Mario LaMothe
Assistant Professor of Black Studies and Anthropology at the University of Illinois at Chicago

Vodou-Rich Bodies: Dance and Imagined Haitian Identities

This virtual presentation introduces Mario LaMothe’s book project Vodou-Rich Bodies, which features his ethnographic collaboration with Haitian choreographers who work in Haiti, Canada, the United States, Venezuela and Mali. LaMothe draws from his arts management experience to document how the artists dedouble or labor to decouple Haitianness from violent images that conflate “Voodoo,” with Haiti’s Africanist tradition of Vodou. For this talk, “Voodoo” refers to malignant fantasies cultivated in the U.S. and elsewhere comprised of Haitian bodies deemed normatively deviant and off-kilter. The Haitian Kreyòl “Vodou” fosters intergenerational transmission of knowledge among Haitians and their allies.

About the Dance Studies Colloquium Series
The Dance Studies Colloquium is a dynamic interactive speaker series designed to facilitate a dialogue about emerging topics and issues related to dance. It brings together artists and scholars to explore how we initiate and assimilate ideas and events and our resulting actions within the field of dance. This virtual Fall series is made possible through technical support from the Dance Studies Association.  

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