Darkness and silence. Not the faintest sound or the smallest ray of light disturbing this heavy peace. The audience feels fearful to make a motion. Then, like a fresh breeze, there is movement and it feels like embers starting to glow. As the light grows stronger, the jellyfish-like clump reveals itself as a company of dancers in a trance-like, tribal state, growing stronger and more ecstatic as the very last of the dancers slows down his movement, and starts repeating the same pattern each time facing a different direction. Exactly nine minutes have passed. The world stood still.
This a section from Vertical Road, Akram Khan’s latest contemporary ensemble work, shown as a part of DanceEast’s Rough Cuts series, following the Company’s five-week residency in the DanceHouse. Visually inspiring and spiritually profound, Vertical Road draws on different cultural interpretation of the human odyssey, as Akram continues his ambition to explore the interface between different cultures and creative disciplines, bringing together a host of performers and artists from across Asia, Europe and the Middle East, diverse in age, craft and background.
In Akram Khan’s words: “In a world moving so fast, with the growth of technologyand information, I am somehowinclined to move against this current.”
Inspired by stories of angels as found in different cultures, faiths and mythologies, <I>Vertical Road<I> contemplates their universal role as intermediaries between the human and the sacred.
But don’t be fooled. Akram Khan is very much on the pulse of the culture we encounter on a daily basis. With a subject matter so weighty, he doesn’t shy away from mentioning that some of his movement inspiration is coming from mundane Hollywood blockbusters, daily London Tube rides, as well as pure mathematics, and in particular, geometry.
This new work features a specially commissioned score by long-term collaborator Nitin Sawhney, and as the Rough Cuts excerpt reached its quiet conclusion, it became apparent that melancholic, lofty visions in the atmosphere of the DanceHouse Studio Theatre undoubtedly challenged the audience and forced it to give undivided attention to both the choreography and the music.
Watching this beautiful piece of choreography, one cannot help but wonder where the boundaries of our movement, and indeed lives in time lie. For at least a split second one will be taken with the illusion that these dancers are indeed defying laws of time and space, which we claim to rationally understand.
