REVIEW | Rising

DANCE
Rising ★★★★
Heath Ledger Theatre | Review by Nina Levy

Rising is a solo show but it doesn’t feel like soloist Aakash Odedra is alone on stage. When one considers the choreographic minds behind the program — Britons Akram Khan and Russell Maliphant, and Belgian Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, alongside Odedra himself — it’s unsurprising that more than one personality occupies the space.

Odedra established his eponymous company in 2011, with Rising its debut show. A series of four solos for Odedra, the program feels like a study on a subject, an investigation into Odedra’s body and the way it moves.

Odedra’s own work, Nritta, opens the bill. Nritta is more than just a chronological starting point, though. Here we see the raw material that the three guest choreographers will manipulate.

Nritta is informed by Odedra’s training in the classical Indian dance. To traditional-sounding Indian music (the arrangement is credited to Odedra but no source is named), the white-clad Odedra springs about the stage, light and lithe. His feet chatter through repeated fast and intricate stamping patterns, his fingers flick and click, his head whips, his body whirls. A small smile plays on his lips.

There’s something animal- like about Nritta — a hint of young goat, perhaps? In contrast, Khan’s In the Shadow of Man is animalistic but disturbing, too. In the light in a dim, orange-tinted beam, Odedra crouches, his torso bare-skinned and gleaming.

There’s an ominous-sounding drumbeat, punctuated by an unearthly yowl. Was that Odedra? Are those his shoulder blades writhing under his skin? Is he human, animal or ... something else? Khan takes Odedra’s capacity for speed, glimpsed in Nritta, and pushes it further — Odedra’s arms and torso repeatedly become a spiralling blur.

Maliphant’s Cut was the highlight of the evening, for me. Michael Hulls’ lighting design is inseparable from Maliphant’s choreography. Cut opens with a thin beam of light that later multiplies, creating, firstly, pyramids across the stage and then a series of steps through its centre. Against a soundscape that brings to mind a syncopated train, these shafts of light reveal Odedra’s body in segments. His capacity for articulate, detailed movement is highlighted, literally, from his torso to his fingertips.

At other moments, his full body is made visible, revealing the parts as a whole. If Khan’s work is about muscle and bone, Maliphant’s is about bonelessness. Odedra drops to the floor like a waterfall.

Closing the program is Cherkaoui’s Constellation. This time the lighting design (Willy Cessa) steals the show. Manipulated by Odedra and unseen hands in the wings, suspended globes dance across the stage, some trajectories arcing gracefully, others bouncing wildly. A stand-out moment sees Odedra whirling a globe so that he appears framed by a golden circle of light, his face a mass of flickering shadows.

Rising feels like a choreographic and performative meditation. I felt, however, that I would have enjoyed more variation in dynamic and movement material, especially given the all-star line-up of choreographers.

Nonetheless, Rising is a compelling evening of work.