Akram Khan's Ritual

Entering the theater at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, one hears birds chirping and the blowing of the wind. Haze swirls from the open stage revealing only the faint outline of a set built to resemble the windswept, sandstone rock formations of Wadi AlFann (Valley of the Arts) in the ancient oasis of AlUla in the Saudi Arabian desert. As the house lights go down, distant sounds of processioning grow closer and louder. Standing atop the rock mountain set now aglow from within (lighting design by the accomplished Zeynep Kepekli), we see the outline of a single female figure, the Matriarch. She removes her crown and lowers it at the same time as a woman on the ground below raises her arms upward to place a white headdress/mask upon her head. The woman on the ground begins to twitch and convulse until she collapses on the floor. Thus, we enter Akram Khan’s imagined ritual creation “Thikra: Night of Remembering.”

Performance

“Thikra: Night of Remembering” by Akram Khan

Place

Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center, New York, NY, July 2, 2026

Words

Karen Greenspan

“Thikra: Night of Remembering” by Akram Khan. Photograph by Christopher Duggan

The work, commissioned by Wadi AlFann (a newly minted arts destination) as part of the AlUla Arts Festival, premiered in 2025 as a site-specific performance in the monumental, outdoor, desert landscape along the trade route of the ancient Nabataean civilization. It helps to keep this vast natural setting in mind as one experiences this cross-cultural collaboration by renowned choreographer Akram Khan and award-winning Saudi visual artist Manal AlDowayan, who created the scenography and costume design. Now reimagined for stage, “Thikra” is the final production of Lincoln Center’s inaugural Contemporary Dance Festival made possible by the Pasculano Collaborative for Contemporary Dance.

Khan’s invented ritual is danced by an all-woman, international cast of eleven dancers—all fluent in traditional Indian classical dance as well as contemporary movement. Khan has made his mark merging these dance languages and it is a powerful combination. The original music score by award-winning vocalist, composer, and longtime associate, Aditya Prakash, along with sound design by Gareth Fry fuses together an evocative, stirring soundscape, within which the narrative unfolds. As understood from this program’s synopsis along with another from the original production, the Matriarch returns to the tribe one night a year for a collective ritual to summon its ancestral knowledge. Through reconnection with its collective memory and wisdom, the tribe can heal, find transcendence, and move with confidence into the future. In addition to the Matriarch, other protagonists include the Shaman, the Vessel, and the Twin of the Vessel—all of whom dance with stunning capacity.

“Thikra: Night of Remembering” by Akram Khan. Photograph by Christopher Duggan

According to visual director AlDowayan, the costume design and make-up (face and arm markings) take inspiration from traditional Nabatean motifs. She involved artisans from across AlUla in the creation of costumes—blending traditional designs with contemporary aesthetics—using native dyes and pigments (henna, saffron, turmeric) to elicit the natural tones of the desert landscape.

The Matriarch (wearing a henna red gown), having descended from her mountaintop abode, partners with the Shaman (wearing black) to transfer the tribal wisdom recorded beneath a stone tablet (part of the set) to the next generation (the Vessel and Twin). In the traditional world of shamanism, one typically goes through a near death experience and returns to the world of the living to heal and harmonize the relationship between human and spirit realms. Hence, the Vessel and the Twin go through intense scenes of convulsing and collapse to be reborn to their new roles as wisdom holders─symbolizing renewal for the community.

Amidst the drama enacted by the four protagonists, the other dancers form a tribal chorus dancing a compelling unison choreography introduced with the commanding female voices of the London Bulgarian Choir. The chorus sways, rocks, dances a two-step, and draws fists in iconic postures of feminine unity. Notably, the dancers’ long, loose hair becomes a signature choreographic element. With movements of braiding, wringing, combing, massaging, painting, and forceful tugging; hair is more than a crowning feature in this dance. When the dancers thread their fingers through their tresses and form a crown mudra above their head, it symbolizes power. When the Vessel and the Twin sit back-to-back and the Shaman braids their hair together, it suggests a sharing of life energy. When the Vessel uses her locks to paint the secrets from the stone onto the ground, it represents the passing down of knowledge and collective survival. The costumes are also integrated into the movement to create drama—as when the dancers’ lift and spread their sashes over their faces like veils or bite them as if to control rage or pain.

“Thikra: Night of Remembering” by Akram Khan. Photograph by Christopher Duggan

Throughout the action, Mythili Prakash as the Matriarch, exudes a benevolent aura, her narrative gestures leading the tribe and the audience through this rite of remembering. Midway through, she animates the ritual unleashing super-charged energy as she spins an incantation around the Vessel pounding her fists to her heart, then her mouth, and leaping upward like flames. Ching-Ying Chien, dressed in white as the Vessel, dances a contemporary vocabulary of generous leg extensions communicating receptive openness to her ritual function. Wearing an apricot-colored gown, Elpida Skourou, the Twin of the Vessel, spends much of the time (along with the Vessel) enacting a trance state—her movements filled with jerks and shaking. She emerges to arch backward into a luscious backbend, then uprights herself into an amazingly controlled spin. Joy Alpuerto Ritter gives a highly physicalized portrayal of the Shaman—fierce and raw. But her literal display of manipulative power over the initiates, whether due to Khan’s conceptualization or her own interpretation, verges on caricature.

Enacted trance and exorcism form a major part of “Thikra.” And that is where this production loses its way. The repeated and literal representation of involuntary, violent, convulsive movements of people in altered states; their physical collapse; and limp bodies being dragged here and there are questionable distractions. “Thikra” pulses with creative energy, but its literal bent disrupts the magic.

Karen Greenspan

Karen Greenspan is a New York City-based dance journalist and frequent contributor to Natural History Magazine, Dance Tabs, Ballet Review, and Tricycle among other publications. She is also the author of Footfalls from the Land of Happiness: A Journey into the Dances of Bhutan, published in 2019.

comments

Rajika Puri July 20, 2026

Thank you, Karen, for this vivid description of a work I dearly would have loved to physically be able to watch.
Rajika Puri

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