Translator: Giselle Dunbar Reviewer: Sebastian Betti
I'm sure this has already happened to you at least once in your life,
where you tripped and did everything so as not to fall.
Back home, in Guadeloupe, we have a nice saying for when that happens:
"Bigidi mè pa tonbé," stumble, but don't fall.
You know, it took me a long time,
a very long time, 25 years all in all,
to understand the power in the word "Bigidi."
Say it with me: "Bigidi!"
Audience: Bigidi!
Léna Blou: No, that's no good! Bigidi! Audience: Bigidi!
LB: It's a magical word.
Because it sings in your mouth. Did you feel it?
It's music, it's a note.
Bigidi! Again? Audience: Bigidi!
LB: Let's use our hands. Bigidi!
Public: Bigidi!
LB: Again! Bigidi!
Audience: Bigidi!
LB: It resonates in your head.
It dances through your body.
More importantly, it makes the unseen obstacles dance.
It challenges minds.
It strikes hearts, it revives souls.
I believe that, like me,
you have already met
someone on a street corner,
such as Albè rom de Badlassous
that was stumbling here, tripping there,
just like a Gwoka danser would.
For those who don't know, the Gwoka is a dance,
the Guadelupian traditional dance,
where we dance alone,
a bit in this space we call "la swaré-léwòz", where the dancer
starts when he feels to,
he is in a conversation, as I am with you,
a conversation between him and the drummer.
And we could say that the Gwoka dancer,
particularly the Léwòz dancer,
looks like a drunk man.
But if we think a bit about this dance,
but especially in closing our eyes and imagining that we are a foreigner,
who arrived in this country
we find ourselves in swaré-léwòz
we see...
(Laughter)
We'd be saying: "But, what is this?"
It has no structure, no order, it makes no sense.
It's incomprehensible to him.
And I get it, but that is just what I find fascinating about the Gwoka dance,
seeing the dancer who quickly, and at such speed, stops.
In the lived silence.
And then, for no reason, he falls back into a wild frenzy only to stop.
In an apparent slowdown, he changes his energy.
He might dance hard, or lightly, or just sway.
I was convinced, you know, intuitively
my heart told me that this dance, that looks to be without order
must have a deeper meaning than that.
A bit like Ti Malo, when I went looking,
I found nothing.
No books, no research, no scientific publication.
Nothing, nothing from before.
I had to make the decision to follow my instinct,
and to watch the dancer's body,
just to observe,
and to study it for more than 15 years, alone;
to observe it, and decode it, so as to understand.
Because I was convinced,
not only that this dance meant something,
because I will remind you
too often, we have the tendency to restrict the dance to its first purpose,
an artistic purpose meant only to appeal to the eyes.
But the dance,
when someone dances in society,
it's an understandable language
meant to speak the unspoken words of the hidden strength of a people.
So I took the time to study the muscles, the bones, the joints,
What's moving? When? Where? Why?
It took me 15 years to put in place a classification
that I call Techni'Ka.
But like all research processes, you know,
there are difficult moments, when we don't have the answers.
There is an epic phase that I had to give a name.
Because when there's no name, it doesn't exist.
And oftentimes, the Caribbean doesn't exist because it has no name,
otherwise we place it in a general category:
Multiculturalism, diversity,
race-mixing, and then we stop there.
So I had to find names to give to the steps I found,
the exercises.
And it was there that I remembered...
LB, Audience: Bigidi!
LB: Mè pa tonbé...
And I found that the word Bigidi, just the word bigidi,
was a perfect translation for the way the Léwòz dancer moved.
And still following my heart,
because it was the only thing that made me progress, bit by bit,
following my heart, my instinct.
And one day, just like that, it clicked,
I set off --
because thankfully, I too,
I know "the great dance" --
I set off to do a comparative element
between "high society" dancing and the Gwoka dance.
On a philosophical, you know, symbolic level,
where a classical dancer,
when their body touches the ground,
you know, with very light movements,
touches the grown, it symbolises death.
But when I watched my famous Léwòz dancer,
I saw him stumble, almost to the point of falling.
But as if by some miracle, he never falls.
He never touches the ground.
I say: but this is symbolic of life!
It means, the more he is imbalanced,
the more he is continually adjusting.
When I observed the body of the dancer,
I realised,
He never falls. Why?
Because of a miracle.
It's what's known as the recovery.
Because the dancer, he allows himself
to be apart of whatever chaotic course.
And then, magically,
pan, dam, pandam, pandam, pan, pan, pan, pandam, pan, pandam, PAN.
This moment, it is the last moment of balance.
So he allows himself to be part of the chaos.
Because he knows that he will land back on his feet.
"Bigidi mè pas tonbé" took on a whole new meaning,
with a new depth for me, and ...
one day I said to myself:
"But why is it that in Guadeloupe
the body is also so imbalanced?
And, if by chance, the bigidi, stumbling, of the Gwoka
was it not a perfect replica of the country Guadeloupe?
I notice that,
we are in the permanent state of disorder.
(Laughter)
Our relationship with time,
our relationship with people,
our relationship with things,
our relationship with even constructing things, in building things,
it's summed up in a very simple concept:
the break in action.
We are in a permanent ellipsis,
in a continuous state of discontinuity.
We start, it starts off well,
then we stop.
As if by miracle, everything reverts, everything goes back to normal.
I'm sure you know what I'm talking about.
And afterwards, I said to myself: "But, this instability of the body..."
because technically, the thing that makes the Gwoka dance unstable
it's in being on your feet.
Try being in heels and never falling.
You get the impression that the Gwoka dancer outwits imbalance,
and shows off his balance.
I really strongly believe that Guadeloupe
is about to tell the world
that there is a new way to look at balance:
it's imbalance.
That, that is extraordinary.
Because Guadeloupe has factors
that come to feed this instability.
First, our emergence in the world.
Colonisation, slavery, it's human chaos.
And I believe the body made up a dance,
its dance,
meant to reinvent its humanity.
It need to be unstable,
because slavery was unstable.
He needed to adapt.
But there is also the space.
Just like the Gwoka dancer who dances alone,
in this country, this archipelago,
every islet is a country:
Désirade is a country,
Marie-Galante is a country,
Terre-de-Haut is a country,
Terre-de-bas is a country.
But there are also natural factors,
everything that happens is unforeseen:
hurricanes,
earthquakes,
volcanoes,
tidal waves.
It's as if Guadelupians were
made oblivious to the fact that they live in an unpredictable space.
So, it's almost normal that,
when I was giving my Techni'Ka classes in Guadeloupe,
naturally we be imbalanced,
but I said to myself:
"It would be interesting to check the word bigidi on the body of foreigners."
So, when I went abroad,
I found myself around some Japanese, Italian and American people,
some Africans, some Caribbean people,
and I told them to dance to the musicality of the word "bigidi,"
without explaining what it meant in Creole
nor that it came from Gwoka.
Bigidi.
And each time, I was amazed to see that these foreign dancers,
who were completely unaware of the Ka culture,
reproduced bigidi.
I said to myself: "But, it's not only a magical word,
it's a word which awakes an age-old understanding,
that belongs to humankind."
Because, in fact, the bigidi, it's Guadelupian, OK,
but it is universal,
because all human beings have seen instability during their lifetime.
There is no person on this planet --
except maybe he who sees, who hears colours --
(Laughter)
There is no human being who hasn't experienced a break.
But what is interesting,
about Guadeloupe and the Gwoka,
and perhaps what we can contribute to the rest of the world,
because the bigidi teaches every human being
that we must accept the unpredictable and be at one with it.
We need only to adapt, to never fail.
We have the right to stumble,
We have the right to waver,
but we can not fall.
Bigidi.
I can't hear you!
Audience: Bigidi!
LB: Bigidi, mè pa tonbé.
Because, as we examine the world
the geo-political dogmas are something else, have shifted,
there is uncertainty in the big political and cultural orientations,
and moreover, what fascinates me,
is that nature, the unpredictability of nature, of large territories,
don't you find that they look more and more like our hurricanes,
the storms over there?
The only thing is that we can remind them of the mysteries in the unlikely.
We have to give all the power back to human beings by saying:
"Have faith. You have what it takes.
You are skilled in deception."
Because when we look at the Gwoka dancer, what does he do?
He escapes.
When he stops, it's like life:
we wait for the storm to pass.
When it's possible,
we pick up speed and if there is an imbalance,
thankfully, it's no big deal,
even if we make progress in a haphazard way,
it's still progress.
The supremacy of balance, this perfect vertical line,
well, once we fall, we die.
Better to progress in quicksand,
to always be in a dynamic state of having to bounce back.
And I want to simply say
that the bigidi, stumbling, of the Gwoka dance, of the Léwoz dancer,
is perhaps the creative solution for facing obstacles in the 21st century.
(Applause)