Impair

Having shown his first solo, Heimat, at the 2013 edition of Rencontres chorégraphiques, Jérôme Brabant returned in 2014 with IMPAIR, which was once again inspired by the island of La Réunion where he is originally from and which he rediscovered in 2009.

Having shown his first solo, Heimat, at the 2013 edition of Rencontres chorégraphiques, Jérôme Brabant returned in 2014 with IMPAIR, which was once again inspired by the island of La Réunion where he is originally from and which he rediscovered in 2009.

This time he draws on the island’s tisaneur tea-makers and magnetisers, wizards of pain-soothing plants, among whom were his great-grandparents and the tradition of which is passed down orally, from father to son. He delivers a piece in which music and dance are closely interwoven in an incantatory form, drawing on the rites and myths that fuel Creole imagination. Accompanied by David Fourdrinoy, a percussionist with a passion for improvisation who worked at the CNDC in Angers as an accompanist before leaving for La Réunion, he produces a sensual, eternally resurgent dance that plays with a hypnotic dimension. On a stage marked out by white bands, plunged into near-darkness and simply lit by a few projectors that section up areas of chiaroscuro, Jérôme Brabant evolves with his undulating body, appearing to sculpt the space. Everything comes from his hands, which offer, indicate, caress and evoke the times of the healers as much as the imposition of hands or day-to-day movements that handle, weigh and separate the plants. He then launches into a more ample movement, creating a body that whirls and unfolds or comes undone in a continuous, fluid movement, undulating and sensual. Alongside him, David Fourdrinoy officiates from the shadows and creates a vocal and soundscape that is at times astounding, at others creaking, and at others still sharp like a mineral, the trance of the dance thus combining with that of the music, which is organic and pushed sometimes as far as pure feedback.

This is how IMPAIR is built and revealed, paying tribute not only to the tisaneur ancestors of Jérôme Brabant, who still combine plants in odd, or indivisible, numbers, but also to a culture that embraces supernatural forces, rendering them inseparable from all existence. In doing this, the choreographer-dancer in turn tisane; indeed, in Creole, the word means to bewitch or enchant.

Updating: September 2014