Caroline Baum in London 2
There is an Indian revolution going on here. At least, you’d be forgiven for thinking so, what with the buzz around Anish Kapoor’s show at the Royal Academy, mentioned in my last dispatch, and the same vital, vibrant, crowd-pulling energy is repeated at Sadlers Wells where dance’s darling, Akram Khan, teamed up with composer Nitin Sawhney to curate Svapnagata (it’s Sanskrit for “dreaming”) a very cool two week festival of Indian dance and music.
I went to Confluence, the festival finale, a kind of “conversation” about creativity between Khan and Sawhney that was an unsatisfactory hybrid in many ways and also reprised too many of Khan’s earlier works. I don’t mind artists quoting themselves, but they need to leave a decent interval before they repeat their best ideas, otherwise they run the risk of looking like they have nothing new to say.
So it was with mixed emotion that I watched Khan and Sawhney repeat the brilliant opening sequence that stole everyone’s hearts in Zero Degrees. You know the bit, where Khan sits down at the edge of the stage with his collaborator and talks in perfect synchronicity, telling a story with gestures, dramatic pauses, all timed to the second in perfect unison. It’s quite a trick, and lovely to see it again, but. . .
Like Zero Degrees, Confluence features sets by Antony Gormley, (Kapoor has also been a Khan collaborator). A handful of other dancers, including Khan’s wife, were seriously under-utilised, not to say wasted, in the piece. In one scene they formed a queue, airport style, with a suitcase, but were given nothing to do but stand about and shuffle forward. What a waste of talent. Khan did a mesmerizing Kathak foot stamping solo wearing ankle bracelets of bells, interacting with a percussionist and with Sawhney playing a heavenly solo of flamenco guitar that sounded both Moorish and Indian at times. But nothing did quite converge. (What is the verb for confluence, by the way?)
Still, the festival had plenty of cred. It marshalled stellar acts like Anoushka Shankar, and practitioners ofvarious Indian dance and performance styles, some traditional, some contemporary andit was great to be part of an audience that was so mixed, young,and enthusiastic.
Nothing could have been more different than the double bill currently on offer at the English National Opera, which also shows a really confident and inspired curatorial hand, putting together a short opera and a short dance piece to create the perfect double bill.
First up, Bela Bartok’s seldom seen Bluebeard’s Castle, here given particularly sinister relevanceby American director Daniel Kramer in a production that echoes the recent horrors of Joseph Fritzl’s cellar (with Jack the Ripper and Fred West thrown in for good measure). It’s caused quite a bit of controversy, especially among female patrons, and is a very hard piece to sit through, dark, disturbing and relentless. It doesn’t quite work, partly because soprano Michaela Martens looks so ungainly and unsexy in a simply dreadful and unflattering frock; but the fear, menace and tension of the piece are inescapable. Norman Lebrecht has suggested in his column that Bluebeard, as incarnated by Clive Bayley (pictured here), suffers from erectile dysfunction. Not sure what led him to that conclusion. He looks to me like he needs far more help than a little pill could provide.
Still in primitive territory, The Rite of Spring, choreographed by Irishman Michael Keegan Dolan for his company Fantastic Beast, had a pulse that was totally compelling from the opening scene. Were we at an Irish wake? And was the woman with the long white hair and the black dress who smoked a spliff a witch whocast a spell over these men, causing them tohump the earth? (Eighteen sets of jiggling buttocks is quite a spectacle) Their atavistic pounding stomped to pagan rhythmsof blood before they unleashed their inner beast even more, donningmasks to become a pack of wild dogs with large floppy red tongues, while the women became long-eared hares, victims of cruel appetites as the music built to its savage climax. The piece resolves in a very surprising, but utterly convincing way, with a warm rising sun feminizing the brutality of the music, as the men whohave slipped so close to barbarity swap theirmasks for women’s summer dresses. What is really exciting for Sydney is that Keegan Dolan is bringing this company to the Sydney Festival with his production of Giselle. After seeing his version of Rite, I’d go to anything he creates.
Ads are already appearing in the papers for the big ticketshows of the New Year. The National’s run of Alan Bennett’s new play The Habit of Art, about the relationship between Benjamin Britten and WH Auden, is totally sold out despite several lukewarm reviews. Jez Butterworth’s play Jerusalem is coming back, starring Mark Rylance. And Nigel Rees and Sir Ian McKellen will reprise Waiting for Godot.There’s also much anticipation for Alfred Molina playing Rothko in a new play, Red, at the Donmar Warehouse and lots of hype aroundKeira Knightley’s London stage debut in a reworking of Moliere’s The Misanthrope opposite Aussie Tara Fitzgerald. Knightley has freely admitted in the press to being terrified. With such stellar talent around her, I don’t blame her one bit.
