Choreographed by Rani Khanam

Composed by Rushil Ranjan

Review by Dominic Corr

The Lyceum Theatre: Tickets

Elemental: Aakash Odedra manipulates the very fabric of our being at times – in the most persuasive of manners on a stage perpetually rippling with drama. To forge fire, earth, and water in dance is something audiences may be familiar with, but capturing air’s lightness and unreserved nature is tricky. To capture the fifth element, to showcase the spirit, is exceptional. A retelling of a Persian myth about a captured bird, from birth to life, in Songs of Bulbul. Sufi Kathak master Rani Khanam’s choreography combines traditional Indian dance with a contemporary weight of movement and additional elements of Islamic poetry threaded through the petals, candles, encroaching darkness, and hanging branches.

But before this even begins, the wonder within us all is overflowing. The emotions are bubbling before the first choreographed movement is even considered. Scarlet petals flutter onto the Lyceum stage, its enormous dark backdrop projecting every shade, the tiny flickering light from a sole candle enough to ignite the room. These petals are the only initial colours; vivid, passionate, but the shade of blood; it’s visually arresting – especially against Odehra himself, draped in white, their arms emulating wings, their flowing lower torso concealing their legs as they twitter and twitch and glide as only a minute creature on wing could manage.

Rushil Ranjan’s cinematic score played and recorded by the incredible Manchester Camerata, is as vital to ‘Songs of Bulbul’ as the movement or visual. This sweeping soundscape of India, an epic in every sense, carries us from embracing day to the crippling night before fluttering itself down into a triumphant yet so humble, breaking dawn. Although Odedra is alone on stage, ‘Songs of Bulbul’ blossoms with life in a way few other performances at this year’s festival have matched. Mainly choreographed to emulate the growth of a bird, from widening wing spans and growing strength to panicked and erratic attempts to free themselves, the dancing never stops; the music caries Odedra forward; it seems like both an eternity and a fleeting, intimate, moment. Joyous. With no hint of faux-benevolence, this is one of the most exquisite and gratifying things audiences can ever see.

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