Aakash Odedra Company World Premiere At Edinburgh International Festival

After the success of the duet Samsara in 2022, Aakash Odedra Company returns to the Edinburgh International Festival with Songs of the Bulbul. This captivating new solo for the virtuoso performer Odedra has been created with Delhi-based Kathak choreographer Rani Khanam. Its World Premiere performances run from Friday 9 August to Sunday 11 August at The Lyceum Theatre.

Songs of the Bulbul lays bare Odedra's personal and spiritual dance landscape on stage. Rani Khanam's exquisite storytelling choreography features expressive hand gestures and flowing lines through space. Khanam is renowned for her intimate knowledge of Islamic and Sufi texts and she has worked widely with Sufi musicians, singers and dancers from across the Islamic world.

Together they tell an ancient Sufi myth about the bulbul, a Persian nightingale, a symbol of the beauty of the natural world and the pursuit of religious enlightenment, which, when captured, sings a glorious tune. The song reaches an inexpressibly beautiful pitch in the moments before it perishes from despair.

Odedra says: “Each stage of the dance builds a sense of desperation or longing. In the end, the bird leaves its body and that's the way it frees itself. For me, it's an important parallel to the life of an artist because every time I perform, I feel I die and leave a part of myself on stage until in the end there's nothing left.”

Songs of the Bulbul has been developed with London-based Sufi/Kathak composer Rushil Ranjan whose original score will be played in a recording by the Manchester Camerata.

In Songs of the Bulbul, music, dance and poetry traditions of Sufism combine in a work that is both ferocious and contemplative, where the bulbul myth becomes a metaphor for the ephemeral nature of dance and life itself.

This ambitious new work resonates with the theme of this year's Edinburgh International Festival – Rituals That Unite Us. The original cultural festival that defines Edinburgh as the world's Festival City, the International Festival takes over the Scottish capital this August between 2 and 25 August with an expansive programme of world-leading opera, music, theatre and dance.

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