ADUNA - Land of adventure

May 18th, 2008 • Related • Filed Under



I just came back from witnessing a different kind of beauty this evening, hot bods aside. ADUNA is a dance theatre which combines choreography from urban dances like breakdancing, capoiera and other acrobatics . Through contemporary and poetic staging and some awesome music, the dancers tell the story of seven adventurers in search of their destiny , facing and confronting their fears and also the discovery and joy of freedom . ADUNA incidentally means gathering of notion of world and destiny in African Wolof language.

The dancers were amazing, perfect isolation of movements combined with strength and precision in seemingly effortless movements are a beauty to withhold and then some. From no storyline and words, they take us through every step of their journey from being lost in the desert , the agony of poisoning due to drinking bad water through their adventurous journey and right down to their pleasure of enjoying the rain and freedom at last. The fluidity of movement and limbs combined with strong agility is breathtaking. In an early scene , watching seven male dancers lifting themselves up from the floor at a 45 degree angle at precisely the same moment is undescribable. Or maybe watching several dancers crawling all over the dance floor like the alien in Alien , is more eerily spellbinding , I can’t decide.

You get the feeling that these dancers somehow seem to lack the smoothness and sexy rhythm of say Madonna’s back up dancers but yet executing more or less the same moves in a much more “primal” and raw, I do mean , very manly raw way especially when combined with the brilliant African drumbeat and sounds effect. Yet they seek not to be sexy or sexual (okay, except that one short scene when they were doing a tumble and one guy ’s head is is in between the other guy’ legs, maybe it’s me, my mind’s in the gutter ) , whilst managing to do just that.

And you can tell that these dancers are having fun as evident in their impromptu solo performance finale due to the encore demands from an unsatiated and screamin’ (I kid you not) female fans and some quite impressed male fans too!! Down girl and boy… At the end of the show, everyone was comparing how red their palms were from all that clapping.

Some history, this dance is choreographed by Ibrahim Sissoko who formed Etha Dam (in 1998) along with some talented dancers who share a same mindedness ( etat d’ame) in appreciation of dance in the search of self and spririt.

Well, too bad they are only performing in KL for one night and then they are off to Hong Kong, maybe next year at the annual French Festival they will come back , I shall certainly book my seat!

Well, so much for my francaise immersion , I shall say au revoir and bonne nuit!

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