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The Grim Reaper showed up on Friday night in the Elbeuf area

Wednesday 18 July 2012 , by Cécile Babin

All the versions of this article: [English] [français]

The company Transe Express gave us an appointment in front of the cemetery located in the Elbeuf area. This is where Death has chosen to show up. Despite the late hour, the inhabitants did not resist the temptation to see and perhaps get in touch with the scaring and fascinating Death.

From the silent cemetery, the insolent drums of Transe Express’s “Tambours de la Muerte” resound. Two skeletons - terrifying bodyguards of their Majesty of Darkness - rise above the shrubs. Transe Express plunges us into an atmosphere of Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) in Mexico where every year families eat, sing and dance on the graves of their ancestors to celebrate their souls back on Earth. Drums and giant skeletons appear in a reddish smoke as a reminder of the after-life. They mingle with ordinary mortals to the rhythm of drums and whistles and the dark parade can start. Spectators join the funeral dance and their bodies are like hypnotized by the call of the drums. The giant skeletons can not help tickling children who are sitting comfortably on their parents’ shoulders or shaking hands with the few people who dare to open their windows!

Death suddenly rises embodied by a giant beautiful woman. The Grim Reaper is in a good mood since she knows that tonight she will bring a man to her kingdom. A man from the crowd who must dance with her... tango, rumba or waltz ... for sure this man will have a first-hand experience with the Death. But she is very hard to please...and rejects all her suitors. At the door to after-life, a man eventually responds to the Grim Reaper’s whims. As a reward, she offers him a return ticket to hell. But the lucky winner will have to prove oneself one more time before finally joining the walkabout: the skeletons, the inflamed scythe and the hunchback server will not give him any chance to fail.

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