Babel is a stunning stream of entertainment, highly recommended.
Babel ends to rapturous applause and a standing ovation – it's a crowd pleaser for sure, but not without a multitude of good reasons. Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui has forgone that Belgian seriousness and welcomed a delectable dose of comedy into this collaboration with Damien Jalet and you can certainly feel the presence of dramaturg Lou Cope in the lengthy monologues and theatrical communication between the dancers.
The show opens with the commanding, PVC-clad Ulrika Kinn Svensson, who begins with a wordy but engaging tidbit about the origins of hand gestures and the dawning of a darker age when hands are used as weapons. Looking both indomitable and frail at the same time, Svensson's frank delivery – during which her hands and arms flutter about as though independent from her body – allows the other dancers to line up inconspicuously behind her.
These performers proceed to portray the various dimensions of cross-cultural misunderstandings. They fight, run, mess up, get hurt, and apologise. Two of them even swing each other around in a topless duet. The production is spattered with moments of warmth: there's a sweet romance and some stunningly melodic vocal solos from the talented troupe. Though at one hour, forty minutes with no interval, it's not all necessary. But it is all striking.
The contemporary performance is hugely varied and brilliantly paced. Antony Gormley's giant, cubic frames that make up the set are pushed, pulled, and climbed. They are constructed into a tower before they become a playground for the dancers to run through their empty frames in a manic scene that goes awry.
As well as some gymnastic feats, Ben Fury break dances and there's a little robot, when two Japanese men discover a broken Svensson. They decide she's probably “Ikea” and try to inflate her so that arms and legs balloon before she goes whizzing to the back of the stage as she deflates. Much of the humour comes from Darryl E. Woods in camp yank mode, who presents us with some cynical, jargon-saturated jabber about consumerism and English as a lingua franca. Again hilarious, but a tad long.
Purists might not appreciate the length of monologues, nor the a scene where a Neanderthal explores Svensson by sniffing her, hugging her, and trying to inflate her once more, before he runs to the other end of the stage and transforms back into his sophisticated French-speaking self. Once more this is the dramaturg at work, and is only dance by a loose interpretation of the word. But the comic delivery is undeniably entertaining and not unwelcome in a thematically wide-ranging collaboration such as this.
The outstanding performances of the night come from the haunting musicians. Elevated behind a thin scrim, they accentuate each movement and propel each scene with a multicultural array of eerie drumming and singing from Patrizia Bovi and Mahabub Khan in an eclectic bill ranging from Sufi chants to Japanese percussion. Purist hesitations aside, Babel is stunning dance performance full of discovery and development in a multifarious display of ceaseless entertainment.
Babel runs at Sadler's Wells until May 19th
Photo Credit: Koen Broos
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