Published
Thu, Sep 22, 2022, 15:00
- Created by Mavin Khoo with choreographers Joy Alpuerto Ritter and Akram Khan, the performance will preview this September 23rd and 24th at London's Cannon Factory.
![GIDEÖN scores MAN[or]GOD, a dance show exploring queer desire and divine love image](https://imgproxy.ra.co/_/quality:66/aHR0cHM6Ly9zdGF0aWMucmEuY28vaW1hZ2VzL25ld3MvMjAyMi9tYW5fZ29kX21hdmlua2hvb19zZXB0MjJfMWc0YTk4ODAuanBn)
Block9 cofounder and director GIDEÖN, AKA Gideon Berger, has scored a new theatre production by internationally acclaimed dance artist Mavin Khoo.
Across 75 minutes, MAN[or]GOD brings together dance, film and music to tell a story of queer desire and divine love through the lens of Khoo's experience as a queer South Asian man living in London. The show features choreography from dance artists Joy Alpuerto Ritter and Akram Khan and will premiere this Friday and Saturday, September 23rd and 24th, at The Cannon Factory in North London.
"Writing the music for MAN[or]GOD has taken me on a journey that is linked both philosophically and geographically to the narrative it is in support of," Berger told Resident Advisor. "The show explores the space between spirituality, dance and London’s nightlife underworld of the '90s. Because I am in dual roles on this project, acting as both creative director and composer, it’s my job to interrogate and push the narrative as well as write the music that the storytelling is set to."
Berger describes the music as a combination of Malaysian gamelan, Indian classical and "downstairs at Berghain on a Monday morning."
Mavin Khoo is internationally recognised as a dance artist, teacher, choreographer and scholar. He is best known as a soloist of the Indian classical dance form, Bharata Natyam and he has worked with the Venice Biennale and Canada Dance Festival.
"Celebrating my 30-year journey as a professional dance artist, I feel empowered to tell my story with a sense of ownership," Khoo said. "In this liminal experience, God and sex belong to the same space, where life reveals its beauty through its own complexities and tensions. Suspended [in] space and time, we stop trying to decipher and apprehend, we feel and surrender."
Watch the trailer for MAN[or]GOD and check out the listings below for more details.