Impair - focus

Jérôme Brabant works on the everyday gestures of the “tisanèr” for his solo piece, Impair. In Reunionese Creole, “tisanèr” means a medicinal healer. This is someone people consult, who is recommended for his healing powers with plants.

Jérôme Brabant works on the everyday gestures of the “tisanèr” for his solo piece, Impair. In Reunionese Creole, “tisanèr” means a medicinal healer. This is someone people consult, who is recommended for his healing powers with plants, and who played an important role in Reunionese society at the beginning of the 20th century. The choreographer researched into his genealogy to find his ancestors, who produced medicinal concoctions to help combat typhoid.

The set is defined by a triangle, a balanced shape, involving an odd number, providing a vanishing point at the darkened body, “boukané”. The predominance of black and the presence of cymbals embodies the place where the magical cure is prepared: the kitchen with the blackened cooking pots of the tisanèr.

His body is completely covered in black paint with glitter highlights. This decoration emphasises the scenic importance of his bare hands and feet in the dark of the stage. His hands explore gestures based on action verbs: gathering, pressing, separating, lifting. The choreographer attaches this search to the entire body, like a sphere exploring its horizontality by making supple, rounded rotations. In a slow and fluid movement, like setting infinity in motion, a liquid comes to the boil in a measured and bewitching gesture, in order to obtain the desired texture. 

The skills of the “tisanèr” are passed from generation to generation and they are an oral tradition. The choreographer transposes this important place of orality in Reunion society through the instant composition of the singer who improvises a dull clamour by modulating his voice. The hard rock sounds of the percussion reflect back the ceremonious and occult tendencies of healing practices as if they were incantations. 

Source : Lalanbik