A few nights ago I went to see Vertical Road, the latest dance work by the choreographer Akram Khan. The Brighton Dome programme said “the work takes it’s inspiration from universal myths of angels that symbolise ‘ascension’ – the road between the earthly and the spiritual, the Vertical Road“. As I’m intrigued by angels, myths and mysteries I was keen to see it.

Akram Khan is a dancer trained in both classical Kathak dance and contemporary dance. He has successfully incorporated elements of kathak into his own contemporary style. As he says in interviews, his new work, Vertical Road, is spiritual, drawing inspiration and using dancers from many cultures.

The performance gripped me from the start. It began with the sound of water. Behind a giant screen at the back of the stage, a figure could just be seen, his hands tracing circles in the fabric as though attempting to find a way through. Frozen dancers became high on energy; they danced exhortation, torment, blind servitude, listlessness, frustration, grief. No obvious story, but what I saw was people in the grip of relentless mechanical lives, almost regimented in their pursuit of something higher than themselves. They went through times of despair or ecstacy, often overlooking their simple, united humanity.

They tilt their hands upwards
looking into bright sound – whirling and moving in their thunderous lives.
Worshipping amongst the dust of ages,
seeking solace amongst statues, the shattered wings and stone cold hope of angels.
United in regiment and yearning,
they struggle.

The reaching out is touching.
The wait is over.
Found.

There was something universal about the performance. I found it quite moving.

weary, weathered angels
with lichen encrusted faces
caught in the web of time,
timeless guardians of warm stone.

I kept thinking of flying swans so I decided to give my book wings. They looked like stone angel’s wings before their wash of blue, so I found some photos of angel statues I took a while ago in a cemetery and a haunting, “gasping”-faced statue I took at Ephesus in Turkey which I particularly like. I printed out copies and stuck them in along with some latin lyric scraps of Panis Angelicus. I tore up a page of notes that I’d made for my “about me” page (that I’ll put up soon) and stuck the pieces on to the wings. I intend to do more with shreddings, scribblings, fragments, messages and murmurings in other projects.

Here is my stone angel swan carrying the night on its back.

The angel on the right needs a bit more definition. It’s a start.

It’s been fasinating and frustrating learning photoshop – bit by bit. I’ve also been dwelling on the sea, on watery things. From angels I’m now into mermaids,… fish …..anything oceanic in fact.

Below is a version of a simple mermaid picture, a photoshop experiment. I’m also including a piece of writing I discovered written up on a church wall in some back street of Barcelona. The author is unknown.

What were the thoughts of those who lived and slept in the vastness beneath the water.
Were these thieves and broken poets, these fugitives affected by some stigma;
Were they jealous or afraid of the world? How had they all gathered in this crepuscular
region?
What had they so much in common that they needed each other’s presence?
Nothing but hope. Hope. Hope like a pale sun……

These words were faint on the church wall, but beneath them was a list of names I could just make out. ‘Mervyn Peake’ was written amongst them; he wrote the Gormenghast trilogy which just happens to be amongst my favourite books.