In addition to being the Co-founder and Artistic Director of Jean Appolon Expressions (JAE), Jean Appolon is a successful choreographer and master teacher based in Boston and Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Appolon received his earliest training and performance opportunities in Port-au-Prince with the Viviane Gauthier Dance Company and the Folkloric Ballet of Haiti. Appolon continued his dance education in the U.S. at the Harvard and Radcliffe Dance Program (1995-1996, Boston, MA), Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (1996-1998, New York, NY) and the Joffrey American Ballet School (1998-2003, New York, NY), where he graduated with a B.A. from a joint degree program offered by The New School.
In addition to the companies and schools listed above, Appolon has also performed with Elma Lewis Productions (Black Nativity), Marlene Silva, North Star Ballet Company (Fairbanks, AK), Black Door Dance Company (Miami, FL), and the Atlantic City Ballet Company.
Jean Appolon teaches regularly at Boston Ballet, UMASS Boston and The Dance Complex (Cambridge, MA), among other locations. Beginning in 2006, Appolon conceived and has since directed a free annual summer dance course in Port-au-Prince that serves young, aspiring Haitian dancers who do not have regular access to dance training. Appolon’s vision is to expand the summer course into a year-round dance program based in Port-au-Prince.
Appolon’s Boston-based Haitian Contemporary dance company has performed at major venues in Boston and has toured to Washington, DC and Port-au-Prince, Haiti. JAE also has performed at many schools and colleges, including Harvard University, Lesley College and Wheaton College. JAE has been fortunate to share the stage with celebrities such as Danny Glover, Henry Louis Gates and Edwidge Danticat, and to collaborate with community partners such as Central Square Theater and Inquilinos Boricuas en Acción.
Support, Media, Recognition & Memberships:
Since 2012, Jean Appolon and JAE have received funding support fromThe W.K. Kellogg Foundation, The National Performance Network, FOKAL, The Boston Foundation, Massachusetts Cultural Council, Cambridge Cultural Council, Eastern Bank, Haiti’s Ministry of Culture and many individual donors. Appolon’s Boston-based company is one of the three inaugural dance companies to be part of the Boston Center for the Art’s expanded Performing Arts Residency Program. Appolon was a 2014 Dance Resident at Boston Center for the Arts and received the Green Street Studios New Works Program Award in 2013. Also in 2013, Appolon was nominated for a Brother Thomas Fellowship (awarded by The Boston Foundation), and honored by The Art of Black Dance and Music.
Appolon has been the subject of feature articles and interviews in The Boston Globe, Dance Studio Life Magazine, World Vision Report, The Boston Haitian Reporter, Le Nouvelliste and NPR, and has received significant coverage by Haiti’s television and radio stations.
Appolon is an Inductee of the Haitian Roundtable’s 1804 List of Haitian American Changemakers (2014) for his groundbreaking accomplishments in dance. Jean Appolon has been endorsed by E. Denise Simmons, Mayor of the City of Cambridge, for his positive contributions to the Cambridge community. Jean Appolon is a member of The International Association of Blacks in Dance and The Boston Dance Alliance.
COMPANY DANCER
Eboni Baptiste is an enthusiastic dancer/actress/choreographer with a passion for the Arts. Her devotion to the art of dance contributed to her success in obtaining her Bachelor of Arts from Dean College. Two of her greatest achievements have been the choreographed productions of “Once on this Island ” and the play, “Xerona @ Wheelock College.” Eboni’s talents are multidisciplinary. She has performed with many dance troupes and theater companies within the Boston Area. Her love for the stage was witnessed playing the leading role of Zora Neale Hurston in the Jacqui Parker play “Feathers On My Arm.”
COMPANY DANCER
Jean-Sebastien Duvilaire (Baba-Seb), is a young Haitian artist who admires and practices dance as a way to make this world a better place. He believes strongly in the use of the performing arts to trigger social change. He has a strong background in African and Afro-Haitian dance and training in classical ballet, modern, and contemporary dance. He’s worked with many artists globally and still travels to teach, choreograph, and collaborate in performances with other upcoming artists. He recently moved to Boston, and as a new community member, he is ready to share his energy, while dancing with JAE. Outside of JAE, Jean-Sebastient continues to teach and choreograph, enjoys music, spirituality, and runs a small cacao processing company in Haiti called Tahomey.
DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS, COMPANY DANCER
Meghan McGrath began her dance training in New Hampshire and studied under Barbara Mullin, Dee Keri, Matt Mattox Jr. and Bryan Steele. She received her BA in Psychology and Dance from UMass, Amherst and a M.Ed in the Creative Arts and Learning from Lesley University. Meghan is a founding member of the Jean Appolon Expressions dance company and has performed with Boston-based BoSoma Dance Company and Austin Allegro Dance. She is also an early childhood educator, with over 10 years of teaching experience and a passion for bringing the arts and movement into the classroom. Meghan has her yoga certification through Yogaworks NYC and enjoys weaving this practice into her early childhood classroom, as well as volunteering with Hands to Heart Center.
MEDIA + MARKETING DIRECTOR, COMPANY DANCER
Meghan Riling grew up dancing in Connecticut and moved to Boston to study at Boston University, where she joined the Dance Theatre Group and got very interested in choreography and improv dance. Since graduation, she has performed and/or choreographed for the Harvard-Radcliffe Modern Dance Company, the CRLS Modern Dance Company, and Luminarium Dance Company. She now co-directs Calamity Co Dance, which performs goofy modern dance pieces, produces casual modern and pop art variety shows, and maintains an art-centric lifestyle blog. She is also the dance coordinator of Art City Cambridge. Outside of dance, she was one third of the indie pop band One Happy Island, which played around the country and did some brief tours in the UK. After teaching high school math for a number of years, she has started working full-time on her doctorate in Math Education at Boston University.
COMPANY DANCER
Lonnie Stanton is a Northern California native, based in Boston. She graduated with honors from the Boston Conservatory with a BFA in Dance. She is thrilled to return from NYC and have the opportunity to work with students at the School of Classical Ballet and Pembroke School of Performing Arts, as well as perform with Jean Appolon Dance Expressions and Prometheus for her 7th season with the company. She has also performed with the Boston-based groups Ballet Rox, Bosoma, Zoe Dance, Angie Moon Dance Theatre, and Anna Reyes Dance. She worked with NYC-based Kinesis Project Dance Theatre for their 2015-2016 season focusing solely on site-specific performance. She has a growing passion and purpose in sharing dance in unconventional, often outdoor spaces where a broad audience can be reached. Lonnie has produced movement for a film for Neoscape (advertisement), Moe Pope (hip hop artist), Linda Tegg (photography), and Tamara Al- Mashouk (film artist). Her teaching credentials include Ballet Academy East and Brookline Ballet among others. She is a 200-hour certified yoga instructor through Yogaworks. Her work in public schools has been especially rewarding bringing dance education into the classroom through Notes in Motion and the New York City Ballet.
COMPANY DANCER
Mcebisi Xotyeni, of Cape Town, South Africa, is a professional dancer, teacher, and choreographer. He began dancing with the outreach program Dance For All, where he trained extensively in ballet, African, contemporary, and hip hop. He was awarded a full scholarship with Dance For All and eventually began working for the professional dance company iKapa Dance Theatre. He has also worked with leading companies in South Africa such as Cape Town City Ballet, Suede Productions, and Sibonelo Dance Project. He has performed for numerous festivals and has collaborated with international artists for performances and outreach projects.
Based in Boston, JAE is a Haitian contemporary dance company, directed by Jean Appolon. Combining Modern technique and Haitian folkloric dance, JAE brings a new artistic vernacular to its audiences. With its dynamic repertoire, JAE educates audiences about Haitian culture, traditions, history and current issues. JAE fulfills its mission to preserve Haitian folkloric culture while constantly pushing the art form forward to remain vital, accessible, inspiring and educational. JAE is comprised of dancers from diverse backgrounds, each of whom who are committed to JAE’s mission to use dance to advance Haitian culture. For more information or to book a performance, please click here.
Appolon’s Boston-based Haitian contemporary dance company has performed both at major venues in Boston and beyond, and in city parks and community spaces in free performances accessible to the public. JAE also has performed at many colleges and universities, including Harvard University, Lesley College and Wheaton College. JAE has been fortunate to share the stage with celebrities such as Danny Glover, Henry Louis Gates and Edwidge Danticat, and to collaborate with community partners such as Inquilinos Boricuas en Acción (IBA) and Central Square Theater.
Afro-Haitian dance has greatly influenced the Modern dance world, largely through the research and exposure of Modern dance icon Katherine Dunham. Haiti captured Dunham’s heart in the 1930s, when she arrived as a dancer and anthropologist to study the country’s culture, history and, particularly, its dance. Dunham, in turn, captured the hearts of Haitians by making the dances of Haiti and the Caribbean internationally known. Now, the “folklorization” of Haitian dance allows both religious and social dances to travel and be performed in the secular context of the proscenium stage. Jean Appolon Expressions is not strictly a Haitian Folkloric company, but rather seeks to preserve Haitian folkloric dance and music through contemporary interpretations.
JAE has performed at the Boston Center for the Arts, the Institute for Contemporary Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Harlem School of the Arts, numerous community festivals and several universities, just to name a few.
PRESIDENT
Born in Haiti, Steve Desrosiers grew up in Mattapan and attended Boston College where he earned a BA in History, Boston University where he earned a Master’s in Arts Administration and Endicott College where he earned his M. Ed . The bulk of his professional career has been in educational administration; primarily with the Boston Public Schools and as a Director for the Sudbury Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity (METCO). As an artist, Steve has been a lead guitarist for Boston based Haitian roots groups like Batwel Rada and Tjovi Ginen. He co-led local Konpa-Zouk fusion group “The Nomads”, releasing two critically acclaimed releases. He was a member of the Boston based band Rock-by-Funk Tribe (Hip-Hop Funk) headed by Nigerian born spoken word artist and Ted Fellow Iyeoka Okoawo. Steve was a guitarist for the popular Haitian band CaRiMi, featuring prominently on their early popular releases.
Steve has also worked extensively with Berklee School of Music ensembles, Federator No.1 (Afro-pop), the school’s Bob Marley Ensemble (Reggae) and Matt Jenson’s Liquid Revolution (Jazz-Reggae fusion).
As a 12-year Contributing Editor to the Boston Haitian Reporter, Steve frequently wrote on Haitian arts, dance music and history. A long time fan of the work of JAE, Steve was part of the instrumental line up (Bass) for the debut of the company’s acclaimed, “Angaje”.
TREASURER
Born in Haïti and raised in the United States and Canada, Nadège V. White works in the non-profit healthcare sector, has a keen mind for numbers and finance, is an amateur photographer, and has dabbled as a performer of Caribbean and West African cultural dances. An avid explorer of beauty, diversity, and truth, Nadège has traveled extensively throughout the United States, Europe, Australia, Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, and Canada. Her self-expression is a blend of quirky sense of humor and imagination, a deep respect for the inherent “efficiency” within us all, and a penchant for hopefulness.
ASSISTANT SECRETARY
Raquel Cardoso is an art educator and artist who believes that we are most connected to ourselves and the world around us when we are creating, whether it be painting, dancing or making music. She has spent the last 16 years sharing this vision with her students with an emphasis on themes of social justice, honoring identity and each child's personal experience and voice. She immigrated to the U.S from Portugal when she was a child and has always felt connected to others who straddle two countries, cultures and families like herself. She is an avid traveler, taking full advantage of summers off, and has traveled to numerous countries, including southern Africa, Europe and South America. She was called to the strong sense of community and powerful and grounding movements of Jean's dance class 4 years ago and has never turned back.
GRANT MANAGER
Daniel Solomon Koff is a design consultant who creates shared social, cultural, and multi-sensory experiences. His work ranges from urban placemaking to interactive installations, from the downtowns of old industrial cities, to the galleries of contemporary art museums. Koff has a Masters in Design Studies with a concentration in Art, Design, and the Public Domain from the Harvard Graduate School of Design. In college he earned a dual bachelor's degree in Social Design and History with a minor in Architecture from Washington University in St. Louis.
GRANTS AND DEVELOPMENT
An avid world traveler, Dana is passionate about advocating for public health nationally and internationally, as well as helping organizations achieve their missions. She is currently the Development Coordinator at Primary Care Progress (PCP), where she is responsible for growing PCP's fundraising and grant portfolio. She has worked with nonprofits that range in size, working on a wide variety of public health issues. These include assisting the business development team at the Union for International Cancer Control in Geneva, Switzerland, managing fundraising teams for a nationwide campaign to reduce the overuse of antibiotics on farms, and research on public policy at Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families in Washington, D.C. A native of Madison, Wisconsin, Dana recently graduated from Boston University, where she studied International Relations and Public Health, and was a member of the Division 1 Women's Rowing program.
JAE ADVISOR
Michel DeGraff, born in Haiti, is Professor of Linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Michel dances as often as he can at JAE’s Afro-Haitian classes at the Dance Complex in Cambridge. On the scholarly and activist fronts, his interests concern the development and structures of Creole languages, with focus on his native Haitian Creole (“Kreyòl”) and on the uses of Kreyòl in research and education. Most recently, these interests have taken him to collaborate with MIT Sloan and Haitian colleagues. Two of Michelʼs recent projects in Haiti, both funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and with the support of Haitian leaders and educators, have explored some of the ways in which the strategic use of Kreyòl and educational technology improve Haitian students’ active learning. In the ongoing MIT-Haiti Initiative, Michel has enlisted the collaboration of colleagues at MIT and in Haiti to help make high-quality education accessible to the greatest numbers of Haitian students while strengthening the foundations of Haiti’s linguistic and cultural identity—in a spirit similar to JAE’s work in Haiti. A stronger and more vibrant Haiti must be rooted in the wealth of its linguistic and cultural soil, along the ideals embodied in JAE’s mission. Wi, se kon sa Ayiti ap djaye ak bèlte pou tout pitit li! For more information about Michel DeGraff’s projects, see http://mit.edu/degraff and http://haiti.mit.edu.
JAE ADVISOR, COFOUNDER
Stephanie co-founded Jean Appolon Expressions with Jean Appolon in 2011 and served as Executive Director for the organization’s first five years. Stephanie is a non-profit professional with nearly twenty years of experience in arts management leadership. She has held recent leadership positions with Quincy Jones Musiq Consortium and El Sistema USA at New England Conservatory. From 2005-2008, she lived in Maputo, Mozambique where she was the Founder and Project Manager of a grassroots project called “Dance for Life,” done in partnership with a local dance company and funded by foreign embassies and corporations. From 2000-2005, she served as the Director of Outreach and Education at Pacific Northwest Ballet (PNB), one of Seattle’s largest arts organizations and one of the major ballet companies in the U.S. Currently a freelance consultant and writer, Stephanie received a B.A. in English Literature at the University of Virginia and an M.A. in English Literature at the University of Washington.
JAE ADVISOR
Francie Latour is a writer, educator and diversity/inclusion practitioner. Her writing on race, culture and identity has appeared in the Boston Globe, The Root, Essence and Ebony, among other publications. She has appeared as a guest on NBC’s Today and on National Public Radio. In 2000, Francie’s essay on Haitian-American identity was selected for the anthology The Butterfly’s Way: Voices from the Haitian Dyaspora in the United States, edited by author Edwidge Danticat. After 17-year career in journalism, Francie now works in higher education, coordinating a diversity initiative for undergraduates at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, a leading center for biomedical research. Francie is also a co-founder of Wee The People, a new arts-based series for kids ages 3-12 exploring social justice and activism. Francie, who lives in Roslindale, is a mother of three and a daughter of Haitian heritage. Her mother was born in Les Cayes and her father was born in Petion-Ville.
Olivia Armstrong
Olivia is the designer of our website. Visit her website at oliviacarmstrong.com.