Dance melded with a unique blend of special effects and lighting leaves audience members truly blown away. As you enter the space you are presented with a circle of fans and drapes of silk hung from the ceiling, which play an essential part later on in the production. Dancer and choreographer Aakash Odedra does a stunning job of highlighting the complicated theme of the performance, the battle one has to deal with when suffering from dyslexia.
Demonstrating the mental and physical strain this can create for a particular individual. Throughout Aakash Odedra is desperately trying to find and discover the letter ‘A’, which he recently realised was actually a misspelling from his original name. The ‘A’ appears in many different forms throughout the piece, but the most interesting has to be the tidal wave of paper tossed into the space via a machine attached to the ceiling. Just when Odedra Finds his ‘A’ on one of the sheets of paper suddenly more paper is falling from above and once the fans circling the space activate, this causes a tornado of paper to glide across the stage. Symbolising the struggle one must go through to compete with this type of learning difficulty.
The lighting is phenomenal throughout the performance. A creative mish-mash of colourful images, from birds flying effortlessly around the theatre to a creature produced out of pure light, which follows Odedra’s every move. At points it seems like this ‘lit creature’ is competing with Odedra, when in fact both are creating the same movements. Also, some very interesting graphics are projected upon the back wall throughout the duration of the piece acting as another powerful visual statement.
Finally, the ending is a storm of creativity, with paper and smoke getting pushed around the space by the fans from below, wrapping its claws amongst Aakash, resembling that of a thunder-storm inside the intimate space. Very creative, innovative and definitely worth a watch. 3.5/5
Review written by Luke Redhead.
Murmur 2.0 was shown at The Place from Friday 20th until Saturday 21st November. For more information on the Aakash Odedra Company, visit here…
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