After taking a wrong turn culminating in the misbegotten Frankenstein, Akram Khan has wisely returned to his original inspiration in kathak, the ancient dance culture of northern India synthesising both Hindu and Muslim mysticism and mythology. The result is something deeply impressive and beautiful that held me enraptured for an hour. This is the work of a serious artist, without gimmicks or frills, and there isn’t much of that around at the moment.
Starting with massive thunderclaps in primal darkness, Gigenis takes us through the cycle of creation, tracing the same epic path as the Mahabharata through fire and air, the birth of a hero, a courtship and marriage, a family feud, a war, a victory, defeat and death. One doesn’t have to worry about niceties of plot, however: the themes are big and archetypal, and their tragic import is immediately and unmistakably communicated.
The stage is bare of decoration, illuminated only by a stark battery of lights. Indian musicians sit to the left and right, beating out rhythms that are often relentlessly percussive. There are seven dancers, all apparently representing a different branch of kathak: they squat deep on flat, turned-out feet, their arms and hands as sinuous as tendrils. Briefly coming out of retirement from performance, Khan himself (now 50) has a stunning solo – whirling faster than a dervish, shuddering as if electrified – but it is the women, Kapila Venu in particular playing mother and wife, and the bereaved who have the most emotionally expressive presence.
Ballet’s economic viability has come to rely to an alarming extent on the pulling power of The Nutcracker over Christmas. This year two new productions will refresh the brand. I’ll report on Aaron S. Watkin’s version for English National Ballet in a future issue; meanwhile, Carlos Acosta’s Nutcracker in Havana is touring until the end of January.
If you’re blessed with even a smidgin of Christmas spirit, you’ll find it a sweet and endearing entertainment, for which Pepe Gavilondo has revamped Tchaikovsky’s score with a Buena Vista Social Club swing (no live band, alas). This is a U-certificate Nutcracker, innocent of any subtext and broadly following the familiar storyline. Those of a Grinchy persuasion may wish that the slender narrative had been given some beef and the magician Drosselmeyer had been more menacing, but the translation to a mid-20th-century Caribbean setting (devoid of any reference to political upheaval or oppression), is so amiably and fluently achieved with the help of colourful video projections and an old winged Chevy convertible that I for one could only end up seduced.
There are some conventional ballet sequences, executed with panache by the ensemble of Acosta Danza, and a grand pas de deux for a Sugar Plum Fairy and her consort, but what choreographic interest there is lies more in the glimpses of folk traditions in which maypoles and wooden sandals feature, setting off odd echoes of La Fille mal gardée. I couldn’t understand why the Kingdom of Sweets should be housed in an astrodome, but the somersaulting snowflakes were a total delight.
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