After a performance in Brisbane, he flew to London to spend some hours in his studio to rehearse, missed his flight to India, and finally arrived in Chennai via Bangalore, jetlagged and exhausted. Yet, one of the world’s most feted dancer-choreographers, Akram Khan, took just a few minutes to throw the bags into his room at The Park and appear in the lounge, eager as always, to talk about his art.
A light cardigan in blue, a blue T-shirt, blue trousers and a blue cap, you would guess he is a baseball player if you passed him by in the street. It’s only when Khan stylistically throws his hands in the air and almost leaps off the couch to explain a movement that you are convinced why he is what he is.
“I love coming to this city. This, I think, is my fourth visit,” he begins. “I love the fact that people here value the arts. It’s so nice when art is part of the philosophy. It becomes sacred; is cherished. Otherwise, it could be a struggle to pursue it and be appreciated.”
It is hard to believe when Khan says he was forced into dance. His mother wanted him to be initiated into the culture, since he was born and brought up in London as a second-generation Bangladeshi immigrant. “My mother herself was very keen to learn and perform Kathak, but her prominent mathematician father didn’t let her do so.”
His dance training began at age three with folk forms, and by seven, he had moved to Kathak under Pratap Pawar. “I think he is one of the first to have attempted Flamenco-Kathak in the Eighties. His style of integration was beautiful. To me, he was an inspiration, not as a dancer, but as someone who helped me find my identity in Britain as an outsider. It was only much later that I took dance seriously,” says Khan, who at 14 toured the world with Peter Brook’s Mahabharata . He revisits the epic in his production Until the Lions , which premieres in January next.
He began training hard, almost 10 hours a day for a year, in his father’s garage. His parents were concerned about his growing obsession. They didn’t want him to make dance his calling. He fled to Leicester, to study Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham and discover Pina Bausch. And then came up with a distinctive, fascinating physical language all his own. “My world is contemporary, but I take into it everything I know about Kathak. In the classical form, there is a code, a language, and you connect your personal journey to them. In contemporary, you are yourself, naked emotionally,” he says, explaining how his body now speaks to him.
“It talks back to me. It says, ‘hey, you make me work so much. You will now feel the pain’,” smiles Khan, who suffered a tear in his Achilles tendon in 2012.
“I was in a lot of pain. But as dancers, we are constantly in denial about it. I kept saying, ‘I will be fine’. I think in the next five years, I will retire. I want to invest more in choreographing for youngsters. Especially after the birth of my daughter Sayuri and son Kenzo, I want to focus on the future. I also want to give more time to my Kathak dancer-Japanese wife and my mother, who are my strengths. After my first marriage to Shanell Winlock, a South African dancer, broke, I learnt a bitter lesson — to stop being a workaholic, and that if you want to be one, not to get married,” laughs the celebrated soloist, with an enviable body of work for his Akram Khan Company and for high-profile collaborators, including top ballerina Sylvie Guillem, sculptor Anish Kapoor, writer Hanif Kureishi, composer Steve Reich, filmmaker Danny Boyle, singer Kylie Minogue and more. “I like to be a student. I learn about myself through their eyes, when working with such geniuses. You think maybe it will rub off on you.”
His is an interesting trajectory. An exciting journey too — from being nobody in school to being recognised as the winner of a disco competition with a Michael Jackson ‘Thriller’ routine. When his classmates and teachers said ‘Well done, Akram’, he was delighted they knew his name.
“I always felt intimidated to speak in front of others who seemed so intelligent. I flunked my A-levels thrice. My parents were frustrated. I would dream of Michael Jackson, Bruce Lee and Charlie Chaplin in the exam hall. I got U, which means unclassified. Suddenly, I realised my body could be the way I communicate. In some way, I began to match up to my mathematical genius grandfather, since I excelled in patterns. And choreography is about patterns — Nature and human patterns. The immigrant in me had finally found refuge, that too, in the hearts of people. Right now, I am speaking a little about the Syrian refugees. In a way, we are all migrants; travellers who are constantly in search of interesting stopovers — Chennai is one,” says Khan.
Enter the ring
Torobaka that brings together Akram Khan and contemporary Flamenco expert Israel Galvan will be staged today at Sir Mutha Venkata Subba Rao Concert Hall as part of The Park’s New Festival, curated by Prakriti Foundation. It is being presented by the British Council and the Embassy of Spain in India.
The production takes its name from a Maori-inspired phonetic poem by Tristan Tzara. ‘Toro’ means bull and ‘baka’ means cow, both sacred animals in the traditions of the dancers. The concert will be a synthesis of Kathak-influenced spins and moves and pulsating Flamenco footwork.
The performance, along with other presentations at the festival, will travel to New Delhi, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Mumbai and Kolkata.
Tickets for Torobaka priced at Rs. 500, Rs. 300 and Rs. 100 are available at eventjini.com and bookmyshow.com
For details call, 86086 85156 or visit www.theparknew festival.com
