Left and right: Jean-Léon Destiné.

FAMED HAITIAN DANCER AND CHOREOGRAPHER Jean-Léon Destiné was also a phenomenal teacher; he was first invited to teach a one-week course in a special summer dance series at San Francisco State University in the mid 1980s. “African Haitian Dance” surpassed its target enrollment of thirty-five students. It was the beginning of what became a twenty-year relationship with the Bay area dance community. As a result of his teaching success, Destiné was invited for two additional summers. His classes reached hundreds of students—a number of them public high school and public university dance teachers. Without question, Destiné’s classes were the most popular of a ten-year series and marked a vibrant period for dance at this university.

Destiné’s teaching method was based on a series of movements related to specific drum rhythms. Elements of various traditional dance forms were the basis from which he developed his classes: mahi, damballa, perigol, petro, and others. Rene Calvin, master Haitian drummer, accompanied all of his classes. On at least two occasions Destiné presented lectures that brought into focus Haiti’s historical and cultural heritage. These lectures helped clarify much of the source material for his teaching, choreography, and performance.

Destiné returned to San Francisco after receiving a National Endowment for the Arts grant. This grant supported a work created for the former Wajumbe Cultural Ensemble (“Messengers of Good Omen”), for which I served as artistic director. The work, The Chosen One, followed a thematic line and design of a religious ritual; it included chants, songs, drumming, and other percussion. The choreographed ritual was based on Vodun-African religious tradition as it evolved in Haiti. It was followed by Combite, which depicted scenes of planting, harvest, and celebration. Destiné’s choreography and performance—reflected in his company’s concerts over the years—indicate why he received the Honneur et Merite, the highest honor Haiti has given to any artist.

It was sometime in the early ’90s that Destiné realized what he said was his dream of a lifetime, traveling to the country of Benin with the Haitian Society of New York to visit the general area to which many Haitians trace their origin.

Destiné returned to the San Francisco Bay area in 2004, 2008, and 2009, at the invitation of the Zeke Nealy Haitian Dance Camps. He was accompanied by dancers Nadia Dieudonne and Pineau Guerier and drummers Fanfan and Augustine Frisner, and several other Haitian artists.

Jean-Léon Destiné was one of the most popular and respected artists to come to the San Francisco Bay area.

Nontsizi Dolores Cayou is a professor emirata of San Francisco State University.