Juliette Binoche and Akram Khan’s In-I is Full of Love
The dance project In-I, produced and performed by actress Juliette Binoche and dancer Akram Khan is on view at Brooklyn Academy of Music as part of the Next Wave Festival. What the performance achieves in the realm of contemporary dance is disputable, however it brings together the best parts of an actor’s and dancer’s performance in the name of love.
If I were to describe Juliette Binoche, I would first talk about her cheekbones and then her voice and then the French accent that fits so well with her soft voice. And so that’s how In-I begins, with Binoche talking, telling a story of a woman who longs for a man. She eyes a guy in the movie theater, she watches him from the back, she watches as he moves his neck while talking to his friend. And she starts following him after the movie. The music hastens to emphasize the boldness of her moves and her determinacy. This is the best part of a relatively short performance, after that it all follows as expected. Binoche and Khan start living together, they have their passionate fights and then make love, break up and then make love again.
They also included religious bits in the performance, but that’s not the part I’m interested in. Akram Khan plays a conflicted Muslim and his conflictory behavior along with his macho side seems to be the main problem in their relationship. However I think these conflicts have just been added to prolong the performance. The most interestingly real part is, like I’ve said before, the beginning. The spontaneity of their meeting, and the modern setting, the movie theater, the subway, not physically realized but is being told by Binoche, is what makes it all exciting for us New Yorker viewers. The thought of actually liking someone at first site, following them, shouting at them as Binoche does, “I wanna be with you!”… I don’t know anything more exciting than this possibility for our ordinary, monotonous lives. So In-I gives you that hope and Philip Sheppard’s wonderful score helps you live through the experience as Khan and Binoche are performing.
And here’s the soundtrack via Philip Sheppard’s blog: RadioMovies
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