Dance as a Duel - Torobaka by Irvine Barclay Theatre

dance as a duel Torobaka written by Philip Szporer Collaboration is no easy art. Yet the spirit of any artistic project has the potential to push the boundaries of what dance can be and how it can open our hearts, our minds, and our bodies. That’s Torobaka, a unique, specific kind of meeting, the result of two successful and influential dance artists with strong voices, coming together in a tour de force collaboration. The pursuit is in finding inspiration in the other and charting new ground. Performing together for the first time, Israel Galván is the innovative and distinctive Spanish flamenco dancer, and Akram Khan is the celebrated British-born dancer and choreographer of Bangladeshi heritage. Both are in-demand dance artists known for new vitality in their work that draws from their rich backgrounds in the classical cultural dances of flamenco and kathak, as well as contemporary dance. The title of the piece refers to the bull (toro) and the cow (vaca), sacred animals in their respective cultures. Khan speaks of the masculine “bull

Israel Galván IRVINE BARCLAY THEATRE

energy,” and the cow “which is more feminine,” and how the dance the two artists have co-created plays with those qualities. Similarities and divergences in their dancing bodies emerge in this experimental creation. These compelling artists celebrate the connection between the two traditions, demonstrating an understanding of both the rhythmic patterns and pulse in either form, but also revisiting those traditions, says Khan. Pounding rhythms in their footwork – Khan with ankle-bells, Galván with heeled flamenco shoes – erupt with a ferocity that challenges the archetypes of dance. The UK’s Guardian newspaper refers to Khan’s “fiendish mathematics if rhythm and footwork,” while The Globe and Mail cites “Galván’s mastery of flamenco’s lightning speed and intricate footwork.” Kathak and flamenco are rich classical forms of dance that share strikingly similar roots. The common ground of the encounter is the music. In Torobaka, an international ensemble of musicians contributes a soundtrack that, as The Londonist indicates, “melds Carnatic ragas with Hispanic harmonies, and quick-fire mnemonic syllables with lusty Spanish counting.” Flamenco is a centuries-old dance that intertwines Gypsy (Roma), Moorish, Jewish, and southern Andalusian cultures dating back to the 15th century. All were persecuted peoples, but Akram Khan cultural tolerance and dialogue

between these diverse groups existed, sometimes in covert circumstances, occasioned only out of necessity. Each group had its own customs, music and instruments. To express themselves, through the persecution, the grief and the suffering, these cultures manifested flamenco. In flamenco, the first thing that came was the song, unaccompanied by musicians. As these were wandering peoples, they often didn’t have instruments. Their instrument was their voice, and the dancing came out of the song. Flamenco showcases a dynamic, sometimes aggressive, at times sensual and erotic character. In flamenco there is no narrative, but the dancer’s movements and gestures express emotions or they emphasize the meaning of lyrics and character of the melody accompanying them. Flamenco includes cante (singing), toque (guitar playing), baile (dance) and palmas (handclaps). Among the seven different Indian classical dance forms, kathak is the only one that has Islamic and Hindu influence. All of the others have a purely Hindu influence. Kathak, the classical style of north India, is a narrative, story-telling dance form. From the 16th century onwards, it absorbed certain features of Persian dance and Central Asian dance, imported by the royal courts of the Mughal era. As dance scholar Royona Mitra notes, “Kathak has come to be governed by the three components of Indian dramaturgy: natya (theatricality), nritta (technical virtuosity) and nritya (sentiments and mood evoked in moveWWW.THEBARCLAY.ORG

Akram Khan & Israel Galván

Torobaka

March 15, 2016 Concert Sponsr

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An anonymous fund of the

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ment).” What the charismatic and innovative Khan draws upon, he’s said, “is inspiration, not just the technique of kathak.” The powerfully abstract aspect of the dance influences him. As a kathak performer, he’s engaged in “an energetic conversation,” he says. “You bring nothing and dialogue unfolds.” It’s been noted that kathak performers, like Khan, are trained to calibrate the mathematics of their dancing against the time cycles of their musicians. Searching for clarity, he plays with stillness and “dancing extreme speeds of chaos.” The blur of the fierce spins and the intricacies of the footwork, performed barefoot, and the complex, rhythmic construction of the dance are virtuosic, and the conjunction with the musicians is nothing less than breathtaking. “When (dancers) go beyond their perception of speed, technique evaporates,” Khan says. As Galván told The Guardian: “Flamenco is my tool for creating art; it’s my tradition. Kathak is like a new language that I have learned – and it seemed to me just like a dialect of the flamenco language.” Praising the Spanish mega-star, Khan says, “Israel’s work is daring, he’s able to destroy and reconstruct the traditional flamenco into something inventive and powerful. He’s a genius artist.” A collaborative work like Torobaka promotes an inquiry into finding individual rhythms, negotiating the encounter and embracing the experience. The two artists first met when Galván was

performing at London’s Sadler’s Wells during a flamenco festival in 2011. But the flamenco master indicates he first saw Khan dancing in a video: “I thought he looked like a flamenco dancer from an ancient past.” The greatest challenge for the artists was to create a new language, and to engage in a dedicated and persistent questioning of all of their complex legacies; however, Torobaka is not about conveying a battle between two dancers with sublime gifts. Khan, hailed for his masterful speed and precision, is a type of artist who quickens the blood. Western dance and the eastern styles keep colliding in his work. What he’s doing, he insists, is not a fusion of traditional Indian dance and contemporary aesthetic, although both influences are embedded in his repertoire. “I’m fascinated when bodies get confused,” says Khan, who’s seeking an ordered chaos. He reckons that a choreographer “comes with a bag of tools,” but his approach is that “once you’ve used up all the stuff that you know, often things will start to happen.” Part of a dynasty of famous flamenco dancers, Galván’s command of the stage is nothing short of galvanic, and has often been described as “breathtaking.” What the duo has created is “a communication, a conversation,” he says. As someone working on the cutting edge of the form, he’s respecting flamenco’s roots, but pushing the definitions of what the art form can be. Galván departs radically from traditional conventions, in the sense that he deconstructs familiar songs and dances. Dance scholar Brenda Dixon-Gottschild notes his work presents “hints of cross-cultural dippings and with a strong energy that, even in the most flamboyant moments, can be characterized as contained.” As he told flamenco-world.com a decade ago, “What I understand by purity is each person’s authen-

ticity. Let’s just say that the audience doesn’t need prior information about whether you’re more avant-garde or more flamenco… Purity is what comes out from within… Each person, each artist creates his own flamenco.” Torobaka hasn’t a narrative through line, nor is it thematically suggestive, but it is an investigation of two movement cultures, and “a duel between two warriors who find a common language,” says Khan. The show, for Galván, is “a fiesta of dance and of music, of two people with very strong traditions, each bringing their own into today’s world.” Today, art goes beyond language and cultural differences, beyond religion; it transcends all these barriers. These artists’ presence in the global contemporary dance culture, at the intersection of bodies, cultures, and identities, has significantly challenged the landscape, and created a dynamic personal performance that eclipses simple notions of fusion. In a way, it’s the moment of intercultural truth. As Khan has said, “Art is a way of putting life into a more heightened place. When it’s contained in a theater it somehow becomes more poetic.” Philip Szporer is a Montreal-based lecturer, writer and filmmaker.

2016