Leeds Playhouse – until 15 February 2020
Reviewed By Dawn Smallwood
4*****
Phoenix Dance Theatre makes a welcome return to the Leeds Playhouse with their world premiere of Black Waters. Working in collaboration with Rythmosaic, an Indian Dance Company, they present this anticipated and awaited work. An excerpt of what was to come had been featured in last autumn’s Phoenix at Home programme.
This contemporary work tells the two stories; firstly, the Zong massacre in the late 1700s where the Zong ship owners who, at the expense of 130 slaves’ lives, attempted to claim insurance and Hula Pani, a century later, is about the Indian freedom fighters who were incarcerated for exposing the British colonial’s regime.
Two very poignant and yet provocative narratives are presented and they are told with combined dance, movements and body language which tells in parallel the horrific plights the slaves and prisoners endured under the clutches of British colonialism. Black Waters is a testimony to how vulnerable individuals were amid historic accounts of prejudice and violence among difference races and ethnicities. Poignancy reigns from this emotional retelling of those narratives and how future opportunities including multiculturalism can give people individuality and belonging along with optimism and self worth.
The company perform evocatively and in synchronisation with a combination of drama, movement and dance representing a range of emotions which the affected victims of those events experienced. Under the creative choreography of Sharon Watson, Shambik Ghose and Dr Mitul Sengupta and set to Dishari Chakraborty’s diverse music, Black Waters captures the retelling of the less well known narratives and what they can be learnt from them and also shape the present and the future.
Phoenix Dance Theatre has an incredible track record for interpreting and sharing stories, some known and some not as well known, that are so relevant today. Black Waters is an excellent, powerful and provocative production which underlines the emotive and soulful yearnings which can be interpreted for past and present human plights.