Colette Eloi
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Dr. Colette Marie Eloi, PhD, is awed by the way dance is a universal language. She feel in love with the centripetal force of dance at a young age, and it has taken her on an incredible journey of self-discovery.
Dr. Eloi is a distinguished dancer, choreographer, scholar, and cultural practitioner whose life's work is deeply rooted in the rich dance traditions of Africa, gaining her understanding of dance from the Oakland/San Francisco Bay Area, and fieldwork on the continent and in the diaspora. Dr. Eloi is a celebrated artists and a master Haitian folkloric instructor, she is also an award-winning choreographer, folkloric singer, and an prolific researcher whose artistic and academic contributions span local, national, and international audiences.
Dr. Eloi is the founder and Artistic Director of ELWAH Dance & Research, an organization established in 2005 to preserve, elevate, and present African-rooted dance traditions. Inspired by the extraordinary dancers and dance teachers from the Bay Area trailblazers such as Nontzizi Cayou (Wajumbe), Deborah Vaughn (Dimensions Dance Theater), and Blanche Brown (Groupe Petit La Croix), ELWAH integrates culturally rich performance, oral tradition storytelling, academic research, and educational programming to connect with diverse audiences around the world.
In 2006, for ELWAH’s inaugural work, Dr. Eloi had the rare honor of co-choreographing A Living Birthday Card (2006) with the legendary Ms. Ruth Beckford, Oakland Queen Mother of Dance. This historic piece celebrated the 97th birthday of the iconic Katherine Dunham and brought together a global assembly of Dunham dancers—97 in total—on a single stage in a powerful tribute to one of the most profound figures in dance history.
Dr. Eloi's deep commitment to African-rooted dance research began in earnest in 1997 through the African Diaspora Artist Collective – Project Reconnect, a group she co-founded to investigate and revitalize African diasporic dance practices. Her scholarly inquiry took root and flourished in academic settings, culminating in a Ph.D. in Critical Dance Studies from the University of California, Riverside in 2024.
Her doctoral research breaks new ground by centering African Diaspora dance epistemologies, with a focus on precolonial and Indigenous worldviews. Among her significant scholarly contributions are the frameworks of the “sovereign body” and “corporeal footnoting,” which offer innovative methodologies for understanding, researching, and writing about African-rooted dance both inside and outside the academy.
Dr. Eloi's training is as expansive as it is profound. A product of the culturally fertile Bay Area and motivated by a pull to conduct in-depth fieldwork, she has studied and practiced Haitian, African (Congo, Guinea, Ghana, Benin), Cuban, Puerto Rican, Brazilian, and Black vernacular dances, as well as multiple modern dance forms including Dunham, Graham, and Horton techniques. Her fieldwork and performance-based research have made her a sought-after voice in the global discourse on dance.
She holds a B.A. in International Relations with a concentration in Development Studies from the University of California, Berkeley, and an M.F.A. in Interdisciplinary Arts from the California Institute of Integral Studies, where she focused on dance and oral traditions. Her professional experience spans roles as a principal dancer, dance therapist, chair of a dance department, resident artist in schools, ceremonial healing dance facilitator, arts administrator, and assistant professor at a top-tier research university.
Dr. Eloi views dance as a profound archive—an embodied vessel of historical memory, communal wisdom, and spiritual insight. She believes in its transformative power to heal, unify, and catalyze social and personal change.
Most recently, she was awarded the Kenneth Rainin Foundation Grant for New Work in Oakland. She is also co-authoring a forthcoming chapter on dancing religions with Dr. Yvonne Daniel, to appear in the Anniversary Edition of The History of the African Diaspora, published by Cambridge University Press in 2026.
As an educator, Dr. Eloi is deeply committed to guiding her students toward self-actualization. Her pedagogy often incorporates leadership training, and she has developed a range of culturally informed curricula for dance programs across educational levels. She has also led international cultural exchange trips, enriching cross-cultural dialogue through embodied learning.
Furthering her vision of dance as a tool for global community building, Dr. Eloi is a co-creator and organizer of Back to the Root: The Healing and Spiritual Power of the Spine and the Pelvis in African Rooted Dance (BTTR), a year-long, online, global African Diaspora conference. Designed as a community-based research initiative, BTTR bridges the academy and the community by exploring the embodied spiritual and healing traditions of African-rooted movement.