Songs of the Bulbul review – sumptuously scored solo dance is full to bursting with feeling

If you see much contemporary dance, you’ll be familiar with the often all-pervasive air of gloom. Rumbling and droning soundtracks, dark, shadowy stages; an all-round apocalyptic mood. And sometimes you think, could we get a little joy around here, some hope? What would that look like?

Aakash Odedra’s Songs of the Bulbul is one answer to that. Odedra’s solo dance sails on composer Rushil Ranjan’s sumptuous, cinematic score played in a recording by co-commissioners Manchester Camerata. Ranjan has written film music for Netflix and others, and this has the grand sweep of an Indian epic, unashamedly dramatic, its recurring themes hummable by the end of the evening. Is it too much? Some might think so, might find its unbridled emotion too bombastic, too deliberately button-pushing. But why not harness all of music’s power? There may only be a single performer, but the stage is full to bursting with feeling.

At the opening, the mood on stage feels like dawn breaking in all its hopefulness. There’s a palpable connection with nature, thick branches hang vertically from the ceiling like an abstracted forest, red petals float from the sky. Odedra’s dancing is buoyant and joyful. He’s known as a beautiful performer of the north Indian dance kathak, a swift and light mover with the exactitude of classical training. But here, in choreography by Rani Khanam, who blends kathak with Sufism, Odedra seems freer, wilder; circling and swooping as the fabric of his robe ripples in his wake. The animating idea of the show, which comes from Sufism and Islamic poetry, revolves around the symbol of the bulbul, a caged songbird whose song gets sweeter as it approaches death. The story is subtle rather than explicit. What it feels like is a hero’s quest. Not off to battle enemies in strange lands, but more a quest within the self, with the same possibilities for adventure, adversity, loss and triumph.

Related: Lewis Major: Triptych review – intense movers trip the light fantastic

Leicester-based Odedra has hit a purple patch in the past couple of years, creating atmospheric, poetic duets Samsara (with Hu Shenyuan) and Mehek (with Aditi Mangaldas). Songs of the Bulbul has the confidence of a performer who has found his place. It is a song of beauty and light and life.

• Songs of the Bulbul is at the Lyceum , Edinburgh, until 11 August
• All our Edinburgh festival reviews