Aditi Mangaldas and her company practise a style of dance drawn from the classical Indian form, Kathak, which traditionally combines acting, storytelling and singing alongside dance, employing rhythmic, percussive footwork and dizzyingly fast whirling and spinning.Choreographer and dancer Aditi Mangaldas takes the rich classical vocabulary of Kathak and combines it with a contemporary aesthetic, describing her company’s mission as seeking to “challenge established norms and develop the courage to dance our own dance” within an historical and international context. In the case of Inter_rupted, newly commissioned by Dance Umbrella, London’s international dance festival, Kathak techniques are used to explore themes and ideas about the body, its fragility, vulnerability, disintegration and renewal.
For a non-specialist theatre going audience, some aspects of the piece are more accessible than others but when the seven dancers are spinning, stamping and vocalizing their energy flies off the stage and bounces around the auditorium, and it can be quite thrilling, while the commitment and control they show in the slower, meditative sections is striking and holds the eye. The work of the two virtuoso drummers, Mohit Gangani and Ashish Gangani, is never less than impressive, often breathtaking, and the plaintive singing of Faraz Ahmed in the closing sections of the piece is properly moving, whether or not one is familiar with the idiom.
But this is a work that always seems to be striving for extremes, whether it be extremes of motion or extremes of stillness, with every motif being pushed all the way to its natural conclusion, which can sometimes make it feel overstated and predictable, and it occasionally feels like there is an unsustainable amount of repetition within such a short piece. That said, it’s only fair to mention that the first night audience was vocally enthusiastic enough for there to be a lengthy extended curtain call.
There needs to be a special mention for Manish Kansara’s set. It’s really just a bare stage with textured walls in various shades of sand-brown, which sounds dull, but it comes to life under Fabiana Piccioli’s subtle and clever lighting design and becomes, through the use of interesting but unobtrusive back-projection, an active participant in the action.
Your reviewer was, at times, bemused by this piece. But I was sufficiently engaged by the technical wizardry on display to admit that – well – maybe the inadequacy was mine. I hope we get to see more of Aditi Mangaldas in the UK.
The first thing to note is that this isn’t a sincere musicalisation of Herman Melville's classic novel of man and beast in mortal combat on the high seas.