Akram Khan Company: DESH

Akram Khan Company: Desh -
Playhouse, QPAC, 6 September -

This is the second Australian outing for Akram Khan’s first full-length solo work Desh, after its 2012 Australian premiere at the Melbourne Festival. Meaning ‘homeland’ in Bengali, Desh is a dance-theatre exploration of Khan’s Bangladeshi roots and British upbringing in his acknowledged attempt to create something of lasting value in a disposable world, where he says, even aesthetics are transient.

In a seamless but episodic progression, moving between Britain and Bangladesh, Khan draws on threads of memory and myth, weaving them into a work that appeals to all of the senses. Although Khan is the only performer on stage, this is very much a collaborative effort as animators Yeast Culture and Oscar-winning visual designer Tim Yip, along with Michael Hulls, the lighting designer, make contributions that are essential to the story telling. Music by Olivier Award-winning composer Jocelyn Pook and the poetic imagery conjured by the words of Karthika Nair add further layers to the drama, which traverses the intimate and the epic.

We are suddenly plunged deep into this multi-faceted tale, where each facet elicits a response from joy to pathos, as Khan, on a stage washed in black, slams a sledgehammer into a ‘mound of earth’. Rhythmic and relentless, the slamming continues, punctuated by grunts of exertion. It is a galvanising moment.

Khan speaks in this work, in fact text as dialogue facilitates much of the story telling, often delivered with a wry self-deprecating humour. Conversations with daughter Eshita examine universally experienced generational differences, while a recurring dialogue with ‘tech support’ also elicits laughter of empathetic frustration from the audience.

However, the narrative connects with most effect when a silent Khan allows the movement to communicate. There are not many of these moments but each is memorable for its seamless almost mercurial construct, miraculously contained in forms of crystalline clarity. For instance the cacophonous sound of Bangladeshi traffic is reflected in a mesmeric twisting and turning, but still fluid dynamic of the upper body and arms that combines elements of both Kathak and contemporary dance.

In another repeated sequence the top of Khan’s shaved head, painted with eyes and mouth, becomes the face of his father, deftly manipulated by Khan as if disembodied. The ensuing dialogue between father and son, with Khan physically morphing from one character into the other, is insightful, funny and poignant, and of masterly conception and execution.

However as the work moves towards the epic and allegorical with striking animated pen and ink projections that traverse the stage, the imagery overpowers the movement; a boat on a stormy sea, a forest of trees, with birds, snakes and a majestic elephant, even a warship, envelop Khan, whose interaction with the setting becomes secondary.

The hero image of Khan suspended upside down in the folds of white ribbons of cloth evokes the final minutes of Desh. Densely packed banks of these ribbons descend from overhead, enveloping Khan. It is a spectacular moment as he runs through them creating waves of movement. The light ‘plays’ with the depth of the ribbons, as a small projected caricature (is it of Khan perhaps?) runs through them.

Khan’s story is deeply personal but resonates universally.  Desh is therefore rich with allegories that speak to the very essence of being human. It rightly received a standing ovation opening night.

- DENISE RICHARDSON