorship of master drummer, dancer, and teacher, Peniel Guerrier, Emilie has committed herself to re-connecting to, sharing and living Haitian culture through folk drumming, singing and dancing, which comprise the foundation of her art practice. She offers a series of Haitian dance workshops to heal the body, mind and spirit through movement, chanting and rhythm exploration; an approach she describes during a CTV interview with the Social. Emilie is also a choreographer and movement consultant in dance and theatre, having partnered with traditional storytellers, playwrights and directors, including Djennie Laguerre with Théâtre Catapulte.

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, which merges performance and historical research into artistic productions, while offering research services, creation guidance and artistic services to support creatives in manifesting their vision (www.emilie jabouin.ca). 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 Canada’s national dance archives Dance Collection Danse magazine. Emilie is currently working on two full-length dance pieces: The Release about Afro-Caribbean experiences of interrupting pregnancies and Jérémie, au coeur de ma vie about Les Vêpres, a massacre enacted under dictator Duvalier in Southwestern, Haiti in 1964.

--French translation—

Emilie “Zila” Jabouin, PhD est une danseuse-interprète et chercheure vivant sur l’île de la Tortue. Elle se sert de ses dons artistiques pour promouvoir la guérison et un mouvement de libération collective. Emilie s’est formée au sein de plusieurs compagnies à Toronto et a voyagé pour participer à des formations, conférences, et résidences au Canada et à l’international. Elle joue le rôle d’une figure ancestrale dans le travail multidisciplinaire renommé de Dr. Camille Turner NAVE, qui porte sur l’engagement du Canada dans la mise en esclavage des africains durant les traites commerciales Trans-Atlantiques.

Docteure en communications, Emilie s’intéresse avant tout au croisement des questions des femmes noires dans les Amériques, les contributions et formes d’expressions culturelles de celles-ci, la performance et l’histoire. Sa carrière artistique est soutenue par une formation continue avec Peniel Guerrier, maître percussionniste, danseur, et chorégraphe avec qui elle apprend et approfondit sa relation avec les rythmes et la culture haïtienne, soit à travers le tambour, la danse et les chants. Emilie offre des cours de danse qui permettent une reconnexion avec soi, son corps, sa pensée et l’esprit, une approche qu’elle décrit dans son interview sur la chaîne télévisée, CTV the Social. Emilie est aussi chorégraphe et consultante de mouvement en danse et en théâtre, offrant ses services aux conteuses traditionnelles, écrivaines-dramaturges et directeurs, comme Djennie Laguerre et le Théâtre Catapulte. Emilie développe présentement deux œuvres de danse : The Release à propos des grossesses interrompues et Jérémie, au coeur de ma vie au sujet des Vêpres, un massacre dirigé sous la dictature de Duvalier au sud-ouest d’Haïti, en 1964.

En 2020, Emilie marie la danse et la recherche pour créer Do Gwe dance and research, une compagnie de recherche, performance, consultation et production qui offre des services artistiques, de développement de projet et de recherche pour la création (www.emilie jabouin.ca). Elle est aussi auteure de plusieurs articles, incluant ‘Black Women Jazz Dancers,’ au sujet des femmes noires dans le jazz au vingtième siècle à Montréal, publié dans le Canadian Journal of History, Winter 2021 Special Issue . Cet article a reçu une mention spéciale du Prix Jean Fecteau 2022 de la Société Historique du Canada. Emilie est aussi auteure de plusieurs articles académiques, de blogs, de magazines, en comptant la revue sur la danse de Dance Collection Danse, les archives nationales de la danse au Canada.