“Jungle Book Reimagined” is of the Headlines
By Garth Grimball
Akram Khan’s “Jungle Book Reimagined” begins in catastrophe. A voice-over announces a litany of contemporary headlines taken to extremes: London is unlivable due to sea level rising; rationing, displacement and economic collapse are the new reality.
Presented at Stanford University’s Memorial Auditorium on December 2-3, this production uses Rudyard Kipling’s narrative to choreograph the story of a refugee, a girl named Mowgli, lost from her family in a storm and taken in by the surviving animals. Animals who are confronting their own traumas of human experimentation, zoos and guns.
“We are now living in unprecedented and uncertain times, not only for our species but for all species on this planet. And the root cause of this conundrum is because we have forgotten our connection to our home, our planet,” Khan said at the premiere in April 2022.
Once this updated exposition is complete, the story coalesces around characters familiar to anyone who has read Kipling’s original text or seen the Disney movie adaptation. There is a wolf pack, Bagheera the panther, Baloo the bear, Kaa the snake, and a band of monkeys desirous of fire. In Khan’s version Mowgli is less the driver of action than a conduit to experience the animals’ stories and personalities.
“Jungle Book Reimagined” relies on voice-over acting more than choreography to convey plot. Each of the main characters speaks via voice-over and the dancers move to the rhythms of the articulation. Mowgli’s voice is only heard in flashback scenes presented in projection. Scenes that loosely convey a politics of indigeneity, of “nature” being a constant part of one’s life and not a distinct place to go and be separate from “civilization.”
The design of this post-apocalyptic civilization is bathed in greenish hues of light, shadowy, and obscured by the downstage scrim needed for the projections. The dancers all wear gray baggy pants and brick colored tops. The uniformity of the costumes and the darkness of the stage requires the dancers to move with incredible specificity to stand out, and they mostly succeed.
Baloo is bowlegged and tilted. Bagheera is all slick and shoulder blades. The head monkey apes human movement. Khan’s signature mix of layering rhythms on the body lends itself to the patterns of speech. Though his choreography is most memorable during the big group numbers to Jocelyn Pook’s score. The 12 person ensemble is breathtaking in the few moments of unison movement, from simple arms swings to complicated isolations.
In addition to the choreography, voice-over acting, sound and lighting design, the projections contribute literal depictions of animals (elephants, birds), buildings (Big Ben clock), and Mowgli’s back story (conversations between mother and daughter). The projections by design firm YeastCulture are playful in simplicity and big in impact, but at times the design elements feel in competition with each other.
The scale of “Jungle Book Reimagined” is impressive. The scope of the concept outweighs the formal elements by its conclusion. Kipling is the foundation, Khan is the author, and climate change bookends the narrative. The synthesis is artistically rich but the amount of content is overwhelming.
Garth Grimball is a dance writer and artist based in Oakland, CA. He is a contributor to SF Examiner and Dance Media. He is the editor of ODC’s Dance Stories.
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