Tour de force in dance
DESH dazzles with its imagination and imagery,
Thomas Wolfe said you can’t go home again. But maybe it’s possible to recreate the idea of home. Or maybe you just carry bits of home around with you, like a hermit crab, in photographs, songs and stories.
DESH is Akram Khan’s first fulllength solo, and it’s a powerful tribute to the pull and push of home and the deep ache for belonging. The London-born son of Bangladeshi immigrants, Khan draws on personal experiences and memories — his own and his parents’ — and weaves them seamlessly with fantasy and dream to create a vibrant, moving tapestry.
DESH’s premise is a son’s journey to bury his father in a far-off country. The dramaturgy suggests Bangladesh in particular — pictures of mangroves and elephants, sounds of chaotic traffic and Bengali political slogans. But it’s also abstract enough to pass for anywhere bewildering and foreign, especially those places that seem to exist on two planes: one fixed and idealized in memory, the other careering messily along in reality.
The piece opens with Khan, dressed in a shirt and dhoti, padding around a dark stage, carrying a lantern. He appears to be looking for something: his keys, a road, a marker. He stumbles upon a recently dug grave and begins pounding at it with a sledgehammer, as if to free whatever lies inside.
DESH slips softly between myth, truth and the shadowland in the middle. Vignettes featuring tech-support call centres and wartime atrocities bracket a stunning sequence that brings a Bengali fairy tale to life. As Khan tells a bedtime story to his cheeky niece, a magical, Jungle-Book landscape of crocodiles, butterflies, pythons and birds, unfolds via visual artist Tim Yip’s vivid projected animations. Michael Hulls’ evocative lighting design and Jocelyn Pook’s rich, almost ecclesiastic, score complete the enchantment.
The choreography is some of Khan’s most imaginative, emotionally mature work yet. His kathak references are becoming more abstract and stylized, although he can still turn and spin so fast you think he’s going to shatter into a thousand pieces. Even more impressive is how he uses his compact, fast-twitch body in non-kathak movement. Freed from the rigours of tradition, he carves up the space like a human Ginsu, dancing as if it were the last time. He also demonstrates his considerable acting gifts, portraying a strange little cook, a small boy, a stern father and his own rebellious teenage self.
DESH is gripping, indelible, tender, courageous and vulnerable. It’s a tour de force from one of the most distinctive, dazzling creators in contemporary dance.