Premiered in 2022, Jungle Book reimagined is a choreography by Akram Khan, a British-born choreographer of Bangladeshi descent. The work was adapted from a popular book by Rudyard Kipling, a prolific writer and Literature Nobel Prize winner. Revolving around the interaction between humans and animals, Akram Khan’s dance merges with contemporary Kathak, embodied in the dancers’ moves, as they rapidly morph into wild animals. This animalistic dialogue coalesces into a unique stage vocabulary, accentuated by the distinctive forms of different characters. As the dialogue is pre-recorded, the audience can synchronise the audio with the action on stage. Large-sized animations are projected on transparent screens at the front of the stage, immersing the audience in a mysterious jungle. The hand-drawn lines are juxtaposed with the performers’ movements, evoking images that traverse the present and the future, flowing between memory and imagination.

A prescient work written 130 years ago, the original novel examines how humans learn to coexist with animals and imagines a return to nature. Evoking the present moment, Akran Khan’s reimagined version reminds us that we must learn to co-exist with nature and rethink who will survive in a post-apocalyptic world.

By Pacing Far
Pacing Far has been writing reviews and feature articles on theatre and culture in various media websites in Hong Kong and Macao since 1998.

This article is summarised and translated from Chinese.