“But who can remember pain, once it’s over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind even, in the flesh. Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind.”
Margaret Atwood
Slut is the new work by Amina Khayyam Dance Company (AKDC), which premièred at the Edinburgh Fringe and responds to a personal encounter experienced by Khayyam when she was growing up. AKDC is concerned with issues that affect marginalised women and Slut follows on from A Thousand Faces which was made in response to the growing frequency of acid attacks on women. With a cast of Jane Chan, Parbati Chaudhury, Nasia Kelepeshi and Khayyam herself, the work (developed in association with women’s groups in Woking, Birmingham and East London) was also triggered by the death of a close friend who shared a similar story.
After seeing their playfully phallic water-pistol image dotted around Edinburgh and a descriptive text from their website identifying the work as ‘exploring issues of sexual grooming across culture and race while challenging labels given to women who do not conform to expectation’, I entered the theatre with a set of expectations that Slut might offer an alternative perspective on sexual violence, a portrait of non-conforming contemporary womanhood or challenge the dominant patriarchy through kathak and other dramaturgical means. There is a rich vein of strong solo and ensemble work at The Fringe that is exploring similar themes and executing them with finesse and originality including No Show by Ellie Dubois, Mouthpiece by Quote Unquote Collective and This Really Is Too Much by Gracefool Collective. Slut, however, adds little to the debate; instead it offers a dated one-dimensional portrait with scenes quickly growing stale, and an uneven quality of cast.
“It doesn’t matter to me what your position is. You’ve got to keep asserting the complexity and the originality of life, and the multiplicity of it, and the facets of it. This is about being a complex human being in the world, not about finding a villain.” Toni Morrison
Set over fifty-five minutes, Slut consists of five scenes charting the childhood years of the central female character – from birth, to teddy bear attachment, to curious adolescence and finishing at age 17, stepping into adulthood. Each scene is established early and clearly ‒ we understand the role each performer is playing but it is the lack of nuance, complexity and ideas outstaying their welcome that is most grinding. When we see Chan hugging her teddy and playing with it in a childlike manner, rolling on the floor and goofing around, there’s little narrative development on show, her emotional palette is one-dimensional and the choreography is restricted. Instead of six or seven minutes, the scene could have played out in one or two minutes and the effect would have been the same. Similar choices are on display again in the adolescence and birth scenes when Khayyam wafts a cheap string of fairy lights in an attempt to convey childhood magic and the siblings’ physical mirroring scene adds little comedy or empathy to the characters. Hardial S. Rai is named as the dramaturg on the performance and I struggle to see the input and impact he has had.
Khayyam is a brooding physical presence in Slut and her all-too-rare kathak interjections are a genuine highlight of the work; as we arrive in the theatre we see her perched on a stool knitting with a muted ferocity that established her physical tone. When her classical training is revealed her arms are reminiscent of the knitting needles, binding and weaving the air around her, demonstrating the quality of her movement; however, this also illustrates the gulf in training and performance skills as the rest of the cast are unable to match the energy and presence of the choreographer. After the curtain call there is a short epilogue in which the empty water-pistols from the poster are revealed from under a school desk and the cast play on stage, pretend to shoot each other and the audience, run about and rub the water-pistols on their crotch. The tone and implications of the scene are completely out of character and it leaves an odd set of images with the audience as they leave.
It is admirable that Slut was developed with the voices of the women’s groups and that AKDC chooses to work with issues that affect marginalised women across their whole output. However, in the context of The Fringe and performing in a competitive international arena of 3,500+ other performances, Slut adds little to the issues it’s exploring, the wider debate and the festival as a whole.