SYDNEY FESTIVAL - BABEL (WORDS)
BABEL (words), Sydney Theatre, 9-11 and 13-14 January 2012; photos Koen Broos.
THE PATH to Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui's Babel (words) is a lifetime journey from his roots of Moroccan father and Flemish mother and Belgian upbringing (a Muslim in a Christian culture) to a dance career that began ridiculously late and unconventionally. As a teenager he watched and imitated dance videos, took ballet classes, studied Prince, did hop hop, modelled his teenage movement on clips of Sylvie Guillem so that, by the age of 19 and his father died, he was already on his way to a now legendary place in world dance with a mind and body saturated in this extraordinary melange of influences.
Not surprising then that Cherkaoui the choreographer is a collaborator rather than a singular autocrat; his most famous partner in creation to date is probably Akram Khan, but Babel (words) has brought him together with co-choreographer Damien Jalet and sculptor Antony Gormley to produce a dance-theatre work that seems to be the distilled essence of all of the above. He has said that he doesn't enjoy competition, which is why he prefers collaboration and why he turned to dance rather than sport; nevertheless, Babel (words) is a frequently funny, moving and often profound depiction of the competitiveness that is to be found in human relations: English is best, French is best; we are cleverest – no, we are; and so on.
Babel (words) is the third part of a trilogy that began with Foiand Myth – neither seen in Australia. This show stands on its own, however, and they have all been explorations of human cultures and languages and the antagonisms that inevitably erupt from differences and divisions. Taking its title from the biblical story in Genesis, Cherkaoui and his partners steer the company of amazing dancer-actors and musicians to a place way beyond the construction of the Tower: "And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven." God wasn't impressed by what He saw as a prideful ambition and, "So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth…Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth…" (And lo, God inadvertently created the lager lout, but that's another story.)
Babel (words) is not really like contemporary dance as we most often see it in Australia in that the complex text, music, song and sculptural set are an entirely integrated whole. The performers – Navala Chaudary, Darryl E woods, Damien Fournier, Ben Fury, Paea Leach, Christine Leboutte, Ulrika Kinn Svensson, Kazutomi Kozuki, Sandra Delgadillo Porcel, Helder, Seabra, Jon Filip Fahlstrom, James O'Hara and Damien Jalet, with musicians Patrizia Bovi, Mahabub Khan, Sattar Khan, Gabriele Miracle and Kazunari Abe – are remarkable, and they have to be. The show is awash with humour, cheek, sass, drama, ideas, compassion, intricacy and simplicity, visual excitement, superb dance, violence and tranquility, marvellous live music and choral singing, moments of transcendent genius (and a few self-indulgent bits towards the end that could be excised, but never mind).
Sydney Festival's director Lindy Hume first saw Babel (words) in Madrid and tried to bring it here for 2011; it didn't work out, but she persisted and it's destined to be one of the 2012 hits. Marvellous.
