Rush Review

'Rush' Review

Akram Khan is the choreographer of 'Rush' who is well known for his other work such as 'Zero Degrees' and 'Confluence'. 
Within 'Rush' the dance styles that you can see are classical Indian dance style which evolved from ancient origins fused with contemporary dance. The dance piece is inspired by parachute jumpers and the idea of free-falling. Khan liked the idea of experimenting with the five senses (Touch, Smell, Sight, Taste, Sound). Khan started his process of creating choreographic material by improvising and focusing on visualizing  movement/positions related to freefall, and the senses. There are 3 dancers in the piece making the dance a trio (Akram Khan, Moya Michael, Gwyn Emberton. The duration of the dance stands at 30 minutes long. 
The choreography is focused about actions of the waist , chest, arms and hands, the dancers perform the gestures and motifs either together in unison, or calling out rhythm changes in a traditional way. A rare Indian cycle of nine and a half beats in the choreography's structure for movement, space and music. 
The choreographic devices used in this dance are; Motif development, unison, cannon and repetition. Unison can be seen when the dancers start off the beginning of the dance by rearranging phrases of movement where the dancers circle their arms in a propeller fashion and the dancers use cannon and rearrange phrases to create interest to their dance and reinforce the idea of paragliding and free-falling as when you free-fall it is a manic sensation and you can see changes in speed and dynamics to show this. The tempo of the piece changed in the middle of the dance as if to show the speed of free falling after you jump out of the plane, and from this the dancer's actions of turns and rolls become faster and more of the dance space was used. I find this dance interesting to watch as the dancers use different speeds and the 3 dancers invariably are performing different movements at different times which creates some interest however it was extremely repetitive which i found i lost interest after a little while as there wasn't much else going on to the dance.