The following review contains mentions of suicide.
Acclaimed UK dancer Aakash Odedra’s reappearance at Perth Festival after almost a decade with his latest touring work Songs of the Bulbul proves a reminder of dance’s power as a means of both personal storytelling and spiritual awakening.
Odedra – who has both British and Indian heritage – is at home using narrative and mystic devices in this work, which sees him fusing traditional Kathak and Bharatanatyam Indian dance techniques with European contemporary dance to forge a style all of his own.
Songs of the Bulbul review – quick links
Dance as both expansive and intimate storytelling
Odedra is not only a highly skilled and disciplined dancer. Having moved to India aged 15 and studying dance there under renowned Bollywood choreographer Shiamak Davar, among others, he is also a deeply spiritual person.
Unlike previous works by Aakash Odedra Company – such as Mehek, a love story between an older woman and a younger man created with Indian dance artist Aditi Mangaldas in 2024, and Samsara, with Chinese dancer Hu Shenyuan performed in 2020 – Songs of the Bulbul sees Odedra laying his soul bare in ways unseen before.
As Odedra explained in a post-show artist talk, he lost his mother to suicide in 2020. It’s a story Odedra tells with a refreshing matter-of-factness, explaining that while his mother’s passing was a profound personal tragedy, he is intent on being open around difficult subjects like these, which are, of course, inevitable parts of our existence.
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This personal story is also important to our understanding of Odedra’s latest piece, Songs of the Bulbul. In its opening scene, we see him emerge as a lonely delicate figure, akin to a small bird – one who is straining to break free from the waves of white silk that envelop him.
Standing under warm spotlights against a pitch black backdrop (lighting design by Fabiana Piccioli), his white robed figure (costume design by Kanika Thakur) unleashes gushing energies that speak to both freedom and constraint.
These opening scenes reveal Odedra’s signature moves and some of the Kathak-inspired technical strengths he is well-known for (neatly choreographed by Rani Khanam). To a highly cinematic sound score (by Rushil Ranjan) infused with Indian rhythms and vocals, it’s impossible not to be entranced by Odedra’s agility and mellifluous grace as he spins and surrenders to higher powers.
A seasoned performer with undiminished powers
These themes of cosmic powers – of both body and soul – are continually present in Songs of the Bulbul, which is performed by an artist who, 10 years on from his debut at Perth Festival and now aged 41, has matured into a different kind of solo performer, and one whose strength and poetic power onstage is undiminished.
Aside from Odedra as its central lightning force, Songs of the Bulbul has its own poetic brilliance as a story well-told and tightly structured in its own right. As well as being exceptionally tender and beautiful, it’s a soulful expression of deep suffering and exquisite grief.
Inspired by the Sufi story of the bulbul, the Persian name for the nightingale, the work charts the course of these little creatures, which are kept alone in cages and subjected to increasing tortures to elicit their most beautiful songs before they die.
This story alone points to our collective capacities to inflict cruelties for the sake of our own pleasures and power (and how true this is today as it ever was). But in the hands of an artist who carries his own story of tragic loss, it is both a shared experience of collective anguish and an individual tale of sadness and surrender.
As a reincarnation of an ancient spiritual story of a caged bird calling for freedoms that it is ultimately denied, this work is a rich experience. But as a revelation of one man’s unknowable interior landscape, it shows us the depths of his personal suffering and allows us to recognise layers of piercing beauty within his pain.
