IndiaPost.com - 'Sacred Monsters' with Sylvie Guillem and Akram Khan

LOS ANGELES: UCLA Live presents the US premiere of 'Sacred Monsters,' a bold new dance work featuring Rudolf Nureyev protégé and celebrated international ballerina Sylvie Guillem with renowned British-Bangladeshi dancer-choreographer Akram Khan.

This highly anticipated dance event, fresh from London and Hong Kong debuts, is an exhilarating exploration of the boundaries and synergy between two great classical dance forms, Indian classical kathak and ballet. The performance, set to live music by a 5-member ensemble, runs for two nights only at 8 pm, Wednesday-Thursday, May 2-3, at Royce Hall on the UCLA campus. This event runs approximately 75 minutes with no intermission. With Khan as artistic director and the main choreographer, "Sacred Monsters" is a dance-theater journey of self-discovery rooted in creation stories and myths.

It also evokes a wish to retain a child's innocent state of wonder, with the artists dancing solos and duets and reminiscing out loud about their past desires and current fears. The title plays on Monstres Sacres, a 19th-century French nickname for big theater stars such as Sarah Bernhardt, and a term which marked the birth of contemporary stardom according "divine status" to select icons.

"Sacred Monsters" showcases ballet and kathak disciplines separately and in combination, with male and female energies in opposition and harmony. Guillem's immense strength and flexibility are highlighted in an early meditative solo created by Taiwanese choreographer Lin Hwai-Min, artistic director of Cloud Gate Dance Theatre. In contrast, Khan's virtuosic kathak solo, choreographed by Gauri Sharma Tripathi, delivers fiery, mathematically sharp changes and muscular arm flourishes.

The work opens into duets that offer both an escape from the individual styles and a merging of the distinct traditions in sinuous wrapping movements, echoes of steps and trading of percussive rhythms. Akram Khan, speaking about "Sacred Monsters," said, "I have spent my life studying and performing kathak. It is the source of my creative process.

Working with Sylvie Guillem is an exciting new challenge, giving me the opportunity to explore another classical dance language with one of its greatest exponents, and as a result, creating a situation that will unearth the things that are most often lost between the classical and modern world." Sylvie Guillem also commented, "I am a classical dancer.

I have been trained as a classical dancer, but I cannot say that my 'religion' is a style, a technique or a tradition. What I can say is that the 'place' where I perform, whatever style I perform, feels strongly a 'sacred place.' The stage … a monster … my sacred monster." "Sacred Monsters" is performed to live music by an ensemble led by cellist and prolific recording artist Philip Sheppard who composed the music using additional material adapted from songs by Iva Bittová, Nando Acquaviva and Toni Casalonga.

The group also includes Alies Sluiter on violin, Coordt Linke, percussion, and Faheem Mazhar and Juliette Van Peteghem on vocals. Sylvie Guillem (pronounced ghee-LEM) is among the world's most celebrated ballerinas. As the star of the Paris Opera Ballet to her current reign as principal guest artist at London's Royal Ballet, she has electrified the dance world with her virtuosity and dazzling elasticity.

Born in Paris, she launched a career based on pure physical prowess when she began as a gymnast with Olympic hopes. But at age 11, when she and her group attended the Paris Opera Ballet's school for polishing, she switched ambitions. The teachers there were impressed by her physique, amazing feet, tremendous jump, and also her intelligence and determination.

She joined the Paris Opera Ballet at age 16 and raced up the hierarchy, winning annual promotions. Rudolf Nureyev, appointed artistic director of the company as she began her third year, gave her many roles that drew on her swift, light technique and a powerful dramatic sense that helped her create a convincing portrait of tension and tenderness, anxiety and determined self-sufficiency. He particularly liked her in "Don Quixote" ("like champagne," he said). In 1984, at age 19, Nureyev named her étoile, star dancer.

Akram Khan is one of the most gifted choreographers and dancers of his generation. He was born in London in 1974 and his mother introduced him as a child to drama and Bengali folk dancing. At age seven, he and his sister began studying under the great kathak performer Sri Pratap Pawar and he later became Pawar's disciple.

In 1988, he toured as an actor-dancer in the key role of the Boy with the Royal Shakespeare Company in Sir Peter Brooks' play "The Mahabharata," but continued studying various types of dance, adding classical ballet, Graham, Cunningham, Alexander, release-based techniques, contact improvisation and physical theater to his repertoire.

During the 1990s, Khan presented solo performances and gradually developed larger scale works, drawing on his experience and training as a kathak dancer and breaking new ground in his collaborations with other artists, first seen in his first full-length work "Kaash," a collaboration with Anish Kapoor and Nitin Sawhney. His production "Ma," presented at the Edinburgh Festival in 2004, received awards from the Critics' Circle for Best Choreography and earned him the International Movimentos Tanzpreis (Berlin) for "Most Promising Newcomer in Dance."