Akram Khan’s climate dystopian adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book features the majestic choreography that Khan is known for but, for the first time, heavily relies on digital projections rather than sets to tell the story, with mixed results.
When the COVID pandemic locked down the human world, the natural world quickly filled the void: sea life frolicked in harbours and shipping lanes; hungry deer trotted on highways. These phenomena, and our susceptibility to the novel virus, were reminders of our interdependence with and vulnerability to nature: a theme explored in Kipling’s The Jungle Book.
In Khan’s adaptation, Mowgli is washed up in a city left deserted due to rising sea levels, not the jungle. The animals she encounters have escaped from the zoo, labs, circuses or family homes. In the most dramatic departure, the villain is no longer a sinister lion; it’s humans. Such fundamental shifts in the dynamics of the story by Khan and writer Tariq Jordan lead to inconsistencies and ambiguities. It sometimes feels like the creative team are trying to fit a square agenda into a round story; trying to hammer an existing tale into shape but losing important pieces in the process.
The modification of the story is not the only innovation. Khan emerged from the pandemic, and the escalating climate crisis, with a desire to spread the word regarding the need for direct human action to preserve the natural world, while simultaneously acting himself, reducing the load of his touring productions by replacing physical sets with digital storytelling. Live performance is currently undergoing the growing pains that cinema went through following the invention of CGI. Yes, the technology is impressive but just because it exists and can be used, doesn’t mean it always should. As Khan himself says regarding the production: “we must not forget that most often, great storytelling can be told by the simplest of tools. Our bodies, our voices, and our conviction in that story.”
The dancers, led by Maya Belom Meyong as Mowgli, amaze with their capacity to morph into animalistic forms. There are moments of true wonder and awe. The arrival of the hypnotic python is particularly fun. Yet fun, joy, is often lacking: there’s little light and shade. Baloo does a funny dance for a few moments. It is a work that is heavy on the environmental nihilism: the world would be better off without us in it, rather than that we need to rediscover our ways of integrating ourselves back into harmony with nature. Perhaps ironically, by separating the audiences from the humanity of the dancers by persistent technological interruptions, there is a severing of the connection with these remarkable artists and the messages and emotions they are conveying with their bodies.
Unlike the Adelaide Festival’s major dance work, Kidd Pivot’s Revisor, The Jungle Book does not seamlessly integrate dance, voice overs, technology and storytelling: while individual parts are beautiful, you can see the stiches.
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