Dance without Movement

Zuleikha, the solo character in Dance without Movement, bounds onto the tiny stage in tears, a shining, elastic band of snot gently dripping from her nose. It’s a grimy detail that stays in the mind as one of the most memorable in a play that simply fails to engage with its audience.

Produced by Peshkar Productions, a group that aims to experiment with young British Asian Theatre, and showcased as part of this year’s InvAsian Festival, Dance without Movement tries to create a snapshot into the life of Zuleikha. Zuleikha is a British-Pakistani girl from Oldham, struggling with the evasions of her family—no one even tells her that her grandmother has died—and the pressures of fitting in. The energetic solo performer brings the character to life with a graceful ease, and her transformation from perplexed 10-year old to young adult fashion designer is played out confidently. By the end of the play, the miniscule stage is covered in a sprawl of vivid colours; shimmering saris and kaleidoscopic silks are left in a tumble at Zuleikha’s feet, reflecting the chaos that her life has become.

However, there’s a lack of detail in Sophia Rashid’s flimsy script which leaves the play feeling hollow. The occasional lines spoken in Urdu are not translated for the benefit of the audience, leaving some feeling that they’ve missed out on an important part of the story. In the end, we feel as excluded from the narrative as Zuleikha does from her family, likening Dance without Movement to a  workshop piece in development rather than a fully fledged narrative.