Dancer Akram Khan tells his own special tales on stage

Text and photo by Mehru Jaffer

JAKARTA (JP): It is probably Akram Khan's rainbow colored personality that is responsible for making his art so interesting.

Khan has performed all over Europe and travels next week to South America. But this is his first time in Indonesia.

"I must admit I do not know this region at all," the 27-year- old dancer told The Sunday Post, adding that he knew little about Indonesia until he was invited to participate in the month-long international Art Summit Indonesia 2001 on contemporary performing arts.

But when he got here the British Council sponsored a two-day workshop with the dancer as well, where about 20 local aspirants of contemporary dance watched him demonstrate his unique art that is a combination of classical north Indian dances and western ballet techniques. The experience was revealing for Khan who marveled at the similarity between the fluid use of the fingers in both classical Indonesian and Indian dances.

Khan was born in London to a Bangladeshi Muslim family. Even as he was sent to an English school and played with Anglo-Saxon children in London, in the home he was always surrounded by much from South Asia, from language, cuisine to literature.

And, of course, much dance and music. He was even allowed to take a guru at the age of seven years when he learnt Kathak, a classical dance form of north India from Sri Pratap Pawar.

But there was panic in this same household when Khan declared that he wanted to take up dancing as a profession. His mother wondered how the boy was going to feed himself? All that dancing was meant only for fun, she cried. After having encouraged him to dance all the time as a little boy she was full of pleas that he listen to community elders and enroll himself for further studies in medicine or dentistry instead.

When the shock subsided his parents explained that their main concern was for his happiness.

Eventually, his kid sister announced that she was the one who planned to make the money. She did eventually studied accountancy and has a job today with a lucrative salary.

To take away some of the uncertainty from a highly eclectic career in the arts, Khan's parents insisted that he should formally educate himself first. But there were no courses in Asian dance so he opted for a graduate degree in contemporary dance. He drifted into this course by sheer accident but by the time he graduated in 1998 he was a transformed human being.

Instead of feeling demoralized when his guru repeatedly pointed out to him that he no longer performed pure Kathak, and his ballet teachers complained that there was something alien in his movements at the Northern College of Contemporary Dance, Khan seized just those moments of high criticism to create something entirely original. And both are applauding him now, along with an adoring audience that is fast spreading in different countries.

He roamed the world a little after he graduated to work with giants like Peter Brook on stage and with the Royal Shakespeare Company. It is just a year since he launched his own company with a group of five, including somebody from Wales and another dancer from South Africa. And they have already earned the reputation of creating dances that are worth dying for.

In fact, he has infused new life into Kathak, a classical dance from that derives it name from the wandering tellers of tales or kathas, the Sanskrit word for stories. The Kathak happens to be none other than the storyteller himself.

In ancient times the best Kathaks were those who told inspiring tales in praise of Hindu deities and when they were sufficiently enraptured by their own poetic renditions they threw themselves into ecstatic dance in deep devotion for gods like Krishna.

Legends about Krishna's childhood, spent in the lush, green environs of Brindavana during pre-historic times, have become part of the landscape of north India. This is the main theme of most Kathaks. The love that Krishna's mother showered upon the child-god despite his endless pranks and the awakening of his own love for Radha, an older but utterly attractive village belle in his teenage years, made Krishna an eternal symbol of unconditional love not just between mother and child, man and woman but also between all human beings and their Creator.

When Muslim rulers, mainly with Turkish and Persian backgrounds from neighboring principalities first saw the spectacles in the sylvan surroundings of Brindavana, they were loath to leave. As a compromise they invited some of the Kathaks to their court. Here stoic ideas like Islam is against song and dance were thrown to wind and a certain urbaneness and sensuality were combined with the highly devotional Hindu performances to give birth to a new form that has captured the imagination of art lovers to this day.

And just when it seemed that much of the imagery and symbolism in classical Kathak was beginning to hold less and less meaning to contemporary audiences, Khan appeared on the scene to trim away all the dead foliage in preparation, as if, for a new spring.

Khan admits that if he was brought up and still living in Bangladesh he would probably not be as creative as he is in London. He loves to visit Bangladesh for family weddings and often travels to India to update his dance techniques. But he is happy to be in London, a city pulsating with life and opportunities.

He likes to repeat that if he was already living in Asia he may not have bothered to explore his Asian-ness the way he is able to do so in Europe. At the moment he is so inspired by all the contradictions and compliments that make up his life and support his art that he has little time to think of how the racist attitude of his classmates in high school often made him miserable.

"It was bad enough that I was brown and living in London. I was teased all the time for that, but also for being passionate about dance, and therefore repeatedly called a homosexual," Khan, who is heterosexual, said.

But at some stage in his life he plans to give more thought to political and social issues, including religion. Khan finds no contradiction at the moment in being far more familiar with Hindu philosophy which is the fountainhead, really, of all inspiration in Kathak.

He continues to believe that there is one God and that his name is Allah. He does not consider Krishna a god and does not worship him but he needs to invoke the image of Krishna all the time as a Kathak dancer.

"And to do that I have to believe in Krishna, to get an insight into what the concept of Krishna symbolizes in Hindu philosophy".

Khan is not afraid of studying other religions and cultures as he is never in doubt of his own. From Indonesia he takes back memories of the tantalizing wrist movement of a Balinese dancer and from his travels else where he will surely steal some more. Khan is a creature of his times from a world with many more open borders. Besides, he is comfortable with his past, is enjoying his present and looks forward to a future that may hold come, whatever it may be.