When his mother wished him “happy birthday” in English the day he turned ten, Akram Khan was quite taken aback. Up until that moment, she had only spoken Bengali with him, and he was convinced she didn’t know any English. This life situated in between two different cultures had a deep impact on Akram Khan’s childhood. On one side, there was London, the modern Western metropolis in which he grew up. On the other side stood the Bengali culture of his ancestors, which played a central role for Akram Khan’s family. Starting at the age of seven, he was instructed in Kathak, a traditional Indian dance style, which combines movements, songs and narratives about religious or mundane occurrences into stories that also reveal something about the history of the country.
After absolving training in contemporary dance and engagements as a dancer in various companies and productions, Akram Khan began to create his own choreographies. From the very start, he has attempted to connect the two poles of his childhood within his pieces. He integrates storytelling, which had long since ceased to play a role in the world of European dance, into the body languages of modern Western dancing. He makes additional use of elements drawn from Kathak, which is characterised by the wearing of bells around the ankles, jumps, pirouettes and symbolic hand and finger movements. However, Akram Khan’s pieces do not only represent a unique fusion of Asian and European traditions in the means and movement forms they feature – thematically, one also finds time and again those ancient tales from Indian mythology that he first encountered back in his childhood.
For instance, the story of the honey tiger that makes an appearance in Akram Khan’s solo project Desh and in the version for children derived from it known as Chotto Desh. In Bengali, “desh” means “homeland” or “little homeland” and the eponymous piece is Akram Khan’s most radical examination of his own roots to date: a call to a telephone hotline located in a call centre in Bangladesh transports the dancer back to the places where his grandparents lived and he begins to recall the stories from his childhood. Accustomed to the orderly flow of traffic in London, he stumbles helplessly through the crowded streets of Asia. Or he shows the exhausting labour of the shipyard workers, whose rhythmic striking with hammers Khan internalised during a research trip to Bangladesh. Akram Khan situates his choreographies in the midst of modern spatial, sound and video installations and creates strong, evolving images. For example, he climbs a tree projected onto the stage wall or hangs upside down in a jungle of white paper webs.
In another instance, simply through adopting a stooped posture and showing a face painted on his shaved head, Akram Khan transforms himself on the empty stage into his father, who lectures his son non-stop and tells of the family’s struggle for survival. Family is an important point of reference for Akram Khan, in life as well as in art. The fact that as an artist he seeks answers to contemporary questions in precisely those old stories that hardly interested him as a child must surely please his father.