publication

On Saturday afternoons in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Haiti is brought to life through the moving bodies of sixty students in the Haitian dance classes taught by beloved Haitian choreographer and pedagogue Jean Appolon. Once thought of as a “dancer’s dance class,” these weekly classes have grown into enormous community celebrations. Appolon draws students from many cultural backgrounds ranging from young children to 60-year-olds. Some participants are Haitian or Haitian American, but many are not. Why does this dance—this Saturday class ritual—matter? Drawing on the author's embodied and ethnographic research over ten years participating in this dance class, Chapman argues here that Appolon’s class offers a space that “re-members” Haiti in ways that expand and extend the body of the Haitian nation through Diasporic resonances. Appolon’s class is a site where Haiti is innervated; Haiti’s revolutionary promise for black life is potentialized and transfigured by a danced collective dedicated to gathering each week in the rhythms of the Haitian lwa, or Vodou spirits.