Freedom Dance

But Akram Khan need not worry. His non-show-level dance is what most will never achieve and only the best can aspire to. When he recently took the stage for The Park’s New Festival (curated and conceived by Prakriti Foundation) in Delhi,there was no disputing the legitimacy of the title he has earned over the last decade — one of UK’s finest choreographers. The British-Bangladeshi’s 90-minute performance of Kathak and contemporary dance took the audience from this world to another. The 38-year-old dances with the might of thunder,the lines of lightning and the terrifying beauty of a summer thunderstorm. He transforms space,performs with precision and releases you enriched.

As a choreographer and founder of the Akram Khan Company,Khan appeals to a wide range of tastes. If he has worked on the theme of “mortality” with British film director Danny Boyle and 50 dancers for the recent Olympics opening ceremony,he has also performed a duet with Oscar-winning actress Juliette Binoche on sets designed by Anish Kapoor.

Performing in India after nearly a decade for a six-city tour,Khan chose Gnosis — a Kathak solo and a contemporary duet with Taiwanese dancer Fang-Yi Sheu about the blindfolded Gandhari and her son Duryodhana — to illustrate his journey as both a dancer and a choreographer.

From the age of seven,Khan trained under the Kathak master Pratap Pawar and went on to learn contemporary dance in the UK and Belgium. But Khan’s repertoire makes categories like “modern” and “classical” redundant. A cello strums through his tarana,a tabla thrums through Gnosis. Khan silences those demands for classification with a simple answer,“There is only bad dance and good dance. Good dance transcends the form. Coomi Behen (Kumudini Lakhia) says it best,‘I hold no flags for any country. I need both hands free to dance’. It is about what message you want to say,it doesn’t matter where it comes from.”

Born to Bangladeshi immigrants who ran a restaurant in London,he grew up with various influences. Bullied and a loner,he earned respect in school for the first time when he performed Michael Jackson’s moonwalk. He knew how to move. He got people to watch. His mother even bought the 14-year-old a Thriller red leather jacket,which he still cherishes. “I will give it to my son…if I have one,” he says,“It doesn’t fit me any longer.”

He grew up with Batman and Spiderman as his superheroes. But the realisation that he would never be chosen to play Spiderman turned him to the Indian epics; as a teenager he performed and toured with Peter Brooks’ Mahabharata for two years. Khan has used the various crosscurrents of youth as building blocks to create an interesting persona and a more relevant dance form. When he meets fellow dancers in Delhi,he resembles a hipster with shaved head,and a few days’ stubble flecked with grey. He is clad in red jeans,a hoodie and a Bruce Lee T-shirt. He smokes Gold Flake cigarettes “out of nervousness”. On stage,in a structured orange kurta,he is the Kathak maestro,who with a flick of his hand becomes Shiva with the Ganga flowing from his locks. He belongs to the MTV generation,one that is bored easily. But he also belongs to the guru-shishya parampara,for whom “classical dance is a temple”. He is this person. And that person. And in this vulnerability he has “found a home”.

The idea of combining the classical with the modern is hardly new,it has been tried repeatedly,and often with amateurish results. Only a rare few like Aditi Mangaldas have got it right because of technical prowess. A dancer can experiment with a form only once he/she has mastered it. “Classical dance is my imprisonment and I mean that in a positive way. It gives me a form which I can then fight against to become formless,” he says.

Khan’s technical perfection is forged from hours and years of practice. Unknown to his parents,he bunked an entire year of school to dance in the garage of his parents’ house for 10 hours a day. “I was doing it wrong but I did it,” he says. The school authorities called his parents at the end of the year and told them they had never met their son. Khan later learned that he had inherited the will to dance from his mother. As a child,her mathematician-father forbade her from dancing. So,she would pack her ghungroos and dance clothes in her steel tiffin box and learn folk dance after school hours. Khan’s first taste of the stage came from performing at local Bangladeshi and Indian melas in the UK,which his mother sent him to. “My earliest memories of those melas is of no one listening or watching. If you can command people who’ve not paid to watch you,then you have something. You have to fight to be seen or heard. And so it brought the performer out,” he says.

Khan’s work has changed over the decades; as a dancer his body is making more demands,as a choreographer he now asks more from his dancers. “Earlier I used to be more understanding if a dancer had an injury. Now I am a dictator. Now if I want something — die for me. Or that is the exit”. He says at the start of the project he entices people,heeding suggestions and inputs,but once he has the vision,it must be followed. As a choreographer,he admits that with experience he is slowly moving away from collaborating and towards commissioning.

While his earlier pieces,like the epic Desh,dealt with the personal and wrestled with questions of identity,for the first time he is now telling other people’s stories. Right now,he is in the throes of Stravinsky’s music. He is working on a piece based on the composer’s life,ITMOI,(In the Mind of the Igor). Next year will see the release of the film Desert Dancer (with Frieda Pinto),which he has worked on,about a male dancer in Iran who is not allowed to dance and then escapes to France.

He finds that many dancers have imprisoned their minds and straitjacketed their bodies. He strives to set them free. While working on a recent collaborative piece,he told the dancers to sit and observe people at King’s Cross station in central London. He left them at the station for eight hours,watching them silently. He fended off keen requests telling them they’d have to wait at least two weeks before any of them danced in the studio. For Khan,freedom comes from being denied. In the majesty of his dance he is truly free.