Attiki Cultural Society - Outwitting the Devil Akram Khan

Outwitting the Devil Akram Khan

The truth was a mirror in the hands of God. It fell, and broke into pieces. Everybody took a piece, they looked at it and thought they had the truth.
Jalalludin Rumi

Outwitting the Devil was presented at the ODEON OF HERODES ATTICUS on 28 September 2021..in Athens. by Attiki Cultural Society

The so much talked , emblematic production presented in the Avignon Festival in the Cour D Honneur of Palais des Papes for the first time, OUTWITTING THE DEVIL in the theater under Acropolis will find its ideal environment ...

The magical and mesmerizing Roman Amphitheater , Odeon of Herodes Atticus matches perfectly with the dark hypnotic atmosphere of the show

“Close to a restorative ritual, the show conjures up the founding myths to rejuvenate their key meaning.

The beauty of the choreographed body animates a telluric dance that seems to go back beyond time, beyond the Antique. The bodies bend to the original contemporary music, at the same time archaic. An alchemy serving a story and a sensitive dramaturgy, understandable beyond words.”
— France Info

Having been honoured with the Olivieraward 2019 for his contribution to the Arts, dance and the promotion of intercultural dialogue Akram Khan creates and speaks with a sense of universal urgency for a Collective Humanity

Attiki Cultural Society coproducer of Outwitting the Devil/ Akram Khan Company

“As I arrive at the end of my dancing career, I have awakened to a new way of dancing. And that is to dance my ideas through the bodies of others, including older dancers, who carry their histories and complex emotional experiences within them. But what remains unchanged is my passion for exploring old and new myths in the context of our times.” – Akram Khan

Outwitting the Devil is inspired by a fragment of the 12 broken clay tablets which together make up one of the world’s oldest great works of literature, the ancient Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh. Akram Khan’s new work embodies a violent chapter in young Gilgamesh’s life, read and recalled by his older, dying self. It tells the story of Gilgamesh’s domestication of and friendship with the wild man Enkidu, their journey to the vast Cedar Forest, home to wild beings and spirits, and the slaughter of its guardian Humbaba. Fuelled by strength and pride, Young Gilgamesh determines to establish his fame and fortify the city of Uruk as a monument to himself. But the killing of Humbaba and destruction of the forest and its animals angers the gods, who punish the young king by taking the life of his beloved Enkidu. Confronted with the truth and sorrow of human mortality, Gilgamesh passes into history, to become a fragment among the broken remnants of human culture and memory. Outwitting the Devil is a myth of all times, for our times. Outwitting the Devil began around a table, with an image of the Last Supper. Or rather, it began with Australian artist Susan Dorothea White’s response to Leonardo da Vinci’s iconic painting, which she titled The First Supper, and which depicted women of many cultures gathered at a table. White’s intention was to challenge the assumptions of a patriarchal religion.Akram Khan saw an image of the painting as a schoolboy and was struck by the diversity of bodies and cultures depicted there. How we tell the stories of our myths matters: our systems of belief and our forms of power are defined by the question of who sits at the table.

Central to Tom Scutt’s design for Outwitting the Devil is a large black wooden box; it suggests a table, and also a tomb - the first as well as the last supper. It is both a meeting place and a monument, and it sits among hundreds of fragments and remnants suggesting the ruins of human culture and the despoliation of the natural world.

The idea of the first supper took us back to the origin stories of one of the world’s first ‘civilisations’ – that of ancient Sumer – recorded in the Epic of Gilgamesh some 4000 years ago. Gilgamesh may have been an historical king of Uruk in Southern Mesopotamia. His rule coincided with the rise of large walled cities, stratified urban culture, slavery, warfare, literary writing, and the creation of historical records. His culture was patriarchal and hierarchical; his gods took human form and were thought to have made mankind – like the tablets on which scribes recorded his timeless deeds – out of clay. But people, like clay tablets, like the great city of Uruk and Sumerian civilisation itself, fall and break.

Among the fragments of the Epic unearthed in Iraq in 2011 was a clay shard containing 20 previously unknown lines from Tablet V. They describe Gilgamesh’s awe at the abundance and biodiversity of the great Cedar Forest, and Enkidu’s shame at having reduced it ‘to a wasteland’.

This is, in effect, the world’s first environmental poem. Outwitting the Devil is at once a memory and a confession, a puzzle pieced together in the dark that contains the story of who we once were, and may again become.

Artistic Director/Choreographer. Akram Khan

Dramaturg. Ruth Little

Lighting Designer. Aideen Malone

Visual Designer Tom Scutt

Original Music Score and Sound Design. Vincenzo Lamagna

Costume Designer. Kimie Nakano

Writer. Jordan Tannahill

Creative Associate and Coach. Mavin Khoo

Rehearsal directors. Ching-Ying Chien, Nicky Henshall, Mavin Khoo, Azusa Seyama

Material performed by Pallavi Anand, Luke Jessop, Jasper Narvaez, Louis T. Partridge, Elpida Skourou, François Testory

Executive Producer Farooq Chaudhry
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Technical Manager Tina Fagan
Production Manager Rich Fagan
Stage Manager Lars Davidson
Lighting Engineer Stéphane Déjours
Sound Engineer Phil Wood
Project/Tour Manager Mashitah Omar
LED Light Tube manufactured and supplied by Light Contrast Ltd Original material devised by Ching-Ying Chien, Andrew Pan, Dominique Petit, James Vu Anh Pham, Mythili Prakash, Sam Asa Pratt

Co-produced by Attiki Cultural Society.Athens Greece. Théâtre de Namur – Centre Scénique, CENTRAL – Centre Culturel de La Louvière, Festival d’Avignon, Théâtre de la Ville – Paris, Sadler’s Wells London, La Comédie de Clermont-Ferrand – scène nationale, COLOURS International Dance Festival 2019 – Stuttgart

Supported by Arts Council England.

Exclusive representative for Greece and coproducer Attiki Cultural Society.

Outwitting the Devil. Ξορκίζοντας το Κακό. 'Ακραμ Κάν Ωδείο Ηρώδου Αττικού. 28 Σεπτεμβρίου 2021 Ωρα 21.00 Μια συμπαραγωγή της Αττικής Πολιτιστικής Εταιρείας με την Akram Khan Company. Φεστιβάλ Αβινιόν 2019..

Outwitting the Devil Akram Khan / 5 Οκτωβρίου 2021 Θεσσαλονίκη. Δημήτρια Μέγαρο Μουσικής Θεσσαλονίκης

http://www.akramkhancompany outwitting the Devil

Outwitting the Devil. Inrenational Tour which was interrupted byu COVID 19 restrictions.. Continue 2021

World Première: 13-14 July 2019, Stuttgart Avignon Festival Palais des Papes 2019 , Impulstanz Dance, Saddler's Wells London,2021 Theatre De La Ville Paris Belgrade Intenational Festival 2021, Sibiu International Festival Romania2021, Dance First , Tanz Festival Edinburgh International Festival International Theatre Amsterdam 2019 Les Grands Theatres Luxemburg.. Maison de La Danse Lyon