EMILIE ZILA JABOUIN is a curious intuitive dance artist and researcher who uses her story-telling abilities for collective liberation, and engages in performance and research projects that focus on social transformation, reparations and collective healing.
Her performance is rooted in Haitian folk culture – dancing, singing, and drumming under the mentorship of Peniel Guerrier based in New York City. Zila offers a series of Haitian dance workshops to heal the body, mind and spirit through movement, chanting and rhythm exploration for various levels and abilities. An approach she describes during a CTV interview with the Social in February 2023.
She founded a multi-faceted research, performance, and creative consulting company, Do Gwe Dance & Research (Emirj Projects), which offers research, creation guidance and artistic services to support creatives in manifesting their vision (www.emirj.ca). Emilie is the author of an article on Black women jazz dancers in mid-twentieth-century in Montréal, published in the Winter 2021 special issue of the Canadian Journal of History. She is currently working on her first solo performance piece around bodily autonomy called, “The Release.”
