Sadler's Wells, London
The genius of Stravinsky's 1913 ballet, The Rite of Spring, looked two ways: embodying the atavistic impulses of human nature and the shattering birth pangs of modern art.
Exactly 100 years after its premiere, the choreographer and dancer Akram Khan sets out to explore the nature of that genius. Yet while iTMOi (which stands for In the Mind of Igor) is inspired by the life and work of the Russian composer, what we see on stage often seems to have issued straight from the mind of Khan. It's his own angels and demons in play, his own experience of the hurtling, dangerous forces that generate art.
Stravinsky's religious faith and the dark allure of sacrifice are transposed by Khan to the figure of a trance preacher, whose rasping, gabbling exhortations relay the story of Abraham, called on by God to kill his son. He seems a servant of hell rather than heaven, and he's joined by equally threatening figures: a remote queen in a fantastical headdress; a young girl, half-innocent, half-sexualised, and a horned beast who lopes with a liquid, insinuating grace around the stage.
For one long section, the queen presides over a set of neatly ordered folkloric dances: yet a thudding, convulsive violence repeatedly breaks through the dancers' bodies. The music (composed by Nitin Sawhney, Ben Frost and Jocelyn Pook) orchestrates equally brutal juxtapositions, with sweet melodies overwhelmed by dread-inducing cacophonies of sound. When the girl finally embarks on her ritual dance that will culminate in death, the artist-creature who's born from her efforts is a cringing Caliban figure, tormented and flayed.
As metaphors, these images rarely cohere, yet they jolt and assault us as viscerally as The Rite of Spring did its original audience. And while iTMOi is a far from perfect work, fractured and oddly paced, it is through Khan's shockingly imagined chaos that we're drawn into the creative maelstrom from which art is born.
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Rating: 4/5 Reported by guardian.co.uk 6 hours ago.
The genius of Stravinsky's 1913 ballet, The Rite of Spring, looked two ways: embodying the atavistic impulses of human nature and the shattering birth pangs of modern art.
Exactly 100 years after its premiere, the choreographer and dancer Akram Khan sets out to explore the nature of that genius. Yet while iTMOi (which stands for In the Mind of Igor) is inspired by the life and work of the Russian composer, what we see on stage often seems to have issued straight from the mind of Khan. It's his own angels and demons in play, his own experience of the hurtling, dangerous forces that generate art.
Stravinsky's religious faith and the dark allure of sacrifice are transposed by Khan to the figure of a trance preacher, whose rasping, gabbling exhortations relay the story of Abraham, called on by God to kill his son. He seems a servant of hell rather than heaven, and he's joined by equally threatening figures: a remote queen in a fantastical headdress; a young girl, half-innocent, half-sexualised, and a horned beast who lopes with a liquid, insinuating grace around the stage.
For one long section, the queen presides over a set of neatly ordered folkloric dances: yet a thudding, convulsive violence repeatedly breaks through the dancers' bodies. The music (composed by Nitin Sawhney, Ben Frost and Jocelyn Pook) orchestrates equally brutal juxtapositions, with sweet melodies overwhelmed by dread-inducing cacophonies of sound. When the girl finally embarks on her ritual dance that will culminate in death, the artist-creature who's born from her efforts is a cringing Caliban figure, tormented and flayed.
As metaphors, these images rarely cohere, yet they jolt and assault us as viscerally as The Rite of Spring did its original audience. And while iTMOi is a far from perfect work, fractured and oddly paced, it is through Khan's shockingly imagined chaos that we're drawn into the creative maelstrom from which art is born.
• What have you been to see lately? Tell us about it on Twitter using #GdnReview
Rating: 4/5 Reported by guardian.co.uk 6 hours ago.