Faculty Fellow Lecture Series: Mario J. LaMothe, Black Studies and Anthropology, “Yanvalou For Haiti: An Affective Ethnography of Ayikodans’ Cry Haiti Mother”
Faculty Fellow Lecture Series
February 1, 2024
4:00 PM - 6:00 PM
Location
Institute for the Humanities, 153 Behavioral Sciences Building
Address
1007 W. Harrison St., Chicago, IL 60607
Calendar
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The presentation surveys interpretations of Haitian embodiment that emerged immediately following the country’s devastating January 12, 2010 earthquake in which 250,000 Haitians perished. Namely, choreographer Jeanguy Saintus’ Anmwey Haiti Manman (Cry Haiti Mother) is a focused response to national and international journalistic reports and public discourse, which positioned Haitianness as Voodoo.
Investigating Saintus’ motivation to withdraw the choreography from his repertory despite its critical success, the presentation considers these complementary points: his company Ayikodans’ labor to direct attention to longstanding White supremacist machinations that silence Haiti, its people, their life, and worlds, and the performers’ maneuvers through media depictions of the country’s centuries of structural problems, political turmoil, economic precarity, and collective unrest. Haitian Vodou’s Yanvalou pedagogies intermeshed with the ensemble’s dramaturgical choices situate the choreography within a Haitian/Black social history that mobilizes relationally constituted narratives of precarity and rebirth in Haiti.
Mario LaMothe is Assistant Professor in the Departments of Black Studies and Anthropology. Mario's research focuses on embodied pedagogies of Haitian and Caribbean arts and expressive cultures, and the intersections of queer lifeworlds and social justice in Haiti. His work has appeared in e-mesferica, Conversations Across the Field of Dance Studies, Women and Performance, the Journal of Haitian Studies, The Routledge Companion to African American Theatre and Performance, and Duke University Press’ co-edited volume "Race and Performance after Repetition". A performance artist and arts manager, Mario received a doctorate in Performance Studies from Northwestern University.
Date posted
Jul 5, 2023
Date updated
Jan 29, 2024