TOULOUSE
Cornélius is a demanding and unruly band, straddling the line between marching band and French chanson. The project fully engages the body and draws on theatre to deliver a performance that makes us dance whilst we weep. Inspired as much by the tradition of New Orleans brass bands as by pantomime, Cornélius has developed a hybrid language in which musical expression interacts with groove, poetry and the absurd.
Cornélius does not merely play music; its members embody
shifting figures, painted white with coloured noses, moving through a world that is at once
burlesque, unsettling and poetic, where the body becomes an instrument in its own right, movement a score, and the stage a permanent playground. His music draws on Caribbean rhythms, hypnotic repetitions, dissonances and breaks, constructing free-form structures – at times martial, at times absurd – always imbued with a strong poetic dimension.
