It starts out as a black and white cartoon. A storm, an inexorable rise in water, a woman falling from her raft. At the bottom of the ocean, waste, fish, and whales that save this woman in distress. “Jungle Book Reimagined” is a punch in the collective consciousness of the climate emergency.
The choreographer Akram Khan — who had made dance 700 lovers on the forecourt of the Hôtel de Ville in Paris in 2018 — powerfully adapted ” the jungle Book “. Mowgli is a child, climate refugee. Baloo and Bagheera watch over her. Ten dancers, with feline bodies, crawl on the ground. Or swing like monkeys in Part 2. They interact with the animals, as if drawn with chalk and projected onto a transparent canvas. Technology puts itself at the service of the show, serving new characters. Mowgli remembers his past, happy, with his mother, in a luxuriant nature. “Men and their machines” have destroyed everything. Forgetting that they were only the hosts of the Earth, forgetting to respect it.
All sounds, from dialogue to growls, were recorded. Only downside, the soundtrack is in English and the dialogues are surtitled, on the background of the stage, which disturbs the attention paid to the show. The translation attracts the gaze in spite of us, while we would like to stay focused on the story and its staging, perfectly balanced between momentum and slowness. The noises are perfectly synchronized with the movements. A shotgun blast, Baloo’s body quivers, convulses in a split second. Another shot, and it is the friendly bird, in drawing, which falls from the sky, mortally wounded. A young girl in the audience sheds a few tears, in silence. The children are captivated by this mixture of images and dances. They understand that animals should not be killed.
A darkly beautiful universe
Mowgli evolves in a flooded city, deserted by humans. The actual decor is limited to piles of boxes. Some are used to reconstitute the serpent Kaa, manipulated by the dancers. Baloo succeeds in breaking the serpent’s glass cage. In a theater in ruins, monkeys fill the balconies, drawn like in a comic strip. They move regarding above the dancing monkeys. This striking painting celebrates the joy of no longer living in zoos. But also the desire to look like a human. All the sets of the show are thus created by projections. A hunter ends up drowned by the rising waters. This time, the dancers shake a large aerial fabric, the waves grow bigger, enveloping the hunter until he disappears.
Some antics of Baloo tear us a smile in the darkness of this universe. Darkly beautiful. The pack wants to keep Mowgli, who tried to reconcile nature and men. The little girl prefers to return to her makeshift raft, following the waves.
« Jungle Book Reimagined », of Akram Khan, from 10 years old. At the Théâtre du Châtelet (Paris, I) until May 26. From 5 to 36 euros.
