Tramway, Glasgow
October 20, 2017
Róisín O’Brien
A starkly demarcated theatre, lacking the interference of messy wings or any bleed into the audience’s space, contains the strict imagery of Inter_rupted. The dancers from Aditi Mangaldas Dance Company are dressed in shimmering golds and browns. Live and recorded music dance around each other, in a complex interplay that often resists being nailed down to one tangible source. Electronic beeps and glitches are fused with traditional singing and flamboyant drumming.
The ensemble work is excellent, the dancers tightly knitted together and sharp in their attack. The dizzying turns of kathak, punctuated by staccato extensions of the arms, are followed by sudden yet lithe rolls across the floor. The thrill of their turns resides in them lying on the edge of control, each extra turn always a testing surprise.
Aditi Mangaldas forms the centre point of the show. As a solo dancer, her movement often counterpoints the group dynamics, or is performed alone on the stage, which unfortunately turns the ensemble dancers into interludes within the piece. There are gestures in her movement of catching and wringing, a sense of trying to pick up something lost.
Photo Foteini Christofilopoulou
The live music is exhilarating. At one point, two drummers sit quietly at the front two corners of the stage, accompanying the dance. But they are given, joyfully, their own focused crescendo, as they frantically execute a rhythm so fast and complex in its beats, it’s almost impossible to fathom its feasibility. Inter_rupted begs to be finished on that note, rather than drawn out afterwards.
The lighting from Fabian’s Piccioli moves from rigid borders that fence the floor, to a gorgeous, dappled sunlight effect. The dancers twist and writhe under the shadows, embryonic and skin like.
Despite such beautiful imagery and dancing, Inter_rupted can get lost in its abundance of symbolism. The effusion of images, one after the other, with each image not always getting the time to develop, can render the meaning of the piece almost unintelligible. The audience is denied a soft fade out of lights on the final scene by a sudden throw of dice across the floor, the lights snapping back on. While the intention to startle the audience is interesting, the execution proves confusing.
Inter_rupted is a boldly wrought piece, exquisitely intertwining traditional Kathak steps with the conceptual imagery of contemporary art, yet it ultimately gets stuck in its own meanderings.