By:
ALAN BRISSENDEN
The Aditi Mangaldas Dance Company is thrilling on stage.
Source: Supplied
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DANCECambodia Sun Rising. Sunrise Children's Village. Space Theatre, Adelaide, September 27.
Aditi Mangaldas Dance Company. Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide, September 28.
IN 1993, Adelaide-born Geraldine Cox helped set up the Australia
Cambodia Foundation which operates the Sunrise Children's Village for
orphans in Kandal province. The music and dance that are integral to the
education program have led to Cambodia Sun Rising, the imaginative
creation of theatre director Cate Fowler, choreographer Ninian Donald
and Cox, involving 30 confident performers aged four to 18, a couple of
adults and a small band of traditional instrumentalists.
Seven scenes depict aspects of Cambodian life and history. Gorgeous
gold costumes and intricate headdresses enhance the formal movements of
traditional Khmer dance. Tall puppet-ghosts scaring a bunch of kids are
placated with gifts of food: Cambodians are superstitious. A lively,
rhythmic stick game and domestic chores show village life.
The war
comes. The Khmer Rouge slaughter of nearly two million people is
powerfully symbolised by the slow, menacing march of a few soldiers; the
rest of the cast falls, filling the stage with bodies. A mother rises,
kneels and sings an anguished lament, but then two boys enter with white
butterflies trembling and dancing on thin wire rods.
On
widescreen video, children tell their stories: heart-rending,
occasionally humorous, all hopeful. Two small boys sing beguilingly and
we move into the present with a joyous display of dance: girls with
colourful parasols, boys and girls leaping into hip-hop. It is a zestful
end to an emotionally moving journey.
Indian dancer Aditi Mangaldas has led her own company since 1991 and
at 52 is as swift, sharp and supple as any of the eight much younger
dancers in her troupe.
The first piece on their double bill,
Uncharted Seas, is classic kathak: rapid spins, fast, fluent arm and
hand movement, an astonishing variety of foot stamping, bells shaking
between ankles and calves.
Multiple turns, emphasised by the
women's swirling skirts, often finish suddenly, the barefooted dancers
stock-still, with arms, bodies, heads in frozen gesture.
Kathak is
the basis for Mangaldas's modern choreography for the second work,
Timeless, the dancers now dressed in grey silk. Skilful lighting
enriches the configurations; the music successfully combines tapes and
live musicians, especially a solo drummer, his hands a blur.
A
relationship with flamenco is plain, particularly in a stamping and
clapping dialogue for two men, but the heel-spinning, arm and head
movement are pure kathak. The dancing -- exultant, exhilarating, tender,
subtle -- is always immaculate. A thrilling performance.
DANCE
Cambodia Sun Rising. Sunrise Children's Village. Space Theatre, Adelaide, September 27.
Aditi Mangaldas Dance Company. Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide, September 28.
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