I am an artist from an island, born in Guadeloupe with an atypical background, which in the Franco-Caribbean context mixes the artistic, the cultural, and the academic fields. My philosophy, over the past thirty years, has been to highlight Caribbean dances (Gwoka from Guadeloupe, Bèlè from Martinique, Kasékò from Guyana) as the results of a crossroads: Africa, Europe, India, etc.
This extensive artistic work, developed as a dancer, choreographer, teacher, and researcher to recognize traditional Afro-Caribbean dances as a source of creativity for contemporary art, positions me as a pioneer and avant-garde, a rare resource, inspiring and recognized as a pillar of Guadeloupean culture.
In 1990, I founded my dance school, the Center for Dance and Choreographic Studies; in 1995, the Compagnie Trilogie; and in 2010, my own place, the Larel Bigidi’Art. These acts of teaching, research, and creation allowed me to invent the Techni’ka and to propose the Bigidi theory as a tool for understanding postcolonial societies, attested in 2005 by the work Techni’ka (republished in 2021) as a technological method for the transmission of vernacular dances.
The recognition of my artistic and theoretical work goes far beyond the borders of my archipelago and has become a major center of interest for artists and researchers. I am regularly invited to present my work in Africa by my accomplice Germaine Acogny of the School of sands in Senegal, in Europe by Maurice Béjart, in the Caribbean by Jeanguy Saintus of Ayikodans, in Brazil by the choreographer Rui Moreira, as well as by conservatories, festivals, choreographic centers in France, by universities for conferences, by journalists for articles (Abdou-Moumouni / Niger, Jean-Jaurès / France), the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and even the Let’s Dance International Frontiers in London, among others.
