Gigenis: A powerful return to form for Akram Khan
Akram Khan’s new piece pulls off quite a coup. Coming just two years after the death of his Bangladeshi father – which is surely no coincidence – it sees the Wimbledon-born dancer-choreographer boldly park his “western” influences (Michael Jackson, Prince, his contemporary training) and let his north-Indian classical Kathak training roar.
On stage with him are six further, similarly brilliant exponents young and old of Indian classical dance (Kathak, plus Bharatanatyam and Kutiyattam) along with seven musicians, and, although just an hour straight through, the piece is dense, and does not ingratiate itself with straightforward storytelling. But on Wednesday’s opening night, it enraptured a packed-out Sadler’s Wells as if it were (say) Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake; and what’s more, it deserved to.
In Gigenis: The Generation of the Earth, Khan – now greying at 50, but still one hell of a performer – returns to what is perhaps his favourite subject: myth. As such, the piece can be seen as a descendant of his earlier, comparable works Until the Lions and Outwitting the Devil. And, like the former, it also has its roots in the Sanskrit epic The Mahabharata.
To give a thumbnail synopsis (and it’s certainly helpful to go in armed with one), the show tells of a mother who has lost her husband to war, and who has two sons: one bellicose, the other serenely nature-loving. After one of them dies in battle, she reminisces.
That, superficially, is “it”. And yet this creation – conceived and overseen by Khan (who also plays one of the sons), but collaboratively choreographed – is in fact an extraordinarily rich tapestry of ideas. There’s the power and function of myth, certainly, but it is also about family, fear, nature, dance, music, tradition and the relationship between the past and the present. And by the way, in case this all sets “worthy” alarm bells ringing, I should stress that the work plays hypnotically out like a cross between a mysterious, millennia-old ritual and a hyper-stylised, particularly internecine episode of Succession. (“Generation”, in the title, is doubly significant.)
After an opening that monumentally welds the elemental to the dynastic, I did at times find myself wishing – as often with Khan – that he might throw us just a few more narrative bones. But concentrate, and you do just about keep a handle on things, besides which this piece is perhaps best enjoyed anyway as a kind of charged, fevered dream, a series of twilit, interlinked vignettes with their own fractured narrative logic.
Key to its power are Zeynep Kepekli’s crepuscular lighting and Dave Price’s thunderous soundscapes (the show’s two concessions to 21st-century western stage tropes), which are positively cinematic in the way they pull you wide-eyed into this world. But the show’s chief “weapon” is the dancing. In terms of both technical diligence and head-to-toe expressiveness, Khan and co outdo themselves. And their related-but-different disciplines prove as fascinating in terms of their contrasts – Kathak’s speed and attack, Bharatanatyam’s exquisite use of the head and shoulders, Kutiyattam’s brazen theatricality – as in their similarities, especially the astonishingly lyrical use of the arms and hands, and the way (unlike classical ballet) they tend to embrace gravity rather than fighting against it.
Khan is an artist I have long admired, but whose muse has struggled of late. True, Gigenis is not on the same level as, say, his former work-of-art solo shows Desh and Xenos, and it may prove too elliptical for some. But to see his imagination once again firing this keenly, and his body still serving him so magnificently, is something to celebrate.
Until Nov 24. Tickets: 020 7863 8000; sadlerswells.com