Jungle Book: Retelling a classic with glorious dance
As the title suggests this is a new rendering of Rudyard Kipling’s famous tale The Jungle Book.
Renowned choreographer Akram Khan, in his dance/drama version, has set the story in a near future world under duress. The central character of Mowgli becomes a climate refugee separated from her mother in a drowning chaotic world where society has broken down.
At the heart of Akram Khan’s Jungle Book reimagined is a company of glorious dance artists. They bring extraordinary expressiveness and detail to embody the characters of the story.
Space is stretched, bodies are curves of threnodic phrasing. Movement rests on a foundation of Kathak, a classical Indian dance form which is Khan’s original idiom. This gives the vocabulary a strong rhythmic current into which elements of contemporary dance, hip hop, break dancing and acrobatics are incorporated. As in the original, Mowgli is found and adopted by a pack of wolves. Many adventures ensue as the story unfolds – not a tale for children but a portent for adults.
The creatures have been treated badly by humans, whether tortured in laboratories, or made to perform or cooped up in zoos. They are brought to life by the great skill of the dancers. Maximilian Revell is a quirky, dexterous
Specimen I, who twitches and gyrates his monkey character through a series of humorous yet poignant scenes. Tom Dunn embodies Baloo the former dancing bear with bumbling goofy moves. Holly Vallis is totally convincing as the panther Bagheera – she is slinky, highly articulate and fierce. Their ease in the characters belies the hours and hours of detailed work required to bring them to life.
Supporting them are the chorus who morph from wolves, to monkeys, to humans with stunning acuity.
The characters’ voices have been recorded by actors and the dancers. This leads to an unevenness in quality. Dancers sync their choreography to audio tracks so the body carries the intention of each sentence of the script, by Tariq Jordan with dramaturgy by Sharon Clark. Akram Khan first experimented with this in 2006 in his award wining work Zero Degrees with Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. Script and body syncing has become a trend in contemporary dance and it is an acquired taste.
Every element of the performance is meticulously placed – Khan is a master creator. Stage design is by Miriam Buether. The performance space becomes a vivid canvas with detailed graphics from uber talented YeastCulture. They are an essential component of the work, so the experience is akin to watching live performers inside a movie or video game. In order to acquire a three dimensional aspect to the projections, a fine scrim is used throughout in the front of the stage – this mutes the action on stage for viewers in the stalls.
Highly textured and at times emotive music, from Jocelyn Pook, incorporates sounds from Macedonia, Serbia, Bangladeshi singer Sohini Alam and thumb piano from the Congo. It is a rich aural scape.
Khan is asking questions about humanity’s attitude to our natural world. Snippets from Greta Thurnburg’s famous UN speech are incorporated into the soundtrack ‘How dare you!’.
There are many cues throughout the work to ensure the meaning is absolutely clear. At other times the work becomes more poetic when the chorus of wonderful dancers unleash themselves into abstract choreography – these moments are welcome.
The last 15 minutes of the work are protracted but the final image has potency.
Reflecting the reality of our troubled times through art is a common approach – ie the apocalyptic version – but portraying solutions is more difficult. Khan moves some way towards this by providing a ray of hope that Mowgli can convince humanity to change tack and treat the natural world with more love and respect. A tiny sliver of optimism. Can we reimagine a future?
– Jungle Book reimagined, from February 23-25 at St James Theatre.
Aotearoa Festival of the Arts events runs from February 23 to March 17