Translated Tales: "He Who Burns" Explores Sufi Narratives

“He Who Burns” ended with the dizzying turning of a lone white dancer against a darkened stage, recalling whirling Turkish Dervishes and flickering candle flames. The spinning sequence, like the performance as a whole, showcased both the admirable stamina and grace of the dancers and the over-ambitious and often confused choices of the director, choreographer and dancer Wendy Jehlen, a Harvard Divinity School graduate. “He Who Burns” played at Farkas Hall until Saturday night and was presented by the Harvard College Pakistan Students Association and Harvard Pakistani Students Group, with support from the Prince Alwaheed Bin Talal Islamic Studies Program, Harvard University Asia Center, and Harvard South Asia Institute. The multi-modal performance was at its best transfixing, calming, and transcendentally mystifying, though at times it slipped into self-indulgent heavy-handedness in its delivery of the core Sufi themes. Though explained in the Q-and-A session after the show, the incoherent and jumbled direction of the narrative ultimately isolated far more than it invited.

Through the media of dance, poetry, and music, Jehlen sought to tell the epic story of the sorrows of Iblis, the Sufi version of Satan, who is aflame with love for God. However, Iblis refuses to kow-tow to Adam (dancer Pradhuman Nayak), despite the insistence of God, and is banished from his presence and his love. It’s hard not to be reminded of Milton’s “Paradise Lost” and the sympathetic Satan. Unlike the epic poem, “He Who Burns” is a disjointed collection of seven acts, which can come across as a confusing narrative, especially for an audience unfamiliar with the Sufi tradition. Even with the aid of translations from Urdu to English projected on the screen behind the dancers and an explanatory program, the confusing progression of scenes and jarringly sudden ending left the plot details largely perplexing.

Jehlen did, however, make good use of the projector screen to cast an ever-changing kaleidoscope of colors that reflected subtle mood and texture changes in the music. Lighting by Stephen Petrilli also provided great visual beauty, especially to mostly silent scenes in which the show’s three dancers were bathed in light. Petrilli’s creative lighting made the dancers resemble lanterns juxtaposed against a dark night sky. This highlighted the binaries of light and dark, good and evil, fire and clay that pervaded the whole performance. The Sufi poetry translations in English showed the rich depth of Sufi poets such as Mansur Al-Hallaj and Hafiz, who provide compelling spiritual aphorisms on love and loss. One line in particular reflected both the title and theme of the play. Iblis describes love “to be like the flame of the candle always burning,” thereby invoking the theme of fire and light. All three dancers moved with fluid and effortless synergy, mastering the interplay of strength and softness of movement.

The God and Iblis dancers, Jun Lee and Jehlen respectively, moved particularly well together in a sort of caressing, tender unity that underscored Iblis’s adoration of God. Just as the screen translated Iblis’s declaration that “the sea of love is a sea that has no shore,” Jehlen copied the curvatures of Lee’s body, mapping out the same extensions and energy. It was hard not to see these dancers at times as artwork in motion, with one particular scene towards the end of the performance showing the three dancers in a state of stillness, forming a series of manneristic and statuesque poses. Sign language too was woven intelligently into the contemporary and traditional dance forms, strengthening the corporal narrative and its meaning.

The choreography at times tested the viewer’s patience. The beautiful, flower-like extensions at the beginning were offset by slow, prolonged pockets of silence and darkness that precariously teetered on the edge of being heavy-handed and awkward. While there were moments of fast-paced movement and execution that recalled elements of Kung Fu martial arts, these were too few and far between and contributed little to the narrative arc.

The Zen music that accompanied the production, under the direction of Nandlal Nayak, was at times soporific, but also haunting and beautiful, pulsating with a transcendental yogic energy. Pan flutes, shehnais and percussion could be heard, along with the insertion of contemporary techno music mid-way through the performance. The integration of modern music, however, seemed to have little conceptual purpose and offered no deeper insight.

Despite their efforts to make the play comprehensible, with so many languages—English, Urdu and sign language—the play remained at its close bewildering. Jehlen said in the Q-and-A session that the performance was a personal religious experience, but she failed to open that experience up to the audience and flesh out an understanding of Iblis’s pursuit of unity with God through self-annihilation. “He Who Burns” offered a fascinating, enriching portal into Sufi spirituality but was hindered ultimately by an execution that was shrouded in some level of obscurity.