An incredible Double Bill from award-winning dancer and choreographer Aakash Odedra featuring the works, Echoes and Constellation. A mesmerising evening of two solos choreographed by acclaimed artists Aditi Mangaldas and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. Each work draws on Aakash’s traditional background in Kathak and Bharatanatyam to create a distinct flavour of contemporary and South Asian dance. This performance offers a rare opportunity to experience an astonishing evening of dance by one of the most talented British South Asian dancers of his generation.

Echoes

Choreography: Aditi Mangaldas

Lighting: Fabiana Piccioli

Music: Shubha Mudgal and Aneesh Pradhan

Rehearsal Directors: Dheerendra Tiwari and Amit Khinchi

The resonance of the bells awaken 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 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.

Echoes is an exhilarating, high-octane Kathak dance experience which explores our relationships with our ancestors. The piece is choreographed by Kathak icon, Aditi Mangaldas, who is renowned for her artistry, energy and for breaking new ground, adding a contemporary twist to this stunning form of Indian dance.

Credits: Co-produced by Curve Theatre (Leicester), DanceXchange (Birmingham), La Comete (Chalons-en-Champagne) and generously supported using Lottery Funds through Arts Council England. 

Constellation

Choreography: Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui

Lighting: Willy Cessa

Music: Olga Wojciechowska

Rehearsal Directors: Paul Zivkovich and Lewis Major

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, while their source is often one and the same. 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. By 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 generating its own rhythms and luminosity.

Credits (CONSTELLATION): Rising was commissioned by AKCT (London), DanceXchange (Birmingham), Sampad (Birmingham), Eastman (Antwerp), The Hat Factory (Luton), Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland Dance (Leicester), South East Dance (Brighton), New Art Exchange (Nottingham), The Place (London), Curve Theatre (Leicester), Southbank Centre (London) and funded by Arts Council England and Akademi (London).