Chotto Desh
Akram Khan Company
Edinburgh International Conference Centre (run ended)
The Edinburgh International Festival has long been aware of the need to nurture tomorrow's audiences, and programmes like the excellent Young Musicians Passport, initiated in 2013, give families the chance to sample the heavy-hitting classical music programme. But new(ish) Festival director Fergus Linehan has added fresh momentum with a Young People strand which this year features two dance performances. Chotto Desh is one of them.
For the record, there aren't a great many children in the audience the night I attend. My three probably make up about a quarter of the total. But as an introduction to the possibilities of dance as a form of expression, and to the way storytelling, movement and technology can combine to become more than the sum of their parts, it gets the thumbs-up from the juniors. That the solo dancer is a man (Nicolas Ricchini) isn't lost on them either.
Akram Khan is no stranger to the Edinburgh International Festival, but this is his first show for children and essentially it tells his story: an immigrant boy who wants to dance, and does so in the face of parental opposition. Into that mix Khan folds memories of childhood stories, as well as the stories themselves, though the layering never becomes too complicated: uncommon for a dance piece, the narrative arc is neat and obvious.
Accordingly, pure, abstract movement is rationed. Instead, Khan's production employs audio (it opens with a conversation between Ricchini and a call centre worker in Bangladesh), props, a soundtrack by Jocelyn Pook and lighting displays both simple (a hand over a torch) and spectacular. The last comes courtesy of the bright, vibrant hand-drawn animations which are projected onto the mottled backdrop and which Ricchini is able to interact with. It's breathtaking, even to these non-junior eyes, though used sparingly enough to never overwhelm the rest of the show.
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