I admire the work of Amina Khayyam. The Slough-based dancer and choreographer has made pieces about domestic violence (Bird), sexuality (You&Me) and nonconformist women (Slut). She often works in consultation with community groups, drawing on the lives of marginalised and underrepresented women. Rooted in north Indian kathak dance, she has an unforced authority over her movement, a softness and certainty, that draws your focus towards her.
But Khayyam’s latest piece, Bibi Rukiya’s Reckless Daughter, doesn’t quite hit home. It is in part inspired by Federico García Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba, the story of a grieving, domineering mother who isolates her five daughters in an oppressive household. Khayyam’s take is a story of how families, and mothers, perpetuate patriarchal systems by repeating the repressions they themselves experienced.
The matriarch of the tale is potentially a fascinating character for Khayyam to explore – the tensions between tradition, honour, respect and freedom, the fear and love you have for your children. In this version, Bibi Rukiya has three daughters, one mostly falling in line – mother and daughter dance together, at a distance but in sync. The other two are more tearaway, wanting to dress up in high heels and dance a Bollywood-pop mashup to Beyoncé – at least until the spectre of their mother puts a lid on their fun.
Rather than domineering, Khayyam is a sometimes distant figure, muted in disapproval. The whole show is somewhat muted, in fact. There is a low-level tension, brooding like the anxious shimmer of bells on dancer Abirami Eswar’s ankles. But the real grit and detail of the subject – the question of what these women desire and in what way they are being thwarted, the texture of their emotions, the complexity of the characters and their family dynamic – is absent. It all ends in tragedy but tinged with confusion.
As well as Lorca, the story is based on the experience of one of the women who took part in Khayyam’s community groups. There is powerful real-life testimony at the heart of this work, but too much goes unsaid.
