“He realized what I thought was impossible”: Danny Boyle, Hanif Qureshi and others on the genius of Akram Khan | Dance

“His precision was truly inspiring to watch.”

Nitin Sawhneya composer, has collaborated on multiple projects with Khan, including… Cash (2002), Zero Degree (2005) and The Vertical Road (2010)

I think I first saw Akram at the Bhavan Center in London when he was sixteen. He moved like lightning. His speed was amazing but his accuracy was also truly inspiring to watch. He approached me in the late 90s to work on a project called Fix and I went on to work with him on several other projects. The drummer in my band ended up marrying Akram’s sister.

Not only did I write music for him, I sang with him on stage at Confluence in 2009. We were in Holland one time, about to perform, and Akram showed up injured on crutches, but he found a way to get through the whole thing. And it was wonderful. He was using them to do laps and things like that.

He has a really good sense of humor, but he’s able to encapsulate very deep concepts, trying to represent through action a sense of struggle for the meaning of humanity.

When I did Vertical Road with him, I had pneumonia and the only time he was available to meet in my studio was 1 a.m., so neither of us were in the best of moods. We were sitting there angry about everything and sighing at each other, and he said that for the music he just wanted a constant noise for the first five to ten minutes. I said, I’ll be torn to shreds if you do that! He said this is what I want. But then we started discussing it and thinking, well, how can we make this work? This, for me, was the most exciting thing I had done for a long time. That’s what a great director does: they have a sense of vision, and they take you somewhere you wouldn’t think to go.

“Very relaxed but completely in control”

Hanif Qureshi, an author, worked with Khan God of Little Tales (2003) and What (2004)

Akram was very young when I first met him and I remember meeting his father who was a bit like my own, being a proud Asian father of a child who had succeeded in the UK. In The God of Little Stories we were working with a group of older women in their 70s. I said to Akram, what will happen? Akram is a smart and creative person, and in the end what I did was interview each of the women and record their voices as they told stories from their lives, and Akram choreographed some movements with them. We played sounds over the women’s dancing, and it was a very beautiful and incredibly moving show. He could make something beautiful out of what seemed to me like a rather unpromising material.

I’ve worked with a lot of different directors over the years, and some of them are very strict, and they want to be likable and make people feel afraid. Akram is not like that. I always enjoyed being in the rehearsal room, the dancers loved working with him, he is very relaxed, doesn’t intimidate people but is completely in control.

What distinguishes Akram is that he is a genius, which means that he does not listen to others much. Or he’ll listen to you, and then do exactly what he wants to do, which is both frustrating and blessed at the same time. He has a strong idea of ​​what he wants to do and does it. It is a wonderful quality of a true artist.

“I remember traveling to Brussels with a realistic rubber replica of Akram.”

Antony Gormley, sculptorcooperated at zero degreesa duet by Khan, the dancer and choreographer Sidi Al-Arabi Al-Sharqawi, Who made human-sized sculptures of him

I think I met Akram through Anish Kapoor, who worked with him in the film Cash, which I saw and loved. It must have been around 2003. I was immediately struck by the paradoxical feeling of a man who was both calm and full of energy.

We collaborated on the film Zero Degrees in 2005. Akram would come to our development days after spending two or more hours doing intense rhythmic exercises. [Indian classical dance form] Kathak served on Lino’s kitchen floor in his mother’s house. It was a touching feeling that his parents, especially his mother, not only took care of him as a child, but were the ground on which he grew up as a dancer.

I still cherish all my memories of the shows. I remember traveling to Brussels with a realistic rubber replica of Akram. We didn’t buy a seat for him so we had to put him in the luggage rack. The people on the train were skeptical. The moment we arrived, Akram and El Arabi started dancing with the rubber doppelgänger, then imitating his movements and learning from his strange falls.

What I took from Akram is that the old is not the enemy of the new, but rather it is its foundation. There are moments in many of his works where the new choreography turns and returns to a vibrant display of Kathak. You can see Akram immersed in his ecstatic flirtations. Here were the rhythms and energy fields that translated him into an immortal, boundless region of heart, mind and spirit.

“He’s actually a very good percussionist.”

Jocelyn Bock, a composer, has written scores for Khan’s shows including Dish (2011), Etmoy (2013), Dust (2014) and The Jungle Book Reimagined (2022).

The first project I worked on with Akram was a shower. That was a great experience. They started the project by taking the entire creative team to Bangladesh for a few weeks [Desh was an autobiographical work exploring Khan’s Bangladeshi roots]. Without planning it, I ended up doing a lot of field recordings in Dhaka, the chaos and noise of the city, the traffic and thousands of bikes and kids who were about to get run over all the time. I did a sketch with it and added it to the mix and it ended up becoming a key part of the show. It’s a very rewarding way of working: you have that freedom and there’s implicit trust. It brings out the best in you and gives you that confidence.

Akram is very open, positive, and very caring. And fun too. We have worked on Chotu Desh [a children’s version of Desh] Then Etmoy, she danced with the English National Ballet. With Dust I was struggling with one section and he remembered a drawing I had done years ago that I had completely forgotten about, and he said how about this, mixed with the drums, and came up with this concept that I had never thought of. He’s very musical – he’s actually a very good percussionist.

I think we connect because there’s an underlying aspect to some of his work, and it’s the same in my music. It’s very grounded and earthy, but there’s kind of a spiritual aspect there as well.

“I could find answers that were true to myself.”

Alina Cojocaru, Ballerina, she danced the title role in Khan’s reboot of Giselle for English National Ballet (2016)

Giselle is a role I deeply relate to and I have played it many times, so working with Akram on his version was great. Physically, of course, it was completely different [from the original ballet]But what I loved was the way it brought to life the spirit of the second act and Giselle’s reality as a woman.

I clearly remember the exercises where he would say what he wanted to achieve and we would find it together. Sometimes you have a choreographer who might come in and say, “I want this and this and this,” and then you just try to give what they want, but when it’s an open dialogue, I can go inward and find answers that were true to myself. She goes home and is still thinking about it, seeing everything through Giselle’s lens. It was an experience of complete immersion emotionally and physically and in the curiosity to find something new within something so traditional.

What I like is that Akram does not settle. He has to find what he’s looking for. In the studio, he’s so focused, he sees everything, you can’t hide in a corner. Everything he does takes time. The world moves so fast these days, and you want to create new ballets in two weeks, but he is honest in the way he works, discovering a deeper meaning in everything he does, which is why his work is so moving and has so many layers and such power.

“Akram seemed like the right person.”

Danny Boyle, film director and London director The opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympic Games, in which Khan performed with singer Emeli Sande. Khan was given a one-word summary: death

What do I like about Akram? Oh, it’s great. He’s very similar to Brian Eno: so wise, so quiet and humble, and yet so incredibly sure of what they want to do and where they want to go.

I saw Akram in Dish and that was my introduction to dance. I just spent a year traveling around South Asia to shoot a film, and when I saw it I was amazed that it captured what I thought was impossible to capture.

You feel that his work makes sense but you cannot explain it, it attracts you. This was perfectly expressed in the piece that Akram presented for the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games. The Olympic Games require very large global data. Akram seemed like the right person to do it. It was about a feeling, a feeling that you wanted to let people dwell in for a moment, and feel inspired by.

It was beautiful to watch him develop the piece. The discipline was amazing to me. I remember talking about fish and evolution and things that seemed silly out of context, but they produced this absolutely beautiful piece in context. As a director, you have to create [the ceremony] Between all the collaborators, and you rehearse it like crazy, including rehearsals on camera, and then at night, you can almost check yourself into a hotel and watch it from there to get the most out of it. But I remember seeing Akram and being deeply moved by what he did for us. It was an extraordinary thing to witness.