I hadn’t realized how powerfully my childhood culture informed my adult life until I got started as a director. Having moved to Guatemala from Haiti at age 9, I ended up relocating to the US at 13. I hadn’t closely analyzed my directorial process until I started researching a film project about a girl connecting with her Haitian roots. It struck me how thoroughly my heritage inspires my creativity (and my day-to-day) even now.
How many of you dance before you sit down to work? Just me? My process as a director includes pre-work rituals I always assumed were unique to me, born from my work as a dancer for example. I feel spurred to stretch, dance and move before I can take on the day, or before a directing job. Really, though, this yearning to connect to myself and clear my head through dance has strong ties to Haitian culture. Haitian dance originated in Benin, Africa, where many dances were used ceremoniously to heal, celebrate, honor others and clear away old energy. Like a tether through time, I keep the practice up in order to channel my own spirit and get into flow.
Speaking of clearing old energy--cleanliness and organization has been increasingly trendy, and especially lately (shout out, Marie Kondo), but my own tidying habits spring from someplace deeper. In Haiti every New Years holiday we all deep-clean our houses to prepare for the year ahead. Similarly, each weekend we did a version of the same; I joined in as a child. The wiping-of-the-slate physically had reverberations mentally, and invited more room to live, work and create. Before I work, wherever I work, I have to clean my space. I wipe surfaces and sweep floors, and even move around decor if the season, week, and yes, even day, calls for it.
Like an itch, I can’t start creating until the slate is clean enough for me to imagine at my fullest potential.
I like to talk about axiology. From Dr. Joy DeGruy, it means, “the study of the nature of value and valuation, and of the kinds of things that are valuable” relating to ethnic groups and other races. As a Haitian woman, who brings Haitian/African diaspora values with me, I feel it vital to honor the values of groups of people. I say hello; I ask someone new whom I meet how they’re doing. I realize individuals are more than their jobs and the number of hours they spend with me. Acknowledging this sets a positive tone on every set and helps my peers feel reinvigorated for the job at hand. They feel important and needed, because they are important and needed. Relationships are the most important thing in Haiti and are prioritized in every encounter.
Habits I felt were part of the past actually surfaced in my practices as a director, constantly and consistently, in my birthplace culture. I urge you, reader, to look inside yourself and consider your own roots. How do you carry your home with you? Where does your culture surface in your own life? Knowing this, you can share your gifts with those you meet, or use them to propel your own unique ideas forward, and bring to the table of your life the shining qualities only you can offer.

WRITTEN BY

Vanessa Beletic