Akram Khan - “My Body is a Living Museum”
An alive archive, the creative genius Akram Khan’s journey of passion.
BY: MALIKA DAYA
Photo via Birmingham What’s On Live
The mind and body are not two separate entities. But more often than not, we treat them as though they are. We prioritize the mind over the body, indulging only in the stories our imagination creates. But what does it feel like to tap into the energy within, to listen to the stories and truths held in our spines? In our toes? In our arms?
What is it that our bodies are trying to communicate? And more importantly, how can we tune into the energy, truths, and wisdom held within us to learn more about ourselves and our experience of the world?
I am inspired by dancers. And envious of their ability to continually cultivate a relationship with their bodies. They allow their minds and bodies to fall into sync as they flow with grace, passion, and purpose. The soul of dance comes from the provocative stories that radiate and come alive from within a dancer’s being. They add the pulse to the rhythm and life to the movement.
Many dancers were born to dance and Akram Khan is one of them. For him, dance is his mother tongue.
Photo via Asian Voice
Akram Khan is one of the world’s most talented, award-winning dance choreographers, and performers. He is an artist who has passionately contributed to the arts and culture scene globally, collaborating with world-class, multidisciplinary artists. Khan’s repertoire includes the successes of his productions such as Kaash, zero degrees, and XENOS. His aesthetic is provoking as he cracks open each narrative in a rather intimate and epic way.
As a dancer, it is as though Khan’s soul is bleeding into his art through movement. Brought up in the intersections of two worlds, Khan often refers to his body and dance as a living museum. He is an alive archive embracing both, a Bangladeshi ancestry and his own life journey in the UK, symbolized through his craft in Northern Indian classical Kathak and contemporary dance.
Akram has said that he was born out of crisis. His parents, Mosharaf and Anwara Khan have lived through the Bangladesh war for independence from Pakistan. They moved to London, England before Akram was born. And like most immigrant parents, they strived to keep alive the heartbeat of the motherland within their children.
Anwara Khan, Akram’s mother, endeavoured to do so by teaching him Northern Indian classical Kathak dancing. Kathakar literally translates to storyteller. Kathakars tell epics and myths through graceful hand movements, intensive footwork, and captivating facial expressions.
From young he trained in this style, skipping school to refine his form in the garage, finding oneness with his ghungroos. Ghungroos are percussive instruments Kathak dancers wear on their feet like anklets. They each have tiny, sacred, bells which hold the spirit of the dance. In an article by the Hindu Business Line, Akram says, “my ghungroos… are an extension of myself. My second skin. The time and energy a dancer invests in footwork, body movements, makes these tiny brass bells—tied neatly to study white cord—crucial to his existence, to his life on stage.”
While speaking about his spiritual connection with his ghungroos Khan shares, “My ghungroos help me recreate sounds that lead me to a doorway to many memories and connections. A threshold from where I can listen to the sound that belongs to temples, to stories, to mythology The bells let me fly, across time and memory zones, and be firmly grounded at the same time. No matter where the head and the heart travel, the feet are on the ground.”
Being a second generation immigrant brought with it, its own set of opportunities and challenges for Akram. His family constantly faced violent, racist attacks as immigrant restaurant owners and Akram found resistance through dance. He navigated around his father’s hopes for him to take over the restaurant one day to continue living in the home his body and dance have gifted to him.
Influenced by both the East and the West, he grew up dancing on the tabla while being inspired by Michael Jackson. After years of training in Kathak, Akram discovered a love for contemporary dance. It became his escape, giving him access to his spoken voice and the inspiration to push boundaries. His connection to his craft was evolving, beautifully so, in a dialogue between Kathak and contemporary dance.
As a creative, Akram is interested in mythical tales, he shares in an interview with Asian Voice, “I want to explore our connection with the past and our future, investigating specific questions that confront me more and more everyday… Do we need to tell other people’s stories just in case they vanish? Who are the ‘other’ people? Who are ’we’, a collective or many individuals? What makes us human? Are we still human?”
Xenos via the Akram Khan Company
Akram’s final production as a performer, Xenos, which translates to foreigner or stranger, was about the experiences of 1.4 million Indian soldiers who fought for Britain during the First World War. Their experiences were depicted in one man’s body, an unknown, unnamed soldier, who reveals the horrors of the human condition. The piece brings to life the souls of the millions of enlisted colonial soldiers whose lives were taken in a war that was never theirs to begin with. It is the rewriting of history to remember the forgotten lives of these Indian soldiers.
There are raw truths that echo in Akram’s dance and a heartbeat that becomes the rhythmic pulse of his craft, transforming epics and myths into murals he paints with his body. Ruth Little, a dramaturg that works with Khan says, “I work with words and he works with the body. What you learn, what you discover in working with him is that the body communicates at least as effectively as words do and perhaps it deceives less than words do.”
Akram can no longer perform on stage because for so long he forced his body to do things, and it can’t keep up anymore. The home that gave him everything, he can no longer rely on, as it becomes fragile. But that doesn’t mean his voice and connection to his soul are silenced. The dancer in him is well alive as he uses his mind, imagination, and other people’s bodies to communicate stories.
His legacy is the living museum that he houses in his dance. Akram Khan’s humanity is inextricably tied to his movement, his imagination, his truth, his mind, and most importantly, the soul that sparks it all. He is an example of how our bodies have the ability to speak more than perhaps our voices do. What happens when we all choose to embody our own living museums and become an alive archive? What stories will your body tell?
