A tantalizing vision of the conventions of the classical Indian dance world and the kathak

When the world-famous British-Bengali choreographer Akram Khan first saw Leonardo da Vinci’s famous Last Supper as a boy, he was confused. Why world famous if he didn’t recognize anything in it? No one like him, no resemblance to his faith or culture?

Years later, he discovered another version of the iconic image: Susan Dorothea White’s The First Supper. The same setup, but with women from all corners of the world. The only white person sits in the place of Judas, the traitor. Inspired by that radical, anti-colonial interpretation, Khan now gives his tantalizing vision of the conventions of the classical Indian dance world and the kathak, the North Indian dance language with which he grew up and gained worldwide fame.

Outwitting the Devil is a concentrated epic about humanity in the “Anthropocene”; the era marked by human action. Khan and six dancers search for fragments of lost knowledge in the fragments of clay tablets and stories of fallen gods. Khan thus rereads the 4,000-year-old Epic of Gilgamesh – written on clay tablets at the time – as a parable for modern man. In the epic, King Gilgamesh arrives in a beautiful forest on one of his journeys. Yet he destroys the forest in order to kill its monstrous guardian.

Rescheduled – The original date of this performance was March 24, 2020 (then moved to March 12, 2021), but due to Covid-19 developments, the performance has again been moved to the above date. Ticket buyers who ordered a ticket before the original date have received an email from us about the processing of the tickets.

Source : PLT Website