WORDS: Suze Harrington
Little Murmur was a tender, moving production highlighting choreographer Aakash Odedra’s struggles with dyslexia. After receiving his diagnosis in childhood, Odedra struggled at school, discovering only in adulthood that he had been misspelling his own name until the age of 21. Dancer Subhash Viman Gorania does a sublime job of depicting Odedra’s journey, highlighting internal battles and external expectations through dance with both precision and poise.
This production melded a visually stunning use of projection and shadow work with the simplicity of fabric and paper props to create a performance that was as touching as it was beautiful. Of particular note was the final half, which sees Subhash searching for his missing ‘A’ and results in papers falling from the sky faster than he can search through them. In a breathtaking sequence, a circular arrangement of electrical fans then whoosh all those papers into the centre of the stage, creating a literal and metaphorical whirlwind around the performer’s body.
While there were intentional moments of humour interspersed throughout the show (the children around me giggled loudly as Subhash scrambled around for his paper), I found myself unable to laugh. Instead, I felt deep empathy and a sense of desperation to help. The teacher in me felt visceral anguish watching him at such a loss. The performance was emotive, and I’m not too proud to admit that it moved me to tears on a couple of occasions as I reflected on students of my own who have wrestled with dyslexia, feeling like I’d gained a new, sacred insight into their struggle.
Gorania is to be commended for his elegant storytelling and his seamless interactions with the projections and staging. His performance is a stark reminder that when words fail, music and movement speak.
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