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Three Solo Contemporary Dance UAE Premieres

Echoes, CUT, & Constellations | Aakash Odedra Company
23 February 2022 | 7:30pm | Auditorium

Tickets to this performance are free of charge, but online reservation is required.

Experience a mesmerizing evening of contemporary dance featuring three distinct solos performed by Aakash Odedra as part of Lates. Echoes, CUT, & Constellations features three solo pieces choreographed by acclaimed artists Aditi Mangaldas, Russell Maliphant, and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. Each work explores different processes and aesthetics using Aakash’s traditional background in kathak and bharatanatyam to create a distinct flavor of contemporary dance. The unprecedented pairing of world-renowned contemporary choreographers and one of the most talented British South Asian dancers of his generation builds on Aakash’s mesmerizing agility and the maturity gained from a decade of developing his craft.

Presented in collaboration with The Arts Center at NYUAD and UK-UAE Cultural Professionals Connect.

Marck Harvey

The evening’s programme includes:

Echoes
Choreographed by Aditi Mangaldas and performed by Aakash Odedra

The resonance of the bells awakens us to the now. A breath and senses awakens. LIFE awakens me. Bells have been a constant companion of every Indian classical dancer. They have aged with one, in a way they have resonated with one's life through the process of dance. Should these bells just be a part of a given tradition? Become a ritual and thus in a way be dead? Can they not be alive in the present? The bells in Echoes become a metaphor of resonance, of freedom, of awakening.

CUT
Choreographed by Russell Maliphant and performed by Aakash Odedra

Russell Maliphant created CUT using elements and dynamics that were familiar to Aakash from his background in kathak and bharatnatyam. He shapes that into a world where lights cut and highlight the movement, creating an industrial, contained world that expresses its own logic of flow and form. Russell worked alongside the lighting designer Michael Hulls and composer Andy Cowton, with whom he has a long creative history. CUT is the result of this collaboration.

Constellations
Choreographed by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and performed by Aakash Odedra

Lighting & thunder. Light & sound. The illusions of distance and nearness they convey in a sky that deceptively appears as a constant. Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui has been fascinated by the different images these convey. He seeks to highlight different patterns of sound and different sources of light that come together to create a constellation, a system where things are kept suspended and in movement by each other’s gravitational fields & contending forces. The movements follow the flow of light and sound, emanating from darkness, and their return to that state. All this with and through Aakash as the locus, the astral body generates its own rhythms and luminosity.

About Aakash Odedra

Aakash Odedra is a dancer, choreographer and teacher. Born in Birmingham, UK and trained in the classical Indian dance styles of Kathak (Nilima Devi, Leicester and Asha Joglekar, India) and Bharatanatyam (Chitraleka Bolar, Birmingham and Chhaya Kantaveh, India). Aakash formed Aakash Odedra Company in 2011 as a vehicle for commissioning solos and to develop his own choreographic work. His debut full length solo Rising featured short works created for him by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Akram Khan and Russell Maliphant. As choreographer he was commissioned to create a piece for James Brown: Get on the Good Foot (Apollo Theater, New York) and the Opera God’s Little Soldier (Theater Freiburg), The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations and the closing of the London Cultural Olympiad. He has been commissioned twice by The Arts Center, to create Murmur 2.0, and #JeSuis, which also presented its world premiere at NYU Abu Dhabi. Aakash has received numerous awards and bursaries, including a Dora performance award (Canada), Danza&Danza award (Italy), Audience Award Dance Week 2013 (Croatia), Infant Award 2014 (Serbia), Bessie Award (Best Male Performer, 2014) and a Sky Academy Arts Scholarship. Aakash Odedra was recently honoured by The Queen as he received his British Empire Medal (BEM) in The 2020 New Year Honours List.

Safety Measures:

• Masks need to be worn at all times within the museum premises
• Attendees must present a ‘Green’ status on AlHosn app

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