VISION
JAE shares the liberating power of Haitian-folkloric dance to cultivate hope and healing towards a more expressive and socially just world.
MISSION
Jean Appolon Expressions (JAE) is a Haitian folkloric and contemporary-infused dance organization that cultivates hope and healing to foster more expressive and socially just communities through professional performances, education, cultural experiences, and the celebration of the joy of movement for all.
STATEMENT ON CULTURAL EQUITY
Read JAE’s Statement on Cultural Equity, an integral part of our work as an organization.
Professional Company
Jean Appolon explores themes that are vital to the Haitian and Haitian-American experience as he continuously evolves Haitian-contemporary dance. His movement has deep roots in Haitian folkloric dance that enable it to grow as Jean collaborates with the JAE company professional dancers and other artists in the fields of music, visual art, and more. Read about how the company impacts its audiences.
Education
Jean and the JAE company dancers bring years of experience in education. They take great joy in working with young dancers in a wide range of programs: school-based partnerships, intensives, weekly classes, and the ongoing Teen Apprentice Program. These programs are guided by the belief that we can all dance, and can learn about ourselves and one another when we dance together.
Haiti-Boston Connection
Even as disease and unrest make it more difficult to dance together in one place, JAE connects to dancers and community partners in Haiti and Boston. Read about how video and internet enable us to continue to learn and even perform together.
Community
From weekly classes in Cambridge to workshops with community organizations in the greater Boston-area, JAE gives movers and thinkers of all backgrounds the opportunity to learn about Haitian culture and their own healing by participating in dance and conversation.
Telling Haiti's story
About Jean Appolon Expressions (JAE)
Jean Appolon Expressions (JAE) is a Boston-based dance organization that blends Haitian folkloric and contemporary styles. Founded by Jean Appolon, JAE creates a unique artistic vernacular that educates audiences about Haitian culture, traditions, history, and current issues.
JAE’s dynamic repertoire is designed to preserve Haitian folkloric culture while continuously revitalizing the art form in a way that is vital, accessible, inspiring, healing, and educational. The company is composed of dancers from diverse backgrounds, each committed to using dance to share and celebrate Haitian culture.
Appolon’s dance company has performed at major venues such as Jacob’s Pillow, Boston’s Paramount Center, The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, The Yard, and the ICA, as well as in site specific community spaces with free public performances. JAE has had the honor of sharing the stage with notable figures such as Danny Glover, Henry Louis Gates, and Edwidge Danticat, and collaborates with community partners throughout the greater Boston area.
For more information or to book a performance, please click here.
Afro-Haitian Dance
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.