If you’ve never seen Akram Khan dance, hurry up and do something about it: he’s taking his last-ever full-length solo show “Xenos” around Europe, following its weeklong run at Sadler’s Wells in London. You have until February.
Khan is one of the most bewitching dancers alive - someone you could watch for hours on end without his movements ever looking dull or repetitive. British of Bangladeshi origin, he was trained as a kathak dancer, but has basically invented his own genre. His cupped hands can evoke a bird, or a fly, or a flower. They go slicing and coiling through the air at superhuman speed. He is nimble in the way few are.
“Xenos” is his homage to the untold thousands of soldiers from the Indian subcontinent who fought for Britain during World War I yet went unrecognised. He starts out performing a fairly classic kathak dance with two traditional musicians on stage, then puts shackles around his ankles and slithers and slides up and down a gravelly, muddy slope that represents the landscape of that brutal conflict. There’s not much narrative to it, and the musical accompaniment is fairly monotonous (except for a brief burst of Mozart’s Requiem). But Khan’s dancing makes up for it all.
Here’s where you can see him next: http://www.akramkhancompany.net/productions/xenos/.
Khan is one of the most bewitching dancers alive - someone you could watch for hours on end without his movements ever looking dull or repetitive. British of Bangladeshi origin, he was trained as a kathak dancer, but has basically invented his own genre. His cupped hands can evoke a bird, or a fly, or a flower. They go slicing and coiling through the air at superhuman speed. He is nimble in the way few are.
“Xenos” is his homage to the untold thousands of soldiers from the Indian subcontinent who fought for Britain during World War I yet went unrecognised. He starts out performing a fairly classic kathak dance with two traditional musicians on stage, then puts shackles around his ankles and slithers and slides up and down a gravelly, muddy slope that represents the landscape of that brutal conflict. There’s not much narrative to it, and the musical accompaniment is fairly monotonous (except for a brief burst of Mozart’s Requiem). But Khan’s dancing makes up for it all.
Here’s where you can see him next: http://www.akramkhancompany.net/productions/xenos/.