Babel (Words)

Overview

Is it dramatically poetic or just ironic that one of the few productions that has left me gaping like a fish is titled Babel, meaning words? This giant undertaking throws together 18 performers from across the globe (speaking almost as many languages and working across many modes of performance), choreographers Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Damien Jalet, and visual artist Antony Gormley. Babel is the third in a trilogy that began in 2003 with Cherkaoui and Gormley's collaboration on Foi, yet it is imposing enough to stand on its own.

Taking as its starting point the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel, the production explores notions of language, communication (and miscommunication) and ongoing efforts towards cross-cultural empathy. With a work primarily composed of movement, which also utilises music, visual representation and a multiplicity of languages, it's inevitable that you will feel a tad lost at times. Think twists and turns, rather than questions and answers. The work manages to be starkly realist and profoundly inspiring in the same breath, punctuated by comedic hooks that ensure you're kept in the loop.

From the first to the last moments of the work, Gormley's cube-like structures loom before us, as endeavours, obstacles, cages and shelters. Manipulated by the performers, they structure the home, the city, the nation, while transporting us to a world far removed from our own. The music and songs woven throughout echo this theme of unity and difference, blending Renaissance choirs with traditional Turkish melodies, alienating while at the same time comforting. The deep, resonant bass drum seems to throb even during moments of silence, the pulsing heartbeat that is part of the raw, almost primal nature of the production.

Even when in unison, each dancer appears as their own being: a flick of the wrist or a nod of the head betraying their own particular mode. Rather than compromising the work, this frayed-at-the-edges feel only contributes to the energy of the performance as a whole. Energy and strength are very literally foregrounded in the choreography, prompting the audience that I was a part of to oscillate between gasps, tears and thick bursts of applause.

Babel appears as a whirlwind, a storm that comes from nowhere and seems to depart only moments after it begins, leaving everything changed in its wake. It is an impressively multifaceted meditation on reality and possibility, otherworldly while utterly at pace with our times.