A peerless performer of the traditional Kathak dance form, Nahid Siddiqui faces a problem shared by many exponents of the ancient arts: how do you elude the noose of museumification and keep your art evolving, relevant to a modern audience?
My Motherland, an ambitious full-length work, is a brave attempt to meet the dilemma head on. Taking us on an epic journey, the piece opens amid the imagined tranquillity of the distant past and proceeds to chart a course through empires, wars and political upheaval.
Born and raised in Pakistan but based in Birmingham for the past 20 years, Siddiqui is not only striving to come to terms with her own heritage but with the cultural divide between east and west. As a result, My Motherland seems at times certain to be defeated by its inevitably fragmented nature. That it holds together is down to Siddiqui's undoubted magnetism as a performer.
When she is on stage, the signature Kathak bells bound to her ankles, she weaves a hypnotic spell that sidesteps notions of time and place. Using her body as a tightly coiled percussive instrument, her legs beat out rat-a-tat rhythms with tiny, snapping movements. The effect is entrancing. Dancer and music become entwined, each physical gesture mirrored by a syncopatic response.
It is at these moments that Siddiqui lives up to her idea that there is no divide between performer and viewer, the dance existing simply as a shared experience. My Motherland only fitfully achieved this, however. Part of the problem was lack of dynamic tension between music and movement. Kathak, like the majority of Asian dance forms, comes alive in the interplay between musician and dancer. My Motherland's mix of live and recorded music proved an uneasy combination.
In an effort to cover so much ground, it often seemed that the supporting trio of dancers had been reduced to a tableau vivant in a historical slide show. All of which is not to belittle Siddiqui's ambition: taking centre stage at the end, she offered a troubling and ambiguous vision of a culture torn by the problem of embracing the new while still cherishing the old.
