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by Marie Antoine, KDC's Public Voice
Since April we have been sharing wellness ideas and offerings for managing your mental and physical health during this pandemic. For the rest of 2020 we will be encouraging you to use some of the tools we have focused on including creativity, rest, movement and breath-work to curate a self-care routine. A self-care practice is a conscious and consistent effort to tend to our basic needs as well as our deeper mental, emotional, and spiritual drives.
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by Marie Antoine, Kriyol Dance! Collective's Public Voice
The current global health pandemic has caused a lot of disruption and turbulence in many of our lives. The widespread misinformation, mistrust of leadership, loss, isolation and fear during this time has raised the levels of socio-political toxicity in our society to new heights. This toxicity has presented a growing threat to our mental and emotional wellbeing. For most of us, maintaining our mental health at this time has been anything but simple. In fact this time requires a lot more effort than ever before to retain our center. by Marie Antoine, Kriyol Dance! Collective Public Voice
In this week’s wellness conversation we are discussing creativity as a tool for problem solving and discovering new mental pathways. In times of uncertainty, what do we need to do on an individual level in order to activate our ability to access new solutions, imagine new possibilities and innovate new approaches for dealing with unfamiliar challenges? This current health pandemic is creating major shifts in our society. This reality leaves many feeling powerless and anxious wondering how we will handle these changes, what impact will they have on our individual lives and what does this unfamiliar space have in store for all us? Each of us are accountable for taking part in co-creating our shared reality; but many of us do not feel equipped or capable of taking on this responsibility. This collective passivity is a result of our being taught to solely rely on others for ideas and solutions. “What can I do?” “What strengths do I possess that will enable me to rise to this challenge for myself and for my community?” The answers to these questions lie within, yet we choose to wait for the answers from elsewhere; thereby negating our respective creative faculties and externalizing individual responsibility. It is easy to take for granted how much energy we exert during our waking moments. After all it feels like we’re constantly in competition with each other; trying to see who can accomplish more- produce more- fit more into our daily schedule. That is the symptom of our internalized capitalist. We capitalize on our energy -without rest. This incessant need to keep moving, to keep pushing. This level of hyper-productivity causes a lot of strain on our mental, emotional and physical health. Though many of us are aware of the repercussions of this lifestyle; we still find it challenging to slow down and to truly see the value in stillness and rest.
by Veroneque Ignace, Founding Artistic Director of Kriyol Dance! Collective. Edited by Marie Antoine, Kriyol Dance! Collective's Public Voice  Photo by @Noiredelatour, PAP, Haiti (2019) During undergraduate studies at Williams College, I began to cultivate my interest in public health. As a Chemistry major, concentrating in Africana Studies, and engaging in intense dance study, I was involved in educational and practice-based experiences that supported rigorous learning and understanding of people, culture, science, and health. From hearing my first public health seminar at the Summer Medical and Dental Education Program at Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons, to studying abroad learning about the Chilean health system’s structural inequity, to completing an honors thesis on inherited trauma, racism, health, and wellness, my passion for public health matured. These opportunities paved the way for the most impactful personal and professional experience I would have in 2015 post-graduation - the failure of my first community-based health initiative, Resist. Restore.
Immediately following Williams, I endeavored to co-build Resist. Restore. Inc., a “global-health-arts” initiative aimed at using community engagement, arts, and scholarship to address the multiple effects of trauma among people of African descent, living in under-resourced communities, in Haiti, Jamaica, and the United States. This initiative very quickly was organized as a short-lived non-profit organization. by Marie Antoine, KDC's Public Voice & Kriyol Dance! Collective
During the 2019 grant year, we sought to implement for the first time “Kriyol Vodou Band: Making Music, Keeping Tradition.” An extension of the work that we completed during our first grant season with CCNYC in 2018, this project served as an opportunity for us to tell the stories of the musicians who are critical in the preservation of Haitian cultural traditions in our neighborhood. by Veroneque Ignace, Founding Artistic Director of Kriyol Dance! Collective.
Building scholarship around Vodou and it’s practice is a beautiful thing. To uplift the philosophies that inherently exist in afro-indigenous practice — through the same academic industries that have raised prestige from dismantling those very philosophies — is just dope. It should always happen. Because black and indigenous folk been woke and everyone should know it. But, even as I write those words something about all this has always concerned me. In the past two years, I have had the opportunity to meet brilliant actors — writers, teachers, artists, activists, and Vodouyizan alike — who have all supported the idea that remnants of Catholicism in Vodou practice today are purely the result of colonization. They’ve supported the idea that access to scholarly writing and convening about Vodou is somehow the same as access to life-long sacred practice and communities. They go as far as to feature ritual practice in spaces that are devoid of any spiritual root or connection - academic conferences, predominantly white institutions, museums... About 5 years ago I experienced what I now understand as the inception of a spiritual awakening. I knew then that I had found tools to create peace in all of the darkness that was threatening to consume me, but I did not know that this path would also give me the keys to liberate myself from it.
My intention for this post is to share a glimpse of what it feels like for me to finally come up for air without the anxiety of a looming threat that would eventually pull me back down again. I name the main sources that threatened to drown me; I name the roots; I name the tools I used to set myself free - the time and effort it took and then, I name myself and I name my destiny. Unpacking comes later. This piece was a commemoration of finally being able to breathe again at my lungs full capacity. And the excitement I feel for feeling so strong after feeling so wary for so long. Rebirth. by Marie Antoine, The 2019 Kriyol Dance! Collective Public Voice The Nou Series, an experiment in embodied knowledge, resistance, and history that prioritizes “nou” (“us” in Haitian Creole) was a layered performance, choreographed and curated to explore the history of the Wyckoff House, documenting memories of native Lenape peoples and enslaved Africans in Canarsie, and the migration of Black Caribbeans to Brooklyn. Through a lens of muscle memory and spirituality, we hoped to build a connected narrative and express it through movement.
Ultimately, our goal was that by positioning our bodies as museum installations we can expand and interrogate stories and processes of cultural preservation and community identity. Each layer of our performance, from the wardrobe to the sequence of installations, contained a piece of this intention which added more depth to our storytelling.  We pride ourselves on free admission to community events. We request support to provide 14 artists with at least $200 stipends to honor their contributions to the success of our June 2018 performance, Lavi Miyò. |
The BlogSak Rete Ou? (What's Stopping You? in Haitian Creole), holds space for reflections, meditations, poetry, video blogs, and capacity to captivate readers through creative writing. To the question, sak rete ou?, we respond "Nou Se Kriyol!" (We are the Children! in Haitian Creole), implying and calling on the strength, kindness, and revolution of our Haitian ancestors to move forward! Archives
September 2020
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