E mbodying Dantò, Performing Freda, Dancing Lasirenn: Yonel Charles's Choreographic Elaborations of Ezili

During Jacmels Carnival season of 2013, Haitian performer and selfidentified masisi (effeminate gay male) activist Yonel Charles staged two evening-length performances with his LGBTIQ-inclusive folkloric dance group Gran Lakou at the towns main art space, FOSAJ.1 To open the suite of ensemble choreographies by the group, Charles danced two different solo improvisations that, when considered together, propose embodied theorizations of the relationships among performance, Vodou service, and queerness.2 The first opening solo Charles danced was for/of/as/with the mermaid spirit Lasirenn-which initiated an iterative performance exploration to honor and elaborate this important sister of the Ezili cohort of women lwa (Vodou spirits). Affectionately known as atis (artist) or sanba (virtuosic singer of traditional songs), Charles is a well-known performer/ choreographer, LGBTIQ activist, and advocate for Vodou, based at the time of this research in Jacmel, Haiti, a seaside town in the south where I conducted fieldwork with dancers from 2012 to 2014.6 Here, we dwell with Charles's Lasirenn and move with other key moments of Ezili manifestations as a way to align our study of Haitian queer performance with Vodou's capacious possibilities. A practical, adaptable, and decentralized religion, Vodou functions as a full-bodied perspective deeply connected to ancestral legacy and service to the lwa.9 The lwa undergird and inhabit the lifeworlds of Vodouyizan (practitioners of Vodou), and even inform everyday living for those who do not explicitly serve lwa but in fact see, feel, or read the world in terms of the forces, energies, aesthetics, and historical memories that lwa bring into being. Freda's demand for recognition, love, and the accoutrements of a beautiful life and Danto's maternal protection and passionate commitment to justice are traits resonant with Charles's leadership in his queer community in Jacmel.