Rising
Brisbane Festival highlight, Rising sees talented newcomer Aakash Odedra perform four individually stunning solo pieces created by some of today’s most important and influential international choreographers.
Akram Khan, Russell Maliphant and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui each created a solo for Aakash Odedra, presented in a quadruple bill and opened by his own virtuoso Kathak creation. Each piece considers Odedra’s Indian dance background in Kathak and Bharatanatyam traditions to inject an exciting new flavour into contemporary dance.
In the Shadow of Man, Khan seeks the animal within Odedra, with haunting music by Jocelyn Pook. Maliphant created Cut, in which Odedra’s fast, dynamic movements are accentuated by a virtuous game of lights. In Constellation, Cherkaoui plays with patterns of light and sound with Odedra generating his own rhythms and luminosity.
Rising is a profound and haunting journey of movement, beauty and soundscapes.
Performance Pieces in the words of the choreographers
Nritta
Choreographed by Aakash Odedra
A classical Kathak variation focusing on virtuosity and timing. Nritta corresponds to pure dance steps performed rhythmically. Here the movements of the body do not convey any mood or meaning and its purpose is just creating beauty by making various patterns, lines in space and time.
In The Shadow Of Man
Choreographed by Akram Khan
The direction for this solo choreography, is not so much about making a piece, as it is about exploring my continuous fascination with the ‘animal’ we have within ourselves. I feel the question that is constantly evoked during my research of the ‘body’, is that as human beings, we continue to evolve from generation to generation, but ‘are we becoming more ‘human’ over time, or are we becoming more like ‘animals?’. I have always felt a strong connection to the ‘animal’ embedded within the Indian dance tradition. Kathak masters have so often used animals as forms of inspiration, even to the point of creating a whole repertoire based on the qualities, movements, and rhythms of certain animals. So, in this journey with Aakash, I was fascinated to discover if there was an animal residing deep within the shadow of his own body.
CUT
Choreographed by Russell Maliphant
For CUT I wanted to create a piece using elements and dynamics that Aakash is familiar with from his background in Kathak and Bharat Natyam. I wanted to shape that into a world where the lighting cuts and highlights that movement and creates a contained world that expresses its own logic of flow and form. Working with lighting designer Michael Hulls to achieve this, and with composer Andy Cowton, both of whom I have collaborated with many times on past works, CUT is the result of this collaboration.
Constellation
Choreographed by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui
Lightning and thunder. Light and sound. The illusions of distance and nearness they convey in a sky that deceptively appears a constant. Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui has been fascinated by the different images these convey, while their source is often one and the same. He seeks to highlight different patterns of sound and different sources of light that come together to create a constellation, a system where things are kept suspended and in movement by each other’s’ gravitational fields and contending forces. By the flow of light and sound emanating from darkness and their return to that state. All this with and through Aakash as the locus, the astral body generating its own rhythms and luminosity.
Prices start at $35
Event Details
Date:
27-28 September 2013
Time: Fri 7pm, Sat 2pm + 8pm
Where is it?
Brisbane Powerhouse, Powerhouse Theatre
119 Lamington Street, [by the river next to New Farm Park]
New Farm, 4005
QLD
For further information...
07 3358 8600
Send Email
View Website