Outwitting the Devil

World Première: 13-14 July 2019, Stuttgart

 

“I have awakened to a new way of dancing. And that is to dance my ideas through the bodies of others, including older dancers, who carry their histories and complex emotional experiences within them. But what remains unchanged is my passion for exploring old and new myths in the context of our times.” – Akram Khan

 

We are thrilled to present our new Company production Outwitting the Devil. Stirring classical and contemporary, Akram Khan explores our oldest rituals in the midst of our ever-changing planet. He brings together a superb ensemble of six international artists sharing great differences in their practice: Ching-Ying Chien, Andrew Pan, Dominique Petit, James Vu Anh Pham, Mythili Prakash and Sam Pratt.

Inspired by the newly discovered fragment of the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the world’s earliest surviving great works of literature, Akram’s new work is a concentrated epic about ritual and remembering. In a landscape of broken tablets and fallen idols, its six characters trade their remaining wealth and stories, seeking to make whole the fragments of ancient knowledge lost and forgotten over time.

To weave the narrative and design of this new piece, Akram has invited his close collaborators: dramaturg Ruth Little, composer Vincenzo Lamagna, rehearsal director Mavin Khoo, costume designer Kimie Nakano, and writer Jordan Tannahill – joined by lighting designer Aideen Malone and visual designer Tom Scutt. Combining live and recorded music and video projection, Outwitting the Devil invites us all to the table where life, death and our half-remembered myths are the bread we break together.

"Ever since I entered the classical Indian dance world, I have been searching for a way out.... or perhaps more truly, I was searching for a new way in."

Akram

Credits

Artistic Director/Choreographer Akram Khan

Dramaturg Ruth Little
Lighting Designer Aideen Malone
Visual Designer Tom Scutt
Original Music Score and Sound Design Vincenzo Lamagna
Costume Designer Kimie Nakano
Writer Jordan Tannahill
Rehearsal Director and Coach Mavin Khoo

Material devised and performed by Ching-Ying Chien, Andrew Pan, Dominique Petit, Mythili Prakash, Sam Pratt, James Vu Anh Pham

Executive Producer Farooq Chaudhry
Technical Manager Tina Fagan
Production Manager Rich Fagan
Stage Manager Lars Davidson
Lighting Engineer Stéphane Déjours
Sound Engineer Phil Wood
Project/Tour Manager Mashitah Omar
LED Light Tube manufactured and supplied by Light Contrast Ltd

Co-produced by Théâtre de Namur – Centre Scénique, CENTRAL – Centre Culturel de La Louvière, Festival d’Avignon, Théâtre de la Ville – Paris, Sadler’s Wells London, La Comédie de Clermont-Ferrand – scène nationale, COLOURS International Dance Festival 2019 – Stuttgart

Supported by Arts Council England

Akram Khan is an Associate Artist of Sadler’s Wells and Mountview in London and Curve Leicester.

Special thanks to Alistair Spalding, Vincent Thirion and Melanie Dumoulin, Patrick Colpé, Meinrad Huber and Eric Gauthier, Olivier Py and Agnès Troly, and the teams at Sadler’s Wells, CENTRAL – La Louvière, Théâtre de Namur, COLOURS Festival and Festival d’Avignon, Tamas Detrich and the team at Stuttgart Ballet, Mr. & Mrs. Khan, Yuko Khan, Aharya Dresses for Mythili Prakash’s costume and all the collaborators and technicians who have worked on the project.

Akram Khan
Director / Choreographer
Ruth Little
Dramaturg
Aideen Malone
Lighting Designer
Kimie Nakano
Costume Designer
Tom Scutt
Visual Designer
Mavin Khoo
Rehearsal Director

Outwitting the Devil / Production trailer

by Maxime Dos

Trailer I

by Maxime Dos

Teaser

by Maxime Dos

12 hands, 6 histories and a thousand fragments of myth: first day of rehearsals for Outwitting the Devil. - Ruth Little
'I have walked through many lives, some of them my own, and I am not who I was... no doubt the next chapter In my book of transformations is already written. I am not done with my changes.' - Stanley Kunitz
“In a splintered world, we must address the splinters” - Clifford Geertz. Gathering shards of myth and memory: Dominique Petit in rehearsal - Ruth Little
’I remember... How they clung How they held... Soft as the hand Soft as the eyelash Soft as the bone Soft as the heart’ (Jordan Tannahill) Dominique Petit and Mythili Prakash in rehearsal for Outwitting the Devil - Ruth Little
'On entering the House of Dust / everywhere I looked there were royal crowns gathered in heaps.' (Gilgamesh) The great spires come down, the great forests burn through all our millennia of the great forgetting: Outwitting the Devil - Ruth Little
'I will not beg the world leaders to care for our future. I will instead let them know change is coming whether they like it or not.' (Greta Thunberg) Sam Pratt and Ching-Ying Chien in rehearsal - Ruth Little
'Today like never before, I've turned back, with all of my road, to see myself alone.' - César Vallejo Dominique Petit and Andrew Pan in rehearsal for Outwitting the Devil - Ruth Little
'The heavens cried out and the earth replied And I was standing between them' (The Epic of Gilgamesh) The wild world reclaims its own: Ching-Ying Chien and Andrew Pan on the road home. - Ruth Little
‘No false gods now, the images o'ercast, We are love's body, or we are undone' (Nan Shepherd, ‘Real Presence') Mythili Prakash and Ching-Ying Chien in rehearsals for Outwitting the Devil. On stage now at Théâtre la Louviére, and meeting for the first time the beautiful possibilities of the set and lighting by Tom Scutt and Aideen Malone. Astonishing music, again, by Vincenzo Lamagna. Also ordering emergency Indian food from a nearby town for the eternally vigilant rehearsal director Mavin Khoo - Ruth Little
Crouching Tigers, Hidden Dramaturg: Akram at the starting line of the world's oldest epic story with James Vu Anh Pham and Ching-Ying Chien. - Ruth Little
'Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold' (WB Yeats, 'The Second Coming') James Vu Anh Pham, Mythili Prakash, Ching-Ying Chien at the centre of Outwitting the Devil. Our last day at Theatre de Namur. Bruised feet, heads and shoulders: a consequence of diving into the darkness of the one of the world's oldest written epic tales Gilgamesh. - Ruth Little
Homecoming in the teeth of the storm: Mythili Prakash, James Vu Anh Pham, Ching-Ying Chien and Sam Pratt unwind life and time. - Ruth Little
'Let them not make me a stone and let them not spill me, otherwise kill me' (Louis Macneice) Last days of rehearsal in the Cour d'Honneur, Palais des Papes, Avignon. High walls all around, ancient stories within, moon, bats and swallows overhead Ching-Ying Chien - Ruth Little

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