On January 11, 1991, Jean Appolon’s father was brutally murdered in Haiti. After spending months in hiding, he and his two younger brothers immigrated to Boston with their mother. Appolon has worked to be a voice for positive change for Haiti ever since, using dance as his medium to spread hope to those around him.

As the co-founder and artistic director of Jean Appolon Expressions (JAE), Appolon seeks to preserve Haitian folkloric culture, while striving to remain vital for Haitian youth, educational for both his students and audience, and inspiring for all. “Dance is something very important to me, because that is how I healed myself,” says Appolon.

On November 2nd, Appolon will premier a new performance commissioned by the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum during the “Migrations: Dance Performance.” His piece, Vwayaj meditates on the “lakou” and its loss in the Haitian imagination. Appolon worked with MacArthur Genius Fellow and award-winning Haitian-American author Edwidge Danticat to collaborate on and create the narrative that will drive the production.

Through his choreography, Appolon ponders various questions: “Where can we find meaning?” and “Where is home?” A crucial point of the performance’s plot is Appolon’s own immigration story, and the stories of other Haitian immigrants living in Boston.

“To me growing up in Haiti, seeing the disturbing ways that they use poverty to keep us Haitians under control, is the worst thing you could do to a country and its people,” Appolon says. This is why in 2006, Appolon created a free annual Summer Dance Institute, Dance Haiti!, in Port-au-Prince for young, aspiring Haitian dancers who don’t have access to dance education.

Dance Haiti! is an intensive, daily after-school program, which also offers academic tutoring and health education. Expanding this summer program into a year-round one is a goal for Appolon, but unfortunately right now the financial support isn’t there.

In addition to his work with JAE, Appolon is lead teacher for the Citydance Program at the Boston Ballet, associate professor of modern dance at UMass Boston, and Afro Haitian dance teacher at the Dance Complex. “The most important lesson that I try to impress upon all of my students,” says Appolon, “is to always be fair, be true, and never give up.”

Jean Appolon–co-founder and artistic director of Jean Appolon Expressions
Boston, Massachusetts
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Top image: Jean Appolon Expressions. All photos courtesy of Jean Appolon

The post #TakeAction: Jean Appolon Uses Dance to Help Haiti appeared first on Take Magazine.

For over three decades, José Mateo has been making ballet accessible. The Cuban-born choreographer and teacher founded the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based José Mateo Ballet Theatre on the values of inclusion, diversity, and social responsibility in 1986, long before those concepts were reduced to the buzzwords they are today. For Mateo, embracing those values from the beginning was a logical response to an artform with “a rather embarrassing history” of exclusion and elitism.

“Ballet was still trying to hold on to what it had been during pre-Tsarist Russia,” Mateo says. “Most companies were trying to emulate this model that basically insisted on these warhorses of ballets that were not only traditional in terms of their settings, but were also hierarchical in ways that we consider unacceptable these days. Everyone in ballet seemed to be aspiring to be an aristocrat. And that seems so antiquated.”

In response, Mateo and his company built a repertory of ballets “that we thought eliminated those parameters that were so typical in traditional ballet,” choreographing and presenting works that speak to issues modern audiences care about. “I don’t mean in any literal sense,” he explains, “but I mean ballets where the protagonists were ones that audiences could identify with on a more personal level. So you were no longer admiring the pirouettes of Princess Aurora. You were seeing someone who was going through the present trials and tribulations that a regular person in a contemporary setting experiences.”

Jose Mateo, Isle of the Dead.

Mateo also diversified the company, staff, board, and school while foregrounding a welcoming approach to dance instruction and performance. “Historically dance training and dance performance had been really provided for a more elite class,” Mateo says. “We have tried to do our part to demonstrate that no one class should have ownership of this or any dance form, but that it should all be accessible to everyone.”

The theatre’s school offers a scholarship program that provides students opportunities to practice ballet that may otherwise have been out of reach. And through its Community Ticket Access Program (CTAP), the theatre works with social service agencies to provide admission to its performances to people “for whom this experience may be valuable and otherwise not available.”

Jose Mateo, Snow.

Dance for World Community, one of the theatre’s main initiatives, unifies dance organizations, local businesses and government, and advocacy groups to raise awareness of a variety of social issues such as racism and health through a variety of dance forms. The indoor/outdoor festival, which returns to Harvard Square next June for its tenth anniversary, will focus on climate justice.

José Mateo Ballet Theatre kicks off its 32nd season on Friday, October 6th with Assault on the Senses at the cabaret-style Sanctuary Theatre. The show’s program features three contemporary ballets that Mateo recently reset: Covens, Isle of the Dead, and Fearless Symmetries, which respectively explore love and deception during a witch hunt, resilient hope despite devastation, and urban life. “Every time you reset a ballet you have an opportunity to really reexamine the ballet from a more contemporary mindset and to make the adjustments that allow new audiences to relate to it.”

“When a lot of people think of ballet, they think the audiences watching somehow know something that one doesn’t know. I look at audiences as having no experiences with ballet,” he says. “I try to choreograph for the person who maybe is watching ballet for the very first time and doesn’t know what to expect and is open to whatever it turns out to be.”

That commitment to accessibility, from organization to performance, makes clear Mateo’s mission to use the connective power of dance as a catalyst for positive social change. “What we’re trying to do is really demonstrate ways in which this power can be harnessed and used to bring people together, to not only celebrate the greatness of our community but also address the problems within our communities.”

José Mateo–founder and artistic director, José Mateo Ballet Theatre
Cambridge, Massachusetts
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Top image: Covens from Assault on the Senses, all photos courtesy of Gary Sloan

The post #TakeAction: José Mateo Harnesses the Power of Dance appeared first on Take Magazine.

The result for nine years and counting is the “surrealist cabaret,” an interactive, walkable performance set in the fields of western Massachusetts, punctuated by crisp autumn air, framed by the setting sun, and characterized by multiple takes in multiple media around a single unifying theme. Last year’s theme was “home,” a resonant, deeply personal concept that can be both comforting and dark. Members of the Royal Frog Ballet Corps scatter to do their various work and art for most of the year, but they trek back to the Pioneer Valley each fall to undertake large-scale performances and installations. Here are snapshots of some key members.

Sophie Wood

Wood studied theater for social change at Hampshire College, and the work she did then was overtly political. But around the same time that Wood began thinking about making art with her housemates, she had an epiphany. “Social change, those two words—social is one of them,” she says. “And dialogue is a huge part of how inclusive change happens. My hope is that this whole shebang is where artists can have conversations with each other, but it’s also happening with the audience.” Wood is acutely aware of how powerful art can be but doesn’t believe it has to be sharp-edged. In fact, at its most effective, its borders can blur. “I think there’s a softness about making things a little dreamlike. People can connect things.” For last year’s “home”—themed cabaret, installations included egg-based breakfasts and laundry hanging from a line—deceptively simple tropes meant to evoke losing home, not having a home, missing home. But there was no narrative, so audiences—and actors—were left to figure out what their subconscious was telling them. “You wake up and you’re like, ‘That didn’t make sense—but it all made perfect sense in your dream.’ ”

Julia Read

Read set the idea of “home” to music, writing a waltz. “The words were from the perspective of a house that missed the people that had lived in it,” she says. But she brought another piece to the cabaret as well, thinking about her mother who had passed away years prior. “I found a dress that was my mom’s—a beautiful long blue dress with flowers on it—and we hung it from a branch of a tree. I would go up to the dress and smell it, imagining my mom was inside it and what it would feel like to touch her and see her.” Then Annie Burdette and Molly Greene, two more members of the Corps, approached. “Annie came up behind me and took my shirt and began doing the same thing, except that my body was inhabiting my shirt, and Molly Greene came up and did the same to Annie’s shirt.” One didn’t need to know anyone’s backstory to sense the intimacy of the moment. “The audience was really quiet. I feel like it helps drop me into being present, having the audience nearby, to see people’s faces.” On any given night, Read may recognize some audience members, but not all—and she likes it that way. More than anything, she appreciates the precipice of performing. “I love the moments right before. As the audience is gathering, people are bundled up and chattering, and the light is usually dramatic. I love those moments. It sort of feels like we don’t know what will happen yet as we move into this world.”

Chelsea Granger

Granger is up for almost any kind of project, but she’s most excited about the ones she undertakes with other people. This is not an accident. “My first few years [with RFB] it was hard to find my footing as a visual artist who makes smaller works on paper,” she says. “It took a while to understand what my work could be outside in a large field setting with big crowds.” But eventually she got it. Her project for “home” was truly collaborative—and truly huge, compared to the small-scale work she was used to. “I wanted to make a really big painting, a cantastoria, with Sophie.” A cantastoria, or “story-singer,” is an ancient melding of visual art and theater where a series of paintings are narrated by a live performer. “Eventually I made a huge painting of a vase of flowers, and Sophie wrote a prayer for flowers to go with it.” Because several members of the Corps had recently undergone loss and were processing grief in various ways, the prayer held special meaning. “It was about creating rituals, showing up for each other in the time and space. I wanted rituals, needed rituals.” Religious expression can be deeply personal, but many of the most powerful rituals happen in community—or collaboration. “I think that’s the thing. It’s not just your voice, your ideas, but your voice and ideas meeting someone else’s voice and ideas. Sitting alone in a room drawing is nothing compared to the alchemy that happens when people make things together.”

Jazer Giles

The natural, outdoor theater is central to the RFB experience, but Giles has fond memories of a rare indoor moment: a monthlong installation at the APE Gallery in Northampton, Massachusetts, when the troupe created a boat-shaped stage in the space. “We spent most of the time building it,” says Giles. About a week before the show, they realized they still needed to come up with a performance. “I had built an artist posing figure, a puppet that mimicked my movement, and I hooked up to it with four coat hangers attached to my limbs with leather straps. I built a small bird outfit for him, and we made this event happen out of the ether.” Some performers might have been daunted, but Giles is less attached to the outcome, more interested in the process. “You’re always pulling art out of the air.” With its outdoor performances, RFB is “harnessing the magic of the place, distilling it, setting it up in a certain way—or just framing it. Of course, sometimes it rains. Often it’s freezing! But you can’t fake things like space. When you put people out in a field, 50 feet away from people, and put them in costumes, you can’t translate that to an inside space with a stage.”

Mike Gundlach

Gundlach began as the mess cook for the Corps, but he quickly found his role morphing. “Sophie asked me to collaborate to make an outdoor-feast show. The food was interspersed with two or three acts in between each course of people popping out of the ground and having dinner.” After that, Gundlach was both company cook and performer, and has been contributing edible art ever since. “We’ve made a pepper-infused, chocolate-covered asparagus as an aphrodisiac course that was served on spires. We’ve hung Turkish delight from trees for people to pick and eat,” he recalls. “Molly and I performed a piece with soft-boiled eggs and volkenbrat, this German rye bread that people would make in the fall and survive on all winter.” They garnished the peasant food with chives and edible flowers, then dumped freshly squeezed grapefruit juice on top and served [the dish] in small planter trays. “For one show we had a bunch of rain and made pizza in the rain. We just figured it out,” he shrugs. “If people can see you be excited, you get that energy.”

Molly Greene

In her other life, Greene is completing a PhD at Yale University in American studies—an interdisciplinary field that explores how elements in society intersect. One could argue that RFB does the same. “The themes of the cabaret are always threads that weave in and out of aspects of our lives,” Greene muses. “Sometimes they congeal into a single idea, but usually it’s a constellation of terms that connect, then get kind of carried off in various trajectories, then get rewoven into something we hope is coherent.” Greene’s printmaking work is solitary and quiet. “I’m kind of a hermit. Being in front of people performing . . . there’s a little bit of tension in it for me, but it’s also rich and nourishing. One of my favorite moments is when we’re literally hiding in a ditch somewhere as your next costume is being assembled or whatever, and the sky is doing something incredible, and it’s fall in New England. You’re listening with one ear for your cue, but you’re also just conscious of being outside, and there’s a heightened sense of purpose and consciousness and collective awareness of just being in that place. I have that moment every year, and it is always all-consuming.”

This story originally appeared in the June/July 2016 issue of Take, which is available here.

Royal Frog Ballet
Amherst, Massachusetts
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All images by Candace Hope

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