A compelling duet from Akram Khan and Natalia Osipova in Dancing Nation

Dancing Nation part two
BBC iPlayer and Sadler’s Wells website
January 27, 2021

David Mead

Review of Dancing Nation part one
Review of Dancing Nation part three

With ballet sitting alongside breakin’, poppin’, flamenco and even good old contemporary dance, everyone is bound to find something they like in Dancing Nation, the Sadler’s Wells and BBC Arts smorgasbord of some of the finest in British dance.

The undoubted highlight of programme two is Mud of Sorrow: Touch, Akram Khan’s new duet for himself and Natalia Osipova, recorded on the Sadler’s Wells main stage. Just the thought of those two dancing together set the taste buds tingling. They deliver in every way.

Akram Khan and Natalia Osipova in Mud of Sorrow: TouchScreenshot from film
Akram Khan and Natalia Osipova in Mud of Sorrow: Touch
Screenshot from film

It is based on Sacred Monsters, Khan’s 2006 work made with Sylvie Guillem, and to which it makes a few direct references. The opening poem by Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan brings us bang up to date, though. “Who will write the history of touch? Do you remember? What if your skin has forgotten? Do you remember? What happens to skin that goes untouched?” Those words hit home personally. Living on my own, I cannot remember the last time I touched another human being. There will be many others in the same position.

Osipova and Khan are as one. Both ooze power and strength. In one long scene, she wraps her legs around his waist and leans back. Their arms fold and unfold, undulating in perfect time with each other, looking for all the world like a goddess come to life. Having separated, there’s a moment where their hands come close. There is energy and desire but when he touches her, she recoils. Going back to Manzoor-Khan’s last question, is this what it will be like, I wonder. She does relent. There is a sense of joy as she turns happily. They dance, closely. And then she is gone.

It is incredibly beautiful and intensely moving, the mood and depth of feeling magnified by a mournful, sad Corsican folk lament performed by singer Raaheel Husain and Nina Harries on double bass.

Júlia Robert and Rudi Cole of Humanhood in SpheraScreenshot from film
Júlia Robert and Rudi Cole of Humanhood in Sphera
Screenshot from film

Also beautiful but in a more serene way is Birmingham-based Humanhood’s Sphera. Danced on a 7-metre diameter circular mat of white astroturf in the Sadler’s Wells foyer. A partner work to Orbis, dark and slightly mystical, this explores the relationship between the visible, bright side of the Moon and humankind.

Reflecting the way the Moon’s gravitational pull affects water and tide Júlia Robert and Rudi Cole’s liquid bodies change and morph. It was interesting to hear the pair, who live together, talk about how lockdown meant that when they actual got into a studio, they played more. You can see that in the work. In their also all-white costumes, which somehow lends the dance a sense of peace, they fall, swirl and circle with super control. The work may have been made for unconventional spaces, but was the foyer the right one? Despite the superbly graceful and strong dancing, I increasingly found the attention distracted by the occasional person, a bus pulling up, even the bottles on the shelf behind the bar.

Yu Kurihara and Tom Rogers in Lazuli Sky by Will TuckettPhoto Johan Persson
Yu Kurihara and Tom Rogers in Lazuli Sky by Will Tuckett
Photo Johan Persson

It was a joy to revisit Lazuli Sky, Will Tuckett’s work for Birmingham Royal Ballet that premiered last autumn, remarkably managing five performances each at the Birmingham REP then Sadler’s Wells in front of a live audience. The pas de deux flows deliciously, Yu Kurihara and Tom Rogers shifting around each other with ease. Yu somehow manages to almost pause time as she suspends before folding into to her partner’s careful arms. When the corps join them, there’s a great sense of purpose, and unlike many 2020 creations, of optimism too.

Preceding the dance, Tuckett speaks eloquently about the creative process, and how almost daily online discussions lockdown actually brought the creative team closer together, despite them being miles apart physically. He also makes the very valid point that, while the pandemic has had plenty of negative effects on the arts, it has also democratised them in that it has given artists performance opportunities, albeit digitally, that they would otherwise never have had.

Sati Veyrunes (left) in Oona Doherty's Hope Hunt and the Ascension into LazarusStill from film, courtesy Sadler's Wells
Sati Veyrunes (left)
in Oona Doherty’s Hope Hunt and the Ascension into Lazarus
Still from film, courtesy Sadler’s Wells

Like all the best opening scenes, that of Oona Doherty’s Hope Hunt and the Ascension into Lazarus, a look at sterotypes of disaffected male youth, leaves you wanting to know what happens next. Filmed in a near-deserted St Anne’s Square in Belfast, dancer Sati Veyrunes is full of sometimes pent-up, sometimes bursting free anger and swagger.

Also leaving me wanting more was the excerpt from Botis Seva’s Olivier Award-winning BLKDOG for Far From The Norm. An exploration of the inner battles of an artist trying to regain his youth, it is mesmerising. The dancers, six androgynous figures dressed head to toe in grey, are terrific. They shift, slump and fall with precision timing, always absolutely together.

A snatch of ‘Whyte’ from Blak Whyte Gray by Boy Blue struggles for impact, however. I certainly wouldn’t have got the theme of identity, oppression and transcendence without the programme note.

Dancing Nation is on BBC iPlayer (for UK viewers) and www.sadlerswells.com (international viewers) until February 26, 2021.