Adelaide Festival
Israel Galvan: Fla.Co.Men
Her Majesty’s Theatre, Adelaide. 9 March
Bangarra Dance Theatre: Bennelong
Dunstan Playhouse. 15 March
Akram Khan Company: Xenos
Her Majesty’s Theatre. 17 March
This year’s Adelaide Festival dance program has been varied, with four mainstage works plus Human Requiem, an outstanding immersive performance of Brahms’s great choral work, in which the Berlin Rundfunkchor is choreographed by noted German choreographer Sasha Waltz. After Lucy Guerin’s abstract exploration of embodiment in Split, reviewed two weeks ago, the remaining works in the program either drew on dance’s ability to evoke stories or pushed the boundaries of traditional form.
In Fla.Co.Men, flamenco iconoclast Israel Galvan’s boundary pushing veers between the self-indulgent and the brilliant. Galvan is a performer of extraordinary exactitude and range, able to segue from traditional flamenco moves to using his whole body as a percussion instrument, from virtuosity to absurdity, within an instant. Fla.Co.Men is structured as a series of vignettes, with Galvan accompanied by a marvellous band comprising flamenco singers David Lagos and Tomás de Perrate, guitarists Caracafé and Juan Jiménez, percussionist Antonio Moreno, and Eloísa Cantón on violin. At the start he pretends to be learning flamenco moves from a book, but it is soon apparent that he is a master rather than a novice, as his feet pound out rhythms with stunning intricacy, velocity and volume. Other interludes have him banging his head on a bass drum, dancing on gold coins and being pelted with paper balls, and even eating a package of crisps in the dark. Several pauses in which the audience has to sit in a darkened auditorium go on for too long, but the show gathers pace and ends riotously. It’s uneven, but definitely worth seeing.
Bangarra’s Bennelong is a work of an entirely different complexion, retelling an exemplary story from Australia’s history to comment on the contemporary situation of many Aboriginal people. In 1789 Woollarawarre Bennelong, a senior man of the Eora people of Port Jackson, was captured on the orders of Governor Phillip, eventually learning English and spending six months in England. Back in the colony he acted as an intermediary between white settlers and Aboriginal peoples, finally being ostracized by both sides and descending into alcoholism and despair. Choreographer Stephen Page tells his story via a series of vignettes, tracking his life from pre-contact to first encounters with the British, his trip to England, and ending with his lonely death. Jacob Nash’s set design evokes the story symbolically, starting with an enormous smoking ring that Bennelong steps through, an allusion to the wholeness of Aboriginal culture until the arrival of the British ‘broke the world’, the giant silver numbers ‘1788’, outsized mussel shells and neon boomerangs. Steve Francis’ score contributes powerfully to the unfolding of the story, combining electronic instrumentation with fragments of sea shanties and ‘Rule Britannia’, but also making very effective use of spoken text.
As Bennelong Beau Dean Riley Smith gave a riveting performance, capturing the authority, curiosity and ultimate pathos of a man caught between two cultures. A spirit figure, played by Elma Kris, effectively linked the vignettes, and the eighteen-strong company executed traditional dance moves and the more angular movements of the Europeans with equal authority. While the movement vocabulary does not break any new ground, it expresses the clash between two very different cultures very eloquently. The ending, in which the anguished Bennelong is slowly enclosed in a silver box — perhaps signifying a prison, perhaps a coffin — is profoundly moving.
Xenos means ‘stranger’ or ‘foreigner,’ and in this epic solo work Akram Khan also explores the frailty of individuals enmeshed in historical events beyond their control, in this case the 1.5 million Indian soldiers who fought for the European powers in World War One. Based on a text by Canadian playwright Jordan Tannahill, the work explores the fate of soldiers who suffer the horrors of the trenches and die for a colonial power that denies both their full humanity and their nation’s sovereignty. Xenos uses image rather than narrative to convey the nightmare of war, and in this Mirella Weingarten’s brilliant set, comprising an enormous ramp evoking the trenches, is instrumental. Khan climbs the ramp, rolls down it, staggers along its ridge, and is showered with the mud and dirt and pinecones that cascade over it. Five musicians appear like visions hovering above the ramp at various moments, playing percussion, bass, violin, sax and vocals, which meld with snatches of Mozart, war songs, spoken text and traditional Indian music in Vincenzo Lamaga’s sound design to create an overwhelming aural experience.
Khan’s first solo is in the Kathak style, his gloriously intricate upper body work accompanied by rapid foot stomping. He removes his ankle bells and drapes them across his chest: now refashioned as rounds of ammunition, they serve as visual images of the whispered refrain ‘Whose war? Whose fire? Whose hand is this?’ that recurs throughout the work. Later solos are more contemporary in style, using the full possibilities of the floor. Throughout, the mud-caked Khan was magnificent: his movement alternately percussive and undulating, his rippling, supple torso expressing the torment and bewilderment of a lost and alienated soul.
After a long and celebrated career as both performer and choreographer, Khan is retiring from solo performance. With Xenos he gives full expression to the humanity that has always been such a powerful feature of his work. It is a monumental work, and he is simply unforgettable in it. The sustained standing ovation at the end was the audience’s homage to a truly great artist.
Maggie Tonkin