[Review] Elixir Festival – Germaine Acogny & Malou Airaudo / Louise Lecavalier / Ben Duke

The Elixir Festival opened with a triple bill of very different and apparently unconnected works: a duet by a pair of septuagenarians performed with a lot of feeling and not much dance; contrasted with a solo of exuberant full-on movement; and a text-heavy comedy about a runaway tortoise.

The connection came in the Festival’s theme of challenging perceptions about dance and age, a purpose given added emphasis after the opening work when those audience members “in the know” began a chorus of “Happy Birthday” during the curtain call to celebrate Malou Airaudo’s 76th voyage around the sun. She performed common ground(s) alongside the legendary Germaine Acogny – known as “the mother of contemporary African dance” – who will turn 80 in just over a month’s time. The pair giving credence to that old adage that “age is just a number”.

At a time of life when many people are moving on borrowed hips or mobility aids, Acogny and Airaudo sashayed elegantly, utilising the full extent of the Sadler’s Wells stage, in a work that is inspired by the lives of these two remarkable women: in the 1960s, Airaudo worked with Léonide Massine at the Ballet Russe de Monte-Carlo and, in 1973, she joined Pina Bausch in what became Tanztheater Wuppertal; Acogny, the founder of modern African dance technique, created the École des Sables in Senegal, which famously collaborated with Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch in a remarkable film (Dancing at Dusk) and then staging of Pina’s The Rite of Spring.   

The cool opening of dawn sneaking up in the African bush is silently spectacular. Darkness opens out into a set vividly lit in blood orange with the two seated performers silhouetted against the sunrise, a long pole across their laps. This opening takes a while, but the imagery is just about worth it. Their duet is a tender and compassionate connection, exploring cultural and personal associations. Some were clear, others less so, while some slipped over the border towards self-indulgence (singing Que Sera, sera was a particularly cheesy and blunt instrument). Acogny tastefully dropped the shoulder straps of her grey dress for Airaudo to draw on her back. They used the large pole, appearing as if a spear, as a prop, finishing the work back on the seats and silhouetted against the sunset but with the poles held upright, warrior-like, in their hands.

common ground(s) is a lyrical autobiographical work that can only make sense when performed by its creators and it is only the strength of their mutual bond, as well as their own legendary places in the history of modern dance, that makes it a compelling work.  

The next performances were both world premieres. First up was one of the leading lights in Canadian contemporary dance, Louise Lecavalier; formerly an inspirational and dynamic performer with La La La Human Steps. Dressed in layers of urban sportswear, and performing non-stop fast footwork in geometric lines, her tousled blonde hair peeking out from under a black hoodie, Lecavalier presented as a young performer (I would have guessed in her 30s had I not known she is 65).

In her programme note, Lecavalier writes of renewing her dancer’s body as if a ‘newcomer at every session’ and this freshness resonated throughout a tireless, tight performance to a pulsating composite electronic score, punctuated by momentary oases of tranquillity, which allowed the audience, let alone the performer, to get their breath back. Minutes around late afternoon was a breath-taking performance and so much more given Lecavalier’s veteran status.

The final instalment lowered the age limit by a decade of so with two of Europe’s finest contemporary dancers – Christopher Akrill (54) and Valentina Formenti (51) – performing with fluid movement and sharp words in a new work of dance theatre by one of Europe’s finest contemporary choreographers, Ben Duke.

The title White Hare is both a pun on the purpose of the festival and a specific allusion to the fable of the Tortoise and the Hare, which underpins a domestic, pre-apocalyptic tale of a lost tortoise (and daughter) largely told in reverse sequences, in a stretched sitting room setting neatly designed by Delia Peel. Duke is a master of writing dialogue that is rich in comic subtleties and wit and both Akrill and Formenti delivered the text with a strong impact. And although we didn’t get to see the third star of the piece, Tipple the Tortoise, onstage (well, not so far as I know) he/she/they dominated the finale through a massive close-up presence on backdrop film, slowly pushing and then munching on a large strawberry. Having once lost a tortoise named Kitty who walked out of an open gate never to be seen again, it was rather heart-warming to see Tipple was safe!

This triple bill completely hit the mark in terms of expressing how bodies of a certain age can still dance with purpose and vitality. So much so that I had forgotten the festival’s purpose by the end. Irrespective of age, these were just 5 outstanding performers.

Graham Watts

Graham Watts is a freelance writer and dance critic. He writes for The Spectator, Tanz, Shinshokan Dance Magazine (Japan), Ballet Magazine (Romania), BachTrack and the Hong Kong International Arts Festival and has previously written for the Sunday Express, Dancing Times, Dance Europe, DanceTabs, London Dance, the Edinburgh International Festival and Pointe magazine (USA).  He has also written the biography of Daria Klimentová (The Agony and the Ecstasy) and contributed chapters about the work of Akram Khan to the Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Ballet and on Shobana Jeyasingh for the third edition of Routledge’s Fifty Contemporary Choreographers.

He is Chairman of the Dance Section of The Critics’ Circle and of the UK National Dance Awards and regularly lectures on dance writing and criticism at The Royal Academy of Dance, The Place and (until the war) for Balletristic in Kyiv.  He was a nominee for the Dance Writing Award in the 2018 One Dance UK Awards and was appointed OBE in 2008.