La Compagnie Tilawcis
La Compagnie Tilawcis performs Flamboyants
Tuesday, October 13, 7:30 pm
Mainstage Theater, Janet Wallace Fine Arts Center
Presented by the Theater and Dance and French Departments
Tickets will be available September 29
Flamboyants blends the cultures of New Orleans, La Réunion, and Puerto Rico, drawing on the cultural and historical similarities of these regions, particularly Creole traditions and histories of colonization and marronage, the resistance to and self-liberation from enslavement. This ambitious creation was born from a meeting between Florient Jousse and Big Chief Juan Pardo, an iconic figure of the Mardi Gras Indians of New Orleans. From a simple human connection, these artists, along with La Réunion musicians Frédéric Madia and Zélito Deliron and Puerto Rican musicians and activists Marién Torres Lopez and Ivelisse Diaz have forged a unique expression of “Créolité”, a fusion of the ancestral culture of the Mardi Gras Indians—with their chants, percussion, and dazzling costumes—with the maloya music of La Réunion and the bomba music of Puerto Rico.
La Compagnie Tilawcis describes their performances as show-making without borders, places where various arts forms hybridize, unleash, and weave together again to create something mystical and spectacular. Beyond their shows, company members are committed to inspiring the ambition of young theatre students in La Réunion through their performances in many schools and conservatories.
“At the heart of the dramaturgy and staging, I wish to place the ocean; this expanse of all the unknown that connects us in the most painful aspects of our island histories. In our play, water becomes a means of communication, a natural radio to unite diasporas that no longer know each other, or barely know each other. And this project carries within it the intimacy of candlelight, when the electricity is cut off after a hurricane or cyclone, and the sewing cannot stop; a sewing between small pieces of scattered cultures, a sewing like an archipelago. From this naturally arises the flamboyance of the colorful costumes of the Mardi Gras Indians, the vegijante masks of the Puerto Rican devil, the flamboyant tree that bursts into scarlet blossoms…like a metaphorical tribute to all those who have decided to forge a brilliant path despite the obstacles of history.”
–Florient Jousse, translated from French