Jean-Yves Leloup

From 1988 to 1994, near Père Lachaise cemetery on the eastern side of Paris, the Etablissements phonographiques de l’Est (Eastern Phonographic Venue), aka EPE, was a multidisciplinary venue hosting the crême de la crême of the international experimental, radical, industrial, noise, avant-punk scene. A record shop during the day, an underground venue at night hosting in its basement gigs, performances, screenings of video art and experimental cinema, readings, bondage workshops, fanzine exhibitions. At the junction of late 80’s and early 90’s, EPE saw the end of industrial music and the birth of the still highly influential avant-punk scene.

How can a queer, androgynous Brazilian, son of a saint in Candomblé, an immigrant from Santo Amaro da Purificação in Europe, for 23 years bring together more than 60 thousand people dancing to the sounds of atabaques in the streets of Paris? This ritual, the Lavagem da Madeleine, which washes the steps of the French church, is intertwined with the life of his creator, the dancer from the Paradis Latin cabaret, Robertinho Chaves. In search of his identity in the Afro-Brazilian diaspora of Paris, he is about to cross the border of masculine and feminine, between the sacred and the profane.