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Left - Salah Brogy, Konstandina Efthymiadou. Cover - Paul Zivkovich, Andrej Petrovic, Eulalia Ayguade Farro, Yen-Ching Lin, Konstandina Efthymiadou, Ahmed Khemis, Young Jin Kim. Photos - Richard Haughton

Much contemporary dance is highly conceptual, aloof, reserved. Take the offerings so far in MIAF - Michael Clark Company’s come, been, gone was stylised to the hilt and gorgeous-looking while Hiroaki Umeda’s Adapting for Distortion & Haptic was an example of technology overwhelming the physicality of the human body. So it was especially refreshing - exciting even - to see a dance work that is spine-tingling, visceral and danced from the soul.

Akram Khan Company’s Vertical Road‘s exploration of spirituality and transcendence is hard-hitting stuff that reverberates from deep inside the guts. Driven by a powerful score from Khan’s long time collaborator Nitin Sawhney, its 70 minutes is truly transportive and effectively works with a wide range of material. In unisex, flowing white tunic outfits, the eight dancers - all hailing from different countries as diverse as South Korea, Australia and Tunisia - tread a line between being individuals and pulsing from the collective consciousness of the group. Everyone in the cast helped devise the content and Khan has shaped it into a cohesive whole.

It starts with the single man as outsider - he’s trapped behind a sheer curtain, pressing his hands against the translucent material while a triangle of bodies lays crumpled in front. As Vertical Road journeys through states of both consciousness and unconsciousness, there’s barely a wasted moment and the choreography is chock-full of influences - the smooth sustained arm patterns of tai chi, the whirling spinning of Sufi mysticism, the stomping feet of kathak dance and even the contraction-based circularity of early modern dance. The group builds whirlwinds of momentum, hurtling across the floor like a pack of wild animals and then recovering softly or rippling a current of energy from body to body in a sharp canon. When the quest turns more inward, they are individuals wandering the same space but in different worlds - a couple makes love, another man is supine on the ground in the throws of his own personal ecstasy while another stares at blank tablets arranged like dominos.

While there is plenty going on, Vertical Road never seems to stray from its path. There’s the potential for the material to take self-indulgent and gratuitous directions, but thankfully it never does. Sawhney’s score is highly prescriptive and effective - its strong percussion rousing the dancers into fervors; its sounds of wind and rain drawing the action back to earth. Each of the dancers - five men and three women - are wonderful and bring uniqueness to the mix without any one of them stealing focus.  

There’s plenty of food for the soul here. Khan and collaborators offer enough pathways, symbols and ideas for audiences to find a way into the work, while still maintaining levels of ambiguity and fluidity. Vertical Road is a very special work indeed.


2010 Melbourne International Arts Festival
Vertical Road
Akram Khan Company

Venue: The CUB Malthouse, Merlyn Theatre | 113 Sturt Street
Dates/Times: Tue 19 - Sat 23 Oct at 8pm
Duration: 1hr 15 min no interval
Tickets: $55.00 - $25.00
Bookings: M-Tx (03) 9685 5111 | Ticketmaster 1300 723 038