Festival Dance

Songs of the Bulbul

Lyceum, Edinburgh

Mary Brennan 

five stars


For countless centuries, and across cultures worldwide, artists - writers, musicians, performers alike - have been haunted and inspired by the same mythic image: a captive bird, on the point of death, utters the sweetest song of its fast-fading life.

This melding of beauty and transience resonated so profoundly with dancer Aakash Odedra and choreographer Rani Khanam that they came together to create Songs of the Bulbul, an hour-long solo that Odedra has just premiered at this year’s Edinburgh Festival. 

It proves to be mesmerising: uplifting and yet heart-rending - a reminder of how, even as we hear and see what’s happening on-stage, it is ephemeral… soon over, gone, at best an evocative memory…

Traditions of Sufi enlightenment inform the narrative, which Odedra expresses in episodes of nuanced dance, his mastery of Kathak technique drawing us into the Bulbul’s fate.

As clouds of red petals drift down from above, Odedra spins and spins in an ecstasy of winged freedom - the copious skirts of his white costume flare out, his arms extend upwards, he is soaring… A brusque clattering ends that reverie: ropes drop down to form the bars of a cage - the captive Bulbul struggles to exist, and again Odedra’s pliant body speaks of this Persian nightingale’s valour and despair.

In the songbird’s end, however, is its spiritual beginning. And here - thanks to a totally attuned creative team that includes Manchester Camerata - Odedra’s performance is framed by some visually ravishing design elements and a wealth of music that, in itself, creates a sense of yearning and eventual fulfilment.

Through the darkness, little lights come alive like beacons of hope. Odedra, his costume discarded, is free to take flight in pure dance that - like the Bulbul’s final song - links Sufi myth and his performative art in poetic harmony. We catch a glimpse of ‘exhaled breath’ as he subsides and is still…  Memorable? Beyond words, yes - absolutely.