The light is bright and cold in a square brick-walled room of Théâtre Garonne’s Ateliers, an appropriate casket for Samir Kennedy’s solo The Aching. The British-Algerian dance artist based in Marseille is sitting on a simple chair, his back towards us. He starts singing. His voice is clear and vibrant. The tone is of a complaint, seemingly from a traditional folk song. In the lyrics, we grasp bits of a dialogue between a mother and son, him being sick to his heart. Sorrow and beauty are tangled in a tune. A discreet beep signals the end of the sequence. From that moment on, this sound effect marks the inevitable passage of time, an obligation to move on to another song, another dance.
Kennedy’s movements are measured, carried out calmly. Nothing is abrupt, everything is precise. Two fingers point like a weapon on a temple. He stands on the chair, passing an imaginary rope around his neck. The images are striking and yet the choreography unfolds with great tranquillity, like a sweet requiem, if there is such a thing. The traditional repertoire is filled with contrasting tunes, where horror stories are sung in a ballad-like tone. Lamentations ooze like sweet poison, making us wonder who is gone, what loss surrounds the existence of this work. The musical passages are all beautifuly chosen, in the lyrics the birds are alone and free while the humans struggle with death. There is enough space to invite one’s own wandering ghosts to come and listen, and perhaps warm to the music. Kennedy sings for himself, for those absent, but invites us to join on the ritual. The tone shifts from time to time, humour comes in the form of a glance, but somehow fear always lurks in the depths. As Kennedy puts on an old pink dress trimmed with lace the image of a creepy adult doll arises, hinting at his previous works which veer towards the horror genre.
Post-show, he explains that at the start of this creation, ‘all gesture seemed absurd, every dance impossible’. The only possible channel of expression appeared to be the voice, the gesture of filling the space with songs, vibrations and resonance; the voice as a historically privileged means of communicating with the dead.
An elegant booklet listing the songs and lyrics gives a chance to fill in the blanks. One short text slices like a knife as it fathoms the link binding the choreographer to the departed. The Aching is like a haunting song, simple enough not to be sacred, light enough not to be just dark, sombre enough to be deeply moving.
