Déplacés

“Déplacés” is a creation by Stephen Bongarçon in homage to the history and voices of the people of Chagos, whose last representatives were chased to the Seychelles and Mauritius in 1972 by the British army, at the time of decolonization of Mauritius, without right of return. The archipelago, located in the heart of the Indian Ocean, was detached from the Mauritius independence agreement to be rented by the British State to the United States of America in order to install a military base there. (Diego Garcia) and retain British maritime sovereignty in the Indian Ocean. The last British colony, the Chagos Archipelago has since been at the center of a dispute finally judged before the International Criminal Court in The Hague on February 25, 2019, to the detriment of the United Kingdom which lost its sovereignty.
By reaffirming the struggle of the deported Chagossians, who never stopped demanding justice – the right to return to their islands, the choreographer uses dance to give voice and speak to us about the uprooting of bodies, of the humble and desperate cry, of the need to find its original soil. Displaced is a work that expresses the overwhelming emotion, from the dignified desire of this exiled people to their right to return to live on their native islands, to the legitimacy of achieving independence and decolonization.