Ann English Mazzocca Bellecci

Inspired by the communal living and intimacy that I encountered in the countryside of Haiti, the fervor and embodied practice in both Haitian and Cuban African-based religious contexts, and my experiences in the diasporic Haitian and Cuban folkloric dance communities, my work approaches folkloric dance through contemporary dance methods such as improvisation, collaboration, juxtaposition, and self-reflexivity. As a white American choreographer I am conscious of my deeply ambivalent position as both outsider and insider within these dance communities. Working collaboratively with dancers and musicians and sometimes in solo form, I mix and recombine movements to evoke my memories, conflicts, and imagination drawn from my experiences within Haitian and Cuban cultural communities in New York, Miami, New Orleans, and Virginia as well as in Haiti and Cuba.

Since 2014 my projects have largely been collaborative, site specific, and ethnographic — working in New Orleans (Bulbancha) exploring the relationship between Haiti | Vodou and New Orleans cultural vitality as it relates to ecological precarity and where we developed the Tè Glise Collective. I continue to work more closely with local and global histories of settler colonialism and its social and ecological effects.