River Dreams of Alexander
2006
Royal Palm Club – Lahore

River Dreams of Alexander was Amin’s third and final catwalk-based performance. Like the other two, it was produced by Pomme Amina Afzal with original music by Ustaaz. It was presented in Lahore with clothes created by Yahsir Waheed, Deepak Perwani and Sheikh Amer Hassan. The show imagined the hallucinogenic dreams Alexander Great might have experienced after he was gravely wounded in what is today the Pakistani city of Multan in 326 BCE. (Soon after, Alexander’s armies mutinied, demanding to return home, frustrating his dream of conquering India, which he believed to be the land of Dionysius). Amin’s interpretation of this epic story was divided into three “acts”: Death, Prophecy and Love. In Death, a woman, shrieking in disbelief, dragged a copper boat onstage that Amin had made. At its bow and stern were representations of bodhisattvas in the Greco-Roman style. Other women appeared and, reaching into the boat, retrieved a prone man lying within, whom they covered with gold dust. In Prophecy, the same man, wearing a loincloth and helmet embellished with leaves, rose and swayed. A woman appeared in a hooded white robe and copper mesh mask plated in nickel. Another woman in a martial bustier, also adorned with leaves, energetically kicked toward the audience. In Love, two men with black sarongs appeared on the catwalk and bathed one another’s bare chests with gold powder from a clay pot. Their hands joined, they walked to the end of the stage then lay down facing one another as a shehnai, a wind instrument traditionally played at South Asian weddings, sounded, hinting at the union of Alexander with his lover Hephaestion. Women sensuously adorned one another with Amin’s gold-plated jewelry. At the end of this section, and the show, Areeb appeared on the catwalk and soulfully sang a Sufi kalam, a devotional poem, in his powerful voice.