Review: the body symphonic – Charlie Khalil Prince at The Place

Looped sound evokes the ringing of sirens, and dabke-based movement becomes both bravado and captivity in Charlie Khalil Prince’s response to Lebanon’s crises.

The one thing you’re always guaranteed at The Place is an authentic experience, and this was the case with the body symphonic by Charlie Khalil Prince and percussionist Joss Turnbull.

Prince describes himself as a dancer, choreographer, and musician, and this is all evident in the work. Part jam session/movement exploration, the audience gets two for the price of one, but the set-up means the whole evening feels more bitty than a connected piece.

Prince is looking at some big subjects. The blurb explains the work as a “response to the multiple political and geopolitical crises in Lebanon” and “the body’s place in the struggle against occupation”.

The above situations are constantly discussed using words, so of course it’s of interest to see an artist use a different mode of dialogue. At the start of the work, Prince uses a microphone and loop machine to create a soundtrack of oppression. The microphone is swung to catch the swooping sound; later, an electric guitar is bowed to create a jabbed chord. Both sounds suggest an ominous environment: the endless white-noise backdrop to conflict, the insistent ringing of sirens. It’s potent and disconcerting.

Turnbull joins, which allows Prince to enter the space and move. The movement language seems based upon Lebanese Dabke dance. One recognises the popular components: stamping, lunging, rapid squats, a sense of posturing. Prince uses the content in two different ways. At times full of confidence and bravado; at others, almost like an incarceration, as if he’s being held captive by the movement and desperate to be released from its shackles.

When the two jam together, the music is wondrous. I don’t know a lot about Lebanese musical history, but the flavour is one of mysticism and melancholy. And by that I don’t mean something that’s depressing, more a suggestion of struggle and yearning.

Prince later executes a diagonal of upper body isolations in a shaft of light. As a dancer, he works his body with both precision and intention, and when he shrouds his head with his own vest, the body undulations take on an even more powerful sense of trepidation and suffocation.

Even considering all the strengths of the piece, the weaknesses felt too apparent. Personally, it lacked cohesive structure, and at times felt a little too retro in its avant-garde randomness. That said, authenticity was the overriding impression.