INDIAN OCEAN · REINVENTED

ORIGINS & SOCIAL FUNCTIONS

Practised on Réunion Island by the descendants of enslaved Malagasy and African people, the moring grew in the plantation world of the island's sugar economy, was attested until the early twentieth century, then fell silent. Its contemporary form was rebuilt from the 1990s by Réunionese practitioners into a banner of Creole identity: not a survival handed down unbroken, but a reconstruction carried out by the heirs themselves.

THE GAME

Combat of Réunion Island, borne by the descendants of enslaved Malagasy and African people, waged in a circle to the piker struck with its sticks, the djembé and the doum-doum: strikes and feints, evasions, take-downs, the drums commanding the slowness or the fire of the assault, drawing the game now toward play, now toward the duel. In its contemporary form, the fight is preceded by an acrobatic contest in which the players take their turn one after another, competitors rather than opponents, each seeking to outdo the last.

PLACE IN THE FAMILY

Kaleidoscopic internal logic. The thesis holds the kaleidoscopic games, capoeira, danmyé, moring, to be extra-ordinary in their relation to space, at once vertical and horizontal: within one rhythmic frame, opposite acts coexist, to strike and to bring down, to play and to fight, their tipping governed by the traditional music alone. The rhythm is not ornament but the very hinge on which the game turns from dance to duel.

The thesis classes the moring, with capoeira and the Martinican danmyé, among the kaleidoscopic games, those that unite the two dimensions of the internal logic, the horizontal (the touch) and the vertical (negative imbalance), the blow struck and the fall provoked. It thus belongs to the family's most complete circle, and carries the category of the Black combat arts into the Indian Ocean, alongside the Malagasy tolona.

SOURCES

Olivier Malo, La capoeira et les arts de combat noirs : histoire effacée, techniques invisibles, 1905–1984 [Capoeira and the Black combat arts: erased history, invisible techniques (1905–1984)], doctoral thesis in History, Université des Antilles, 2020.

J.-R. Dreinaza, Techniques et apprentissage du moring réunionnais, Comité Réunionnais de Moring, 2000.

É. Combeau-Mari, Moraingy, mrenge, moring : permanence et ré-invention des pratiques traditionnelles de combat dans les îles de l’océan Indien : Madagascar, Mayotte, Réunion, Staps, 2013/3, n° 101, p. 69-80.

HOW TO CITE THIS ENTRY

MALO, Olivier. Moringue. In: The Atlas of the Black Combat Arts [online]. Black Combat Arts Institute, 2026. Available from: https://www.blackcombatarts.com/atlas-en/moringue [accessed date].

RELATED PRACTICES

→ Moraingy, Malagasy-Réunion striking family

→ Manì, Strikes, feints, evasions to the drum

→ Danmyé / Ladja, Rhythm commands the assault

→ Mouringué, Fist contest in a circle