RomaEuropa Festival, Auditorium della Conciliazione, Rome, 25 September 2014, h 21
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| Khan and Galván, photo Jean Louis Fernandez. |
There is a
bull and a cow ('toro' and 'baka' in the title), there is violence and peace, there is flamenco and kathak and
there is a bit of Spain and a bit of India in Israel Galván and AkramKhan’ Torobaka that opened the Romaeuropa Festival 2014. Stereotypically
Spain is associated with flamenco and bulls as India is with kathak and cows, but
this piece is a lot more than that, it is entering a dimension where
excellence, irony, intensity, confrontation and rhythm mix in a superb
performance.
To begin
with, Spanish dancer and choreographer Galván’s flamenco is and is not
flamenco, it is rather a remarkable style that deconstructs it from the inside,
breaking its lines and bringing its percussive nature to an almost airborne
level. Then, in his thought-provoking choreographic work, Khan’s kathak is reinvented and mingled with
contemporary dance, giving a sense of rootedness and three-dimensional quality
to the moving body.
It goes without saying that the departing images have already been s/mashed and overturned,
because Torobaka is about meeting the Other and is also about going beyond
that, going beyond symbols and stereotypes to reach the pulsating rhythm we all live in. Shall we call it a
duet? Galván and Khan are the two only dancers onstage and they do interact a
lot, but the term ‘duet’ only makes sense if we multiply it, if we turn it
into a layered series of others that play a fundamental role in the piece: I am
referring to the two musicians, Bobote and B. C. Manjunath, the two singers
Davide Azurza and Christine Leboutte and to rhythm and sound production.
The piece
is made of various sections and takes place on a stage which is for most of its
part covered by a circular platform surrounded by the musicians and the
singers. At the beginning, Galván and Khan are both barefoot and confront each
other, exploring space and sound. They both wear the same costume, a tunic that
recalls kathak and tight trousers that can be associated with flamenco. Perfect
is the ‘dialogue’ between Galván’s feet articulation and Manjunath’s
percussion.
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| Azurza, Galván, Leboutte, photo Jean Louis Fernandez. |
Then Galván
puts his flamenco shoes on and performs a solo outside the circle, front-stage
right, with a microphone. Again Manjunath is his alter ego, playing with his
movements as Galván plays with Manjunath's vocal sounds. Irony is a key feature in
Galván’s dancing, irresistible is the moment when he points his finger upwards
exclaiming “E.T. phone home”. This is flamenco with a bit of comic relief! When he performs
a zapateado (flamenco footwork) inside Khan’s kathak set of bells, we know a
change of scenery is going to occur and Khan is going to appear.
In the
third section, Khan is down to the floor with a pair of flamenco white shoes on
his hands. He plays them against the stage floor, against each other
alternating their sound with the one produced by his knees and head. It is as
if sound ran through his body and could be created by everything he has or is. Instead
of Galván’s irony here we have a profound movement density, even when he
entertains a ‘dialogue’ with Bobote, who takes the flamenco shoes from his
hands, throws them into the wings and starts playing las palmas (flamenco
hand clapping) provoking Khan to respond. And Khan sits down on a chair and dances a
seated dance.
After this,
singers and musicians take the stage in a beautiful ensemble. Singers Azurza
and Laboutte are phenomenal throughout the whole piece, singing songs from
as different traditions as Italy and Spain. On some occasions
their chanting seems to slow the dancing down, creating an unusual unbalance, but
their bravura is impeccable for the aural background of the two performers.
The last
section is an explosion of movement, sound and rhythm with Khan particularly
in tune with Manjunath’s percussion, Khan's ghungru (ankle bells) reverberating throughout
the entire theatre.
Rhythm
is one key element in this work, a common ground for both dancers to move and
investigate choreographic patterns. Historically speaking, it is difficult to
trace a clear path connecting flamenco to kathak, but, according to some,
gypsies left India and travelled through the Middle-East and Europe until some
of them arrived in Spain. In this sense, a beautiful film documentary comes to mind,
Tony Gatlif’s Lacho Drom (1993) where there is very little dialogue as the main role
is played by the rhythm of music and dancing.
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| Khan, photo Jean Louis Fernandez. |
As it often
happens, we find out that what or who we considered to be the Other is much
more similar to us than we thought, it is an animal we may like, a person we
become fond of. In Torobaka two types of gestures remained in my mind recalling me that, the
joined hands both Galván and Khan recurrently perform pointing them downward
towards the floor/earth from which so much of their energetic rhythm comes, and
their hugging and touching which testify to their artistic bond. According to
Galván one has to kill the audience before the audience kills you, that is his
peculiar motto which testifies to the violent, aggressive element inherent in
flamenco, while to Khan dance is like an offer, a gift one donates to the
audience, as the cow donates milk to the world in Hindu religion. Again the bull and the cow, violence and peace, and in Torobaka dance is definitely a gift so exquisite it can virtually kill.
