Interview with Akram Khan / Choreographer

Only in his mid-thirties, this young British- Bangladeshi choreographer has already tied up with the top-list greats in the bustling art world, gaining him a dashing stellar career and a center stage spotlight. Some of the names among his eminent co-workers are, the controversial British sculptor Anish Kapoor, the French ballet diva Sylvie Guillem,
and the international pop icon Kylie Minogue. And now with his newest creation in-i another beautiful name joins this list, the Oscar-winner actress Juliette Binoche. Okay, so some blabby critics and journalists are gradually starting to call him a high-flying careerist…but is he really so? Meeting up with him in a cozy restaurant in Paris, the man sitting in front of me with a café crème and a warm judicious smile, just seemed to be having fun staying true to his inexhaustible curiosity.

——Since your breakthrough in Zero Degrees (05) you have been dubbed as the “ Prince of contemporary dance”.
Akram: Well, I know. But frankly, I don’t care much about how I am looked upon. I just do what I want to do. Which is, by the way, usually the extreme opposite of what people want me to do. I mean, the truth for me is, that you can never play safe as an artist. You always have to take risks. That is the only true way for creating art. But anyway going back to your question, yes, Zero Degrees was a creative milestone for me. Because before that, in the early days, I used to perform to a lot of empty seats. It was such a depressing life, and I thought I ‘m such a depressing artist. Nobody sees me. I must be doing crap. Then one day a Hindu musician I know came up to me and said, “Imagine that each empty seat has a God sitting there”. So from that day on, faithfully taking in his advice, I put Krishna and Ganesa and Siva and all the Gods I knew in the audience.

——Wow, that is quite an audience.
Akram: It is. And also what you’re going to present to Krishna is totally different from what you’re going to present to Siva. Each of them is individual. So in a way, you become tremendously sensitive and aware of all these Gods in the theater. And for me, this goes exactly the same with people. Once you’re in a theater, you contact each and every one of them differently. The Japanese choreographer Saburo Teshigawara once said something very beautiful regarding to this concept, which I quite agree. He said that if there is 450 people in the audience, and one hour later it becomes 451, because one person comes in late, his whole breathing changes, as he senses every single person in that room. It is the same with me, or at least I’d like to think it is the same. On stage, my five senses are fully awake.

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This entry was posted on December 7, 2009 at 01:16.