Open Skies of Night : On Caroline Déodat’s Sous le ciel des fétiches

These elements, as it turns out, are characteristic of Sega, a genre of music and dance that was developed in the eighteenth century across different islands in the Western Indian Ocean, and is now considered typical of the island of Mauritius. Although it was originally practised predominantly by enslaved people, Sega dance and music became culturally valorized over the course of the twentieth century; it is now considered Mauritius’s “national dance” and was recognized by UNESCO in 2014 as a form of intangible cultural heritage. It also serves as an important tourist attraction on the island, and has been performed at hotels aimed primarily at European tourists since the 1950s — when Mauritius was still firmly under colonial rule.