Kenbe, Lache: Haitian Contemporary Dance and Women's Words

Dr. Celia Weiss Bambara Lecture

This presentation will analyze two concepts of the body/dancing in Haitian dance that come from traditional dance and will seek to contextualize these concepts within a lineage of female cultural producers from Port-au-Prince. By employing conversations with Haitian elders Viviane Gauthier and Florencia Pierre, embodied memories of performance, and current ongoing conversations with past collaborator Djenane Sainte Juste this lecture will begin to unpack knowledge passed on between women. Importantly, this lecture will explore notions of kenbe (holding on) and lache (looseness, letting go) in Haitian dance and dance making in ways that demonstrate that Caribbean and African dance forms are ways of both knowing and making in concert dance.
Celia Weiss Bambara is a dancer, choreographer and a dance scholar with a Ph.D in Dance History and Theory/ Critical Dance Studies from UC Riverside. She is the co-director of the CCBdance Project an African Contemporary dance company and her work is published in the Journal of Haitian Studies, Making Caribbean Dance, Australasian Drama Studies and the Chicago Artist's Resource. More information is available on celiaweissbambara.com.