Two new myths. Two modern masters using classical traditions to create dance that grapples with the fears and griefs of the contemporary world. It has been a thrillingly ambitious week in dance, with UK premieres from Wayne McGregor and Akram Khan.
McGregor’s MaddAddam is based on the eponymous Margaret Atwood trilogy that grapples with the challenges of climate breakdown, big pharma, violence and misogyny. It depicts a dystopian and instantly recognisable world where mad genius Crake seeks to end the chaos by creating a drug that will wipe out humankind in a “waterless flood”, replacing them with the peaceful, genetically engineered Crakers.
McGregor and his dramaturg Uzma Hameed have a distinguished record in Woolf Works and The Dante Project of shaping epic material by great writers (Virginia Woolf and Dante) into dance form. Yet here, perhaps because Atwood is still very much alive, there feels more anxiety about making references completely understood.
The accretion of detail (voiceovers, narration, computer graphics) sometimes feels distracting because what McGregor has fashioned is a sumptuously beautiful and haunting full-length work (first seen at the National Ballet of Canada in 2022). It communicates most strongly through the dance at its heart, arching from the terror of the opening moments, when films of violence dwarf the live dancers, to a tentative hopefulness at the end, where Crakers tell stories of the past and look to the future.
Underpinned by a lyrically inflected score by Max Richter that incorporates lush strings, techno and hymns, McGregor is constantly switching focus from individuals to groups, stretching his vocabulary, finding moments of pensive thoughtfulness for the peacenik God’s Gardeners; little dipping runs for the Crakers who develop from robotic eggheads to near human form; superfast turns for the players of Extinctathon, the video game that forms the second act.
The passages for the central trio of Oryx, Crake and their friend Jimmy (superbly danced on opening night by William Bracewell, Fumi Kaneko and Joseph Sissens) have a sense of suppressed emotion, of constant questioning. They dance together and apart, the tensions and changes in their relationship filling the movement. When Jimmy tries to communicate with a Craker child, the steps reflect his frustration at all there is to say and all that remains unsaid. The final vision of a possible new Eden is rapturous.
The characters exist in a world where Ravi Deepres’s films are cleverly incorporated into We Not I’s flexibly minimal sets and Lucy Carter’s rich lighting moulds atmosphere as much as space. Fizzingly inventive costumes by Gareth Pugh add unexpected flashes of colour and of shiny gold, and the oddly shaped Pigoons, staggering on all fours.
One of MaddAddam’s underlying refrains is an examination of the way stories are told. By coincidence, Akram Khan’s Gigenis: The Generation of the Earth mines similar questions in entirely different yet equally extraordinary ways. Its most striking quality is that Khan, who built a career on combining the kathak traditions of his upbringing with contemporary dance techniques, has now returned to his roots to give Indian classical dance a new showcase.
The story is very loosely inspired by the Mahabharata, the epic that has been a part of Khan’s makeup ever since he performed in Peter Brook’s 1989 film version as a teenager. Here, the centre is the figure of a mother (the astonishing Kapila Venu, practitioner of kutiyattam, one of the world’s oldest theatre traditions), who looks back on the various stages of her life marked by the death of her husband and one of her two sons in war. Its themes are the darkness generated by fear and grief, the way inner ugliness blights hope and happiness.
Its quality, though, lies in the way that Khan and his collaborators have used Indian classical solos and group dances. The frame is modern and dramatic, with lighting by Zeynep Kepekli that highlights the action in shafts and boxes of light. Yet the precision and rigour of the movement is entirely from the ancient traditions represented by the performers. When Vijna Vasudevan and Renjith Babu float across the stage in perfectly synchronised grace, as an image of the woman and her husband, centuries of bharatanatyam are being transposed to a new setting.
It’s like being given a prism through which to appreciate the dance. The detail of each dancer’s skill – the delicacy of the hands miming thought, the arch of bodies and arms, the rhythmic beats that seem to animate every muscle – are brought together in the service of an emotionally gripping work.
As director of the whole, Khan contributes flashes of whirring kathak, but principally gives the stage to the exceptional company of dancers he has assembled, which also includes Mavin Khoo, Mythili Prakash and Sirikalyani Adkoli. The music, orchestrated by Jyotsna Prakash and performed on low stages surrounding the dance by seven onstage musicians and vocalists, drives everything forward. The combined effect is overwhelming.
Star ratings (out of five)
Maddaddam ★★★★
Gigensis ★★★★
