The continuation: Kettly Noël, dancer, actress, and choreographer just at the edge of the world

In the first part, you discovered the initial upheavals in Kettly Noël's life as a dancer, actress, and choreographer. It is in Port-au-Prince that she fully commits to the path of dance. In this last part of the portrait, discover the continuation of her journey, marked by encounters, learning, and first opportunities. At just 13 years old, Kettly Noël receives her first scholarship and begins taking folklore classes with Viviane Gauthier, a dancer and teacher of Haitian folk dances.<\/strong><\/p><\/div><\/div>

At 17, right after her mother left for the United States, she begins dancing with Rachel Jean-Louis, who passed on the Katherine Dunham method. Kettly Noël receives her second scholarship and spends three years at this school. A precious relationship has formed between the two dancers: “With her, I danced at the stadium for President Aristide’s inauguration. I have always appreciated her love of dance. She is one of those who made my profession easy and enjoyable.”<\/i><\/p>

Kettly Noël dances with Patrick Lacroix and his group Perfect: “From there, I developed a kind of immunization from Viviane Gauthier’s folklore.”<\/i> She performs continuously, here with Bookman Eksperyans and Mario Benjamin, there with Émeline Michel. <\/p>

Very discreet about her couple life except to say that she meets the man who will become her husband, an educator, diplomat with whom she has a daughter, Carmen Aïda, in Ralph Boncy and Émeline Michel's living room in Pétion-Ville. This was during the preparation for Émeline Michel's tour in France.<\/p>

“I put the idea of leaving Haiti in my head, to leave instead of continuing at the dance school. Haiti was too small for me; it was a confinement. I did not stay; I went to train. I wanted to leave dance because I did not see the possibility of making a career there. I did not want to be a dance teacher; I wanted to dance and be a choreographer.”<\/i> Her ticket came from an artist exchange scholarship from the French Institute to study dance.<\/p>

August 1991, direction Paris. In the Abbesses district with its art-house cinema, theater, cabaret, the Moulin de la Galette on the Montmartre hill, the guinguettes, “there was everything for a young Haitian coming to Paris. I could have gone to Berlin but I chose Paris to open myself to the world, to be bohemian, to perform on the Rue Fille des Calvaires. It was a way to be an artist. I was nourished.”<\/i> she says with laughter. She is 23.<\/p>

“Doors opened for me: there were writing workshops, theater classes. Jack Waltzer took me on audition to work with him on The Bear from Troyes; I performed at the Arènes de Nîmes. I was encouraged with ‘You must continue in this direction.’” “That’s what made me who I am. I forged my artistic identity. It seems simple, but I think if I had stayed in Haiti, I would never have been able to cross those barriers.”<\/i> In parallel, she continues her studies and obtains a License in economics and commerce.<\/p>

Africa<\/strong><\/p>

Her hunger for elsewhere leads her to Africa, first to Benin in 1995 to open the first contemporary dance space in Africa. Then she goes to live there with her husband and her 3-year-old daughter.<\/p>

At the end of 1999, she heads to Mali where she accompanies her husband to Bamako. Seduced by the country, she decides to settle there. This will last nearly twenty-four years during which she creates her artistic world in the Malian capital.<\/p>

“What do you leave them?” I wondered. Shortly after, she sets up the training and creation space Donko Seko<\/strong><\/i> to promote transmission and sharing. Then, she founds Dense Bamako Danse<\/strong><\/i>, an international dance festival that takes place in the streets all over the city. She also had a restaurant-bar where she hosted concerts; the singer James Germain invited for a show then spent 3 years in Mali.<\/p>

Kettly Noël refuses the status quo. “At that time, dancers always had a sponsor, like ‘that’s your dancer.’ Somewhere I understood that I wanted to change the image of the dancer, an image of the artist as a night bird, a woman of joy. Dancers had a bad reputation. That was not the image I had of them, but I did not want the image of the easy folkloric dancer either,” she explains. “I changed that in Africa. I improved the image of the dancer.”<\/i><\/p>

Through her many performances in France and across Africa, in Niger, Chad, Kenya, Mozambique, South Africa, she receives honors for her work. She was one of the 50 most influential Africans one year. Later, she is named Chevalier of Arts and Letters of Mali, and receives the Marcel Deschamps Prize at Beaubourg and the RFI Dance Discoveries Prize.<\/p>

In November 2022, she leaves Mali for good and confesses that emotionally, she was not ready. So, why leave? “Since 2010, I felt that I had finished my work in Africa. But I always have a hard time making decisions. I needed to renew myself. I was looking for other challenges, other desires. I had toured even a long time ago.” <\/p>

France<\/strong><\/p>

Since her return to France, her schedule is packed. Today, her projects are numerous as she embodies many roles even while realizing “that in France today, it’s difficult.” She works with the Théâtre national de Chaillot in difficult neighborhoods of Paris. In Basel, she made a dance show. She also collaborates with Benjamin la Fontaine, former director of the Paris opera and his series on other dancers.<\/p>

With strength and determination, Kettly Noël carries her country within her: “Haiti is always present in my artistic approaches. Giving another image of Haiti has been a constant in my career.” In her performances, she blends dance, theater, and literature to interrogate, to propose, to denounce, to validate voices, choices, experiences while keeping the focus and light on Haiti and its identity. She affirms: “I have African inspirations and I have a multiple and diverse identity. That’s also my whole journey, what I do today and tomorrow that nourishes me.” <\/p>

An example is her choreography on coffee and the Haitian debt, staged on the esplanade of the Palais de Tokyo at the foot of the Eiffel Tower as a backdrop. “I created a colonial counter with something about coffee and money. I threw the money at the audience.” She adds with a sly smile, “even better, we benefited from the wind that sent the money onto the people. They were banknotes bearing the image of the Eiffel Tower. Fo yo bwe kafe a. Fok yo santi bagay la.” <\/p>

She speaks of a new creation: a collaboration with the novelist poet Makenzy Orcel, met at the Basel festival in 2018 and seen again in Mali in 2021. “We became friends. There is a lot of love, respect, and things to share. I explained to him what interested me: words, expressions, phrases, gestures and he wrote the text ‘Fillette Lalo ou tuer la mort.’ The idea is to go to the origin of evil, where does evil come from?” <\/p>

If this great dancer has less time to devote to her travels back to her homeland, she still maintains a keen eye on dance in Haiti. <\/p>

Regarding the folklore as practiced in the country, she chooses her words carefully to highlight the difference between traditional dance - weaving a link with Africa and folklore. She explains that folk dance is to bring joy to tourists, it is to please, it is the smile. Traditional dance is not about pleasing; it is a dance to communicate with spirits, with a higher being, to announce war, a birth, and it is between the beyond and the everyday.<\/p>

On the worrying questions of color and barriers of social class that trouble her. “We must go beyond these barriers. We continue to be terrorized by this class in Haiti with ‘go ahead and take your place.’ I have nothing against light-skinned people, the bourgeois, but we need to move past that. We cannot maintain our own society in oppression. We do not love who we are. You always find someone who will try to squash you.” She explains with a hint of annoyance: “Neoclassical dance is a dance of oppression. You have to tuck in your butt. We need to move on, we need to deconstruct. Yes, I love classical dance, its technique is a technique that supports everything you have today. But this whole classical dance class thing traumatized me. With their bun, besides, you do not know who was Haitian, I never identified with that. It was in Haiti that I cut my hair, that I stopped relaxing it.”<\/p>

On what is needed to develop dance in Haiti: the question of dance as a career and that of choreographic writing must be addressed by students. “The dance school does not work in the spirit that the dancer could be professional. I would have liked it if we were not developed only to be dance class teachers. There needs to be learning of choreographic writing as well. There is a great need for diversity,” argues the choreographer who has toured the world of dance. There also needs to be work between dance and theater. “The people from the theater are the best people I’ve worked with. Why is that not the case in dance in Haiti?”<\/p>

Kettly Noël is also involved in transmitting artistic and social education in Haiti, in the Caribbean region, and in France, especially with the Company KN (Kettly Noël) Dance Project, founded in 2020. She gives master classes, she works with young people. In Haiti, she offers training for contemporary dancer creation, choreography with PAPLAB (the laboratories of Port-au-Prince) to bring culture to remote places and distant people. It’s a project supported by Fokal, an organization that opened its doors to her since 2018, and the French embassy. “For me, we must continue to do things in Haiti, we must not keep being sad, that’s how we will surpass ourselves.”<\/p>

However, she admits: “I live Haiti very badly, I am ashamed. I am sad and very hurt. I would have loved to see my country differently, to see my country shine. I feel like we will take time. I bring my knowledge, openings, support, possibilities to the younger ones. Culture is not enough, but it’s my field.”<\/p>

There is something poetic about closing a circle because after nearly 20 years, this month, she whom many consider to be their little grain of madness returns as a star in Haiti. <\/p>

Kettly Noël is the one who dared. To leave the country. To question the taboo of classical dance, folk dance. To learn lessons. To transgress. She translates into “two words: always dig. You must. And even when you dig, you always dig with great fear, sometimes it’s painful. But you always dig.”<\/p>

Monique Clesca is the author of <\/strong>Silence and Resistance, Memoir of a Girlhood in Haiti<\/strong><\/i>, published by Wordeee.<\/strong><\/p>