Youn jenn dansè ayisyen pral parèt sou "So You Think You Can Dance"

Dancer soars after life on Haiti's streets



BY JORDAN LEVIN
jlevin@MiamiHerald.com When Vitolio Jeune was 15, an orphan dancing for pennies on the streets of Port-au-Prince, his talent was just a way to stay alive.

''I was thinking how would I survive, how would I live?'' he says. ``Dancing was the only thing I could think of to make money that was legit. I didn't want to sell drugs or go into a gang.''

Eleven years later, dancing has enabled Jeune not only to survive but also to live what still seems like a dream. The New World School of the Arts graduate is competing on the hit Fox TV show So You Think You Can Dance, seen by more than eight million viewers each week, and has an offer to join one of the country's most-prestigious modern-dance troupes.

Jeune is one of four talented South Floridians still alive in the competition, but his story is the most surreal.

''I used to watch this show on TV, and now here I am in it, and people are watching me,'' Jeune, 26, says from the show's rehearsal studios in Los Angeles. 'It's unbelievable. You have to accept it because it's true, but I keep thinking about it. It's tough to really be yourself, because you're like, `Oh my God, is this true? Is it really happening?' ''

That Jeune is leaping across American TV screens is due to his considerable talent but also to a determination and optimism all the more impressive given his story. ''There are people who are bold, for whom the sky is the limit,'' says Mireille Chancy Gonzalez, a member of the New World foundation board who sponsored Jeune when he was a penniless scholarship student.

''This is a boy with no hope who comes from the streets.,'' she said. ``He could have been angry with the world. But he's a nice person. He has a lot of ambition in a positive way.''

Jeune was born in Haiti to a single mother who died in childbirth when he was 5. His grandmother took over raising him and his younger brother until Jeune was 9.Then, unable to support them any longer, she sent the boys to The Little Brothers and Sisters orphanage outside Port-au-Prince.
''She knew they would feed us three meals a day, and she really had no choice,'' Jeune says.

HARSH DISCIPLINE
Discipline was strict, and the rebellious Jeune was beaten often. ''It wasn't the most beautiful experience in my life, but I took the best of it,'' he says. ``I had quite a lot of whuppings.''

In the orphanage he got his first taste of dance, from a Michael Jackson video and some Haitian dance classes. When he was 15 Jeune took a guard's car for a joyride, crashed, and was expelled. He returned to his grandmother's apartment, often sleeping on the floor so she could have the single bed that eased the cancer that killed her within the year. Desperate, Jeune began dancing on the street, subsisting on a few gourdes a day in tips and money his aunt in Miami sometimes sent him.

In 1999 he auditioned for Artcho Danse, a dance school with the Compagnie Ayikodans, a well-known Haitian and contemporary troupe. ''It's a school that believed in children like me,'' Jeune says. ``If they see the drive in you, they give you that chance.''

He rapidly progressed from scholarship student to apprentice to company member.

''The first day I saw Vitolio Jeune, I knew that he was going to be a great dancer,'' Jeanguy Saintus, founder and artistic director of Ayikodans, writes in an e-mail. ``He was very committed and passionate [about] his art.''
Jeune toured internationally with Ayikodans, performing in Europe, Latin America and Asia. On a layover in Miami in 2005, he filled out an application to New World. When he got an audition notice months later, he used his frequent-flier miles to get to Miami.

The audition was daunting, but Jeune drew on the experience and support of Saintus, who had taken him into his home as well as his school. ''Sometimes people make you believe that just because you are Haitian you cannot do anything good,'' Jeune says. 'But Jeanguy Saintus, my mentor, he always made me believe in myself. He would always say `Just because you are from this place doesn't mean you can't do anything.' I was, of course, intimidated, but I said 'I'm just going to dance and show them what I can do.' ''

He immediately won a full scholarship. ''He was born to dance. We all saw that,'' says Daniel Lewis, dean of New World's dance department. ``He was a wild maniac in movement. If you put him in a classroom, he took up all the space.''

But the obstacles were as visible as Jeune's talent. He was older than the other students, who had years of formal training he lacked. He was on his own in a strange country, at a highly demanding conservatory.

''He had a raw beautiful way of moving with absolutely no technique,'' Lewis says. ``He didn't know how to relate to everyone else. He'd been out there a long time on his own, and he had that personality where you're out for yourself, you're gonna get what you need out of life. But he came through in the end really well. It's not a transition everyone can make.''

Jeune's scholarship did not allow him to take a job, and though he had a series of sponsors, he was broke and often hungry. Sometimes he missed class because he didn't have bus fare or went days without food. ''I had to get to class, because if I didn't I would lose my scholarship,'' he says. 'Sometimes I would worry: `Would I survive the next day? Would I graduate?' ''

EVER THE OPTIMIST
But his doubts didn't affect his dancing.
''He's not afraid to do anything, and he doesn't hold back,'' says Natalie Rogers, assistant to famed modern dance choreographer Garth Fagan, who rehearsed Jeune in a Fagan work at New World. ''It's very important as a dancer to have a sense of self. Who you are comes out very clearly when you're a performer.'' Fagan was so impressed by Jeune that he helped pay his living expenses and invited him to join his company.

With its glitzy pop style, So You Think You Can Dance seems an unlikely destination for Jeune. He auditioned in Miami in February ''just to have fun,'' and was one of 20 contestants selected from thousands of hopefuls. The dancers are divided into couples -- Jeune's partner is Asuka Kondoh, a Latin ballroom dancer from San Francisco. The couples perform a new routine on each Wednesday night's show.The audience votes, and the lowest-rated couple is eliminated on the air on Thursdays. The single winner on Aug. 6 takes home $250,000. A few contestants from previous seasons have gone on to Dancing With the Stars.

Jeune's teachers hope he'll follow a less-commercial route. ''He's better than what they're putting on the show,'' Lewis says. ``The show is fun, not art. He's an artist.''

Jeune seems not to know what he'll do next. He's said he hopes to choreograph, to tour, to work as an actor, to help orphaned children who struggle like he once did. But he seems confident that, win or lose, things will go well.

''Only one person will win this prize,'' he says. ``So I'm just gonna be myself, and whatever happens, happens.''