2 July 2025
In this Sufi myth, the Bulbul is a small bird revered for the beauty of its song. It is captured and kept in a cage from which it sings towards the light. When the cage is placed in a darkened room, the bird’s voice becomes more plaintive. A hood is placed over its head, and, in its desperate yearning, its sound grows ever sweeter. Finally, its eyes are plucked out and the Bulbul’s song soars beyond the world of captivity and suffering towards the divine.
This anguished story of a soul’s journey towards spiritual transcendence is given powerful visual representation in an extraordinary solo dance performance by Aakash Odedra. The narrative is simple and, to a western audience, unusually abstract, but the combination of movement, design, light and music is enough to keep us spellbound. The orchestral score by composer Rushil Ranjan has been rightly praised for its masterly combination of eastern and western elements. However, both your reviewer and her companion felt the recorded soundtrack was unnecessarily loud, overwhelming the senses, particularly in those moments when the dancer’s physical expression is at its most refined and delicate. Furthermore, its filmic nature with its multiple climaxes and swoops of emotions might have been better suited to a fantasy epic. The music is best in its quieter moments when we could enjoy the wonderful instrumental combinations from the Manchester Camerata. The use of harp and cello was magical and there was evocative additional instrumentation from the tabla and bansuri, or Indian flute.
The choreographer is Rani Khanam, a celebrated Kathak dancer of the Gharana school which emphasises dramatic facial expressions and fine hand gestures. She has fused this style with the traditional ecstatic Sufi whirling, creating a dance language that feels wholly unique. It has found perfect execution in Odedra. He is technically astounding, conjuring the suffering bird through the curious angles of his arms and the feathery flicks of his long fingers. He starts hunched on the ground, wings fluttering, rising imperceptibly to his knees, giving us the very essence of the captured bird. From there he rises to frantic movement, his white costume flying about him as he swirls manically among a cloud of rose petals. As darkness closes in, the bars of the cage crash down, his material world grows smaller as his spiritual world grows larger. We feel the expansion of the spirit through his every gesture.
For a solo dancer to hold an audience for an hour with only a brief narrative introduction is no mean feat. Whatever one’s take on the spiritual dimension to this mortal life, it is hard not to enter a kind of aesthetic trance when witnessing something of such beauty and power. The show was on for one night only in Oxford and will be at London’s Sadlers Wells on from 17th to 19th July. For those looking for something new and different in dance it is well worth seeing. It may be too much to hope they will tone down the volume. Perhaps one day the Aakash Odedra Company will repeat what they did in 2024, performing with a live orchestra. That would be a rare treat.
★★★★☆ Ros Carne 3 July 2025
Photography credit: Angela Grabowska
