Avignon (AFP)
British choreographer star Akram Khan, a guest at the Avignon Festival, has transformed a fragment of the Mesopotamian epic of Gilgamesh into a dark dance show meant to sound an alarm over the destruction of the environment.
The Palace of the Popes' courtyard, which traditionally hosts a play at the opening of the prestigious festival, gives way to choreography towards the end of the event.
In the scenography imagined for "Outwitting the Devil", the palace of the popes has been transformed for an hour and a half in the city of Uruk, in ancient Mesopotamia, of which Gilgamesh would have been the king (the site is in the south of present Iraq).
Akram Khan, known for fusing contemporary dance with the Indian kathak, has returned to this same style in the show performed by six dancers.
Their movements evoke tribal, ritual dances meant to exorcise the devil. Smoke, various sounds, and especially bodies sometimes immobilized as in Mesopotamian sculptures, sometimes moving like felines, give the whole, sometimes repetitive, a deliberately primitive character.
The devil, according to Akram Khan's interpretation, is only the man himself who kills and destroys the environment: in legend, Gilgamesh assassinates Humbaba, guardian of the Cedar Forest of Lebanon.
The destruction of the forest and its animals fuels the anger of the gods who punish Gilgamesh by killing his friend Enkidu, confronting him with human mortality.
"I always thought that my work was consciously apolitical (...) but we are thinking about the future, what we leave behind for our children," wrote Akram Khan in the note of intent.
© 2019 AFP