:00:00. > :00:13.Welcome to HARDtalk, I'm Stephen Sackur.
:00:14. > :00:20.In every culture on earth, dance is a physical, joyful form of
:00:21. > :00:25.expression and communication. It is in a way the world's most basic
:00:26. > :00:31.common language. My guest today epitomises the ability of dance to
:00:32. > :00:36.cross borders of time and space. Akram Khan is British by birth,
:00:37. > :00:40.Bangladeshi by family heritage and now globally renowned as one of the
:00:41. > :00:44.great contemporary dancers and choreographers. His performances
:00:45. > :00:47.weave together influences from east and west, past and present. How
:00:48. > :01:22.would he define his dance? Welcome to HARD it is talk. Thank
:01:23. > :01:28.you. So many of the great professional dancers have been
:01:29. > :01:32.raised in one very strict discipline, one cultural tradition,
:01:33. > :01:40.but that isn't quite true of, is it? No. I was born and brought up in
:01:41. > :01:43.London. Already I was exposed to many, many different cultural
:01:44. > :01:50.activities from very different backgrounds.
:01:51. > :01:53.But, my mother wanted me to learn something from her roots and not
:01:54. > :01:55.just language because language was very crucial to her,
:01:56. > :01:57.because of the independence of Bangladesh, the movement
:01:58. > :01:59.originally started for the war to fight
:02:00. > :02:04.between East Pakistan and... So, the Bengali identity,
:02:05. > :02:06.Bangladeshi identity was hugely important.
:02:07. > :02:11.I did, because she refused to speak to me in English.
:02:12. > :02:14.She knew I would learn English in school because I was born
:02:15. > :02:18.She wanted me to be in touch with her language,
:02:19. > :02:20.her culture, but also something that was classical.
:02:21. > :02:22.That was close to her culture and classical Indian dancing
:02:23. > :02:25.was the right thing, so that's what she forced me
:02:26. > :02:33.It is Kathak, exactly, north Indian classical dancing.
:02:34. > :02:36.So, as a kid, you were living in South London, your dad
:02:37. > :02:39.running a restaurant, but were you told that you would be
:02:40. > :02:41.going to dance lessons, the Kathak traditional
:02:42. > :02:45.Yes, it was more of a bribe, if I went I would get
:02:46. > :02:48.something at the end of it because I was a kind of, of course,
:02:49. > :02:50.when you are exposed to so many different things,
:02:51. > :02:55.I was heavily into Michael Jackson...
:02:56. > :03:03.Is it true that you won a prize at school for the best
:03:04. > :03:08.version of Thriller, the Michael Jackson routine?
:03:09. > :03:10.Yes, it was two things it was Michael Jackson,
:03:11. > :03:15.I did a routine, and it was 5-star which is a group in that period that
:03:16. > :03:20.I used to love and they used to be inspired by Michael Jackson,
:03:21. > :03:25.So I guess even, I don't know if we're talking what,
:03:26. > :03:28.ten, 11, 12 years old, you were becoming a sort of fusion
:03:29. > :03:31.in a way of different influences and I wonder whether that when
:03:32. > :03:35.as you progressed through adolescence and you became very keen
:03:36. > :03:38.on different forms of dancing whether there was a tension
:03:39. > :03:42.in you about which direction to go, to follow?
:03:43. > :03:45.I think the tension, yes there was, but the tension comes
:03:46. > :03:49.from my community and social constructs of my parents' community,
:03:50. > :03:53.because academics was really important for them,
:03:54. > :03:58.because they were recently independent as a country,
:03:59. > :04:00.they felt education was the way forward and dance was a hobby,
:04:01. > :04:03.so up to this day, I mean, my community is great
:04:04. > :04:12.and wonderful and supportive, but I do get the
:04:13. > :04:14.occasional, "what do you do as a real job?"
:04:15. > :04:20.Obviously, your parents were from a Muslim tradition.
:04:21. > :04:24.Was that in any way relevant, was there any religious impulse
:04:25. > :04:27.to go in one particular tradition or direction rather than to embrace
:04:28. > :04:31.No, my mother was extremely open, she is a very open,
:04:32. > :04:32.she studied literature, Bengali literature,
:04:33. > :04:36.but she also studied mythology from Greek mythology,
:04:37. > :04:41.Hindu mythology, she was fascinated by stories, narratives,
:04:42. > :04:45.and she kind of coached me into it and guided me into it
:04:46. > :04:51.Many people from around the world will probably be familiar
:04:52. > :04:54.with the Billy Elliot story of the kid Northern,
:04:55. > :04:58.industrial town, a mining sort of town who is a brilliant natural
:04:59. > :05:02.dancer and then has to struggle with himself and his family
:05:03. > :05:06.and his community about getting into the right sort of dance school.
:05:07. > :05:12.That isn't quite what you're telling me.
:05:13. > :05:14.It wasn't that, sort of, having to escape.
:05:15. > :05:21.No, first of all I don't, I wantto be very honest,
:05:22. > :05:25.I was not naturally, I'm not naturally talented.
:05:26. > :05:30.What I am is, I have one talent and that is I,
:05:31. > :05:45.when I get obsessed with something I commit to it in a very
:05:46. > :05:47.extreme way, I can go into my parents' garage,
:05:48. > :05:54.which I did at the age of I think, just after GCSEs, I was lost
:05:55. > :05:57.for a while and I went into my parents' garage
:05:58. > :06:01.So, for a year I was hiding out in my dad's garage.
:06:02. > :06:05.Training in Indian classical dance and that is my talent,
:06:06. > :06:08.Wow, entirely in secret, private just for yourself?
:06:09. > :06:13.I just wanted to get really good at it, I just became obsessed by it,
:06:14. > :06:15.I was fascinated by Kathak, north Indian classical dance.
:06:16. > :06:19.And yet, if we fast forward a little bit to get to where your career
:06:20. > :06:25.begins to take off you actually entered a very different environment
:06:26. > :06:28.you went to one of the UK's top contemporary dance schools and then
:06:29. > :06:32.you started to get work which was beginning to make your name,
:06:33. > :06:38.not in the strict Kathak tradition but by actually finding a dance
:06:39. > :06:41.language which combined some eastern traditional expression with a lot
:06:42. > :06:43.of very, very contemporary, edgy, current Western dance.
:06:44. > :06:49.People like to call, used to call the work fusion,
:06:50. > :06:54.but I preferred to call it confusion, because really my body
:06:55. > :06:59.was very confused at the time and I think out of that confusion
:07:00. > :07:06.Your identity, in a way, which you're exploring,
:07:07. > :07:12.But, it could have been writing, or music or whatever,
:07:13. > :07:17.but you you were very much autobiographical in a way.
:07:18. > :07:18.A lot of my work is autobiographical.
:07:19. > :07:22.I like to touch, there is a lot of questions
:07:23. > :07:28.As I said, Michael Jackson wasn't the only person,
:07:29. > :07:30.I loved Charlie Chaplin, I loved Fred Astaire,
:07:31. > :07:32.Buster Keaton, Muhammad Ali, Bruce Lee, all these people
:07:33. > :07:44.I thought HARDtalk, who's harder than Bruce.
:07:45. > :07:47.It's a great cue, actually because we want to show everybody
:07:48. > :07:50.a little bit of your dance, some of the stuff you have done.
:07:51. > :07:55.Perhaps your most autobiographical work was Kaash, which took you,
:07:56. > :08:30.Let's just enjoy 30 seconds or so of this.
:08:31. > :08:33.For me, it's fascinating on so many levels, here you are,
:08:34. > :08:35.the movement I love it so expressive, but also there's
:08:36. > :08:38.a longing in it and a relationship between you and Bangladesh,
:08:39. > :08:45.I'm trying to figure out whether it's actually,
:08:46. > :08:51.in a sense, sad or whether it's a very positive thing.
:08:52. > :09:06.In a way, I started the show with hammering this kind of grave.
:09:07. > :09:10.So, when I told my father that, look, the show is kind
:09:11. > :09:12.of about you and me and he was excited.
:09:13. > :09:16.I said hold on, I have to tell you something you're dead
:09:17. > :09:19.at the beginning of the show and he said, "you've killed me off
:09:20. > :09:22.already and not even dead in real life."
:09:23. > :09:25.So he was taken aback by that, but it's very much about my,
:09:26. > :09:30.about how my father or how fathers from a different culture,
:09:31. > :09:34.when they're in another environment, they start to question
:09:35. > :09:39.what they want their children, which direction they want them to be...
:09:40. > :09:42.He kept on saying to me when I was a teenager,
:09:43. > :09:47.I was imitating a lot of Michael Jackson, Bruce Lee,
:09:48. > :09:50.all these people who were my superheroes, and he said,
:09:51. > :09:57.I still to this day don't know what that means.
:09:58. > :10:01.It was really something in his own mind that he believed in.
:10:02. > :10:04.Partly you are exploring your relationship to him, but in terms
:10:05. > :10:07.of your own relationship with the culture you grew up
:10:08. > :10:11.in in London and then in the dance world in the West,
:10:12. > :10:15.but also very regularly visiting Bangladesh.
:10:16. > :10:18.Did you mean, and do you feel like an outsider, actually,
:10:19. > :10:28.I never felt an outsider in Britain as much as when Brexit happened.
:10:29. > :10:33.In Bangladesh I always felt like an outsider.
:10:34. > :10:37.I feel more British when I'm in Bangladesh and I feel more
:10:38. > :10:43.Bangladeshi when I'm in Britain, so for me it's about no borders,
:10:44. > :10:47.really, a home is where for me, where family is and where
:10:48. > :10:54.I'm interested that you say you never felt more of an outsider
:10:55. > :10:58.in the UK than you do today, because just from reading things
:10:59. > :11:00.that you said in the past there were difficult experiences
:11:01. > :11:04.Your father's restaurant sometimes was visited by pretty
:11:05. > :11:09.Yes, we went through a really bad period.
:11:10. > :11:11.And I think many people from the Bangladeshi community
:11:12. > :11:13.and others would say, actually there is less
:11:14. > :11:15.overt racism today then there was back then,
:11:16. > :11:20.I wonder why you feel more of an outsider now?
:11:21. > :11:25.With Brexit I think things are changing.
:11:26. > :11:28.I think that racism has an open door now, somehow, a bigger voice,
:11:29. > :11:32.the sense of creating walls with other cultures,
:11:33. > :11:38.xenophobia, fear of the other, fear of the foreigner, from me a lot
:11:39. > :11:50.You weave that into the stuff you are doing.
:11:51. > :11:54.Because that's my reality, I explore things that happen to me
:11:55. > :12:01.Coming back to the point about mash up and fusion,
:12:02. > :12:05.and want to bring in another clip because it seems so relevant
:12:06. > :12:15.You took a classical ballet, Giselle, you worked
:12:16. > :12:17.with the English National Ballet and gave it a contemporary twist.
:12:18. > :12:23.When you talk about walls and talk about immigrants coming
:12:24. > :12:27.you re-imagined a love story taking place with Giselle
:12:28. > :12:29.who is active garment worker, a very poor girl and let's
:12:30. > :12:42.just look at the imagery that comes from your Giselle.
:12:43. > :12:46.Again, stunning images, very different from the clip
:12:47. > :12:51.What was it like working with the English National Ballet
:12:52. > :12:54.and with Tamara Rojo who is one of the great contemporary dancers?
:12:55. > :12:59.It was extraordinary, I mean, you know, particularly working
:13:00. > :13:02.with the English National Ballet, I have not worked with
:13:03. > :13:07.other ballet companies, and English National Ballet,
:13:08. > :13:10.I was always apprehensive of working with a ballet company...
:13:11. > :13:15.To what you were bringing which is probably very different
:13:16. > :13:17.to everything they have worked with before.
:13:18. > :13:20.That is why I was apprehensive about if they would be open.
:13:21. > :13:22.They were extraordinarly gernerous and really daring,
:13:23. > :13:31.they really support of the entire process and kudos to
:13:32. > :13:34.Tamara and her team, they are extraordinary.
:13:35. > :13:40.It has a lot of weight, so I could feel the weight.
:13:41. > :13:44.And Giselle is a very loved piece, and it's
:13:45. > :13:49.So, to take it and then have the audacity to...
:13:50. > :13:59.I was going to say, you said very modestly at the beginning
:14:00. > :14:01.of the interview the secret was you weren't very talented
:14:02. > :14:03.I don't think anybody watching that would believe that,
:14:04. > :14:07.Could you imagine now, you're so experienced
:14:08. > :14:10.in the world of dance, if you had gone in a different
:14:11. > :14:12.direction, could you have been a classical ballet dancer?
:14:13. > :14:18.I don't think so, I used to love Nureyev and Baryshnikov,
:14:19. > :14:21.they were also one of my heroes, both of them were extraordinary
:14:22. > :14:26.ballet dancers and I always dreamed of being like them.
:14:27. > :14:32.Personally, I don't have the body for it,
:14:33. > :14:35.I don't have the flexibility, but it depends because maybe
:14:36. > :14:38.as a child perhaps if I had started early enough,
:14:39. > :14:41.but, you know Nureyev started much later, but still, I mean,
:14:42. > :14:46.So, you use your body in a very different way.
:14:47. > :14:53.I'm interested in that, I'd like you to determine
:14:54. > :14:58.-- tell me a little bit about how, the mechanics of how you tell
:14:59. > :15:02.What are the great gifts that you need, what kind of flexibility
:15:03. > :15:05.and what kind of expression can get out of your body?
:15:06. > :15:07.For me, the flexibility idea with is an illusion,
:15:08. > :15:15.I don't truly have an immense range at all, physically, but I'm fast,
:15:16. > :15:20.that is one thing I've always been, because of my training in Kathak
:15:21. > :15:24.because you have to wear these very heavy belts around your ankles
:15:25. > :15:26.and you train for hours and it is like having
:15:27. > :15:32.The moment you take them off you're like Speedy Gonzales.
:15:33. > :15:39.So, I think, also fear, fear of revealing I'm not flexible,
:15:40. > :15:44.So, things will become a blur, so you would be
:15:45. > :15:54.And, so in a way my stylistic development came out
:15:55. > :15:59.of the necessity of hiding what I was not good at.
:16:00. > :16:04.Well, when you tell me about the things you took
:16:05. > :16:08.from your Kathak tradition, it also reminds me that on this
:16:09. > :16:11.journey of yours through different dance traditions and fusing things
:16:12. > :16:14.together you have, in recent years, gone quite regularly to India
:16:15. > :16:17.and I guess to Bangladesh, as well to put on some shows
:16:18. > :16:23.and I know, that there has been a resistance to you.
:16:24. > :16:26.People felt you had betrayed the tradition, but that
:16:27. > :16:29.seems to have changed, because now you get huge acclaim
:16:30. > :16:35.They now more open minded, do you think?
:16:36. > :16:43.I think, always the traditionalists will be a little bit negative
:16:44. > :16:48.or a bit difficult, with absorbing what I do or accepting what I do.
:16:49. > :16:51.But, it has changed and got a lot better.
:16:52. > :16:53.I have to say the younger generation are amazing,
:16:54. > :16:57.In India it's so exciting, I love performing in India
:16:58. > :17:02.Dance strikes me as, I guess I said it in the introduction,
:17:03. > :17:05.it's such a sort of elemental art form, because in the end
:17:06. > :17:07.you are communicating through your body and I can see that
:17:08. > :17:11.one of the implications of that is that as you age,
:17:12. > :17:13.and as your body becomes perhaps, you know, less powerful,
:17:14. > :17:16.less potent, it affects your ability to tell stories and express
:17:17. > :17:24.I would say, technically yes, I think, you know, it depends
:17:25. > :17:33.if you look at it from a Western perspective or an eastern,
:17:34. > :17:46.In Kathak the real masters are when they are at their
:17:47. > :17:50.Everything else before that is preparation.
:17:51. > :17:57.I think in western classical dance form it is much earlier because,
:17:58. > :18:03.it's not just about having strength it's about knowing how to use that
:18:04. > :18:09.strength in a poetic way and a deeper way.
:18:10. > :18:15.For me, the older I become the less, of course I have to abandon
:18:16. > :18:20.the reality that my body cannot do some of the things that I would love
:18:21. > :18:23.to do when I was 30, but then I find other things
:18:24. > :18:30.and I find other ways to express that same movement.
:18:31. > :18:37.You do less dancing now and probably more...
:18:38. > :18:49.Right, so you have to actually train more.
:18:50. > :18:53.The reason why I think it is important, when discussing
:18:54. > :18:57.dance, to get into the physicality of it, is because it is so important
:18:58. > :18:59.and you'd said, and they think there were three of you,
:19:00. > :19:02.leading to in contemporary dance in the UK he wrote
:19:03. > :19:05.a letter not long ago, an open letter, saying that the,
:19:06. > :19:08.as far as you were concerned the new generation of young,
:19:09. > :19:11.contemporary dancers in the UK were not disciplined enough,
:19:12. > :19:17.not hungry enough, not training hard enough to be the very best and that
:19:18. > :19:20.a lot of the best young dancers you could see and that
:19:21. > :19:23.you want to work within your own company were actually
:19:24. > :19:28.We were talking more specifically about the training,
:19:29. > :19:31.perhaps selfishly geared toward our company's work,
:19:32. > :19:38.so I always needed very strong, technical dancers, and I felt that
:19:39. > :19:47.at that time, the dancers that I was singing coming out
:19:48. > :19:52.of the colleges were not geared towards the kind of dancers I was
:19:53. > :19:55.looking for and perhaps the same for the other two choreographers.
:19:56. > :19:57.It's not a basic hunger thing, you're not saying that
:19:58. > :20:02.With so many different forms of entertainment and art and culture
:20:03. > :20:06.around them are not dedicating themselves to dance in the way that
:20:07. > :20:16.I think in any form if you really want to have a profound impact on it
:20:17. > :20:22.you have do become obsessed by it and I do believe, deep down,
:20:23. > :20:27.that whatever technique it is, it has two inprison you,
:20:28. > :20:34.you have to learn it so much, you have to learn about it so much,
:20:35. > :20:36.you have to do it so much that eventually that imprisonment,
:20:37. > :20:40.you find freedom out of that imprisonment, you find freedom out
:20:41. > :20:42.of that form that you have been trying to perfect.
:20:43. > :20:44.But, it means you go through an awful lot
:20:45. > :20:48.Yes, pain of course, but everything is pain,
:20:49. > :20:51.anything is hard work, if you want to be good at anything
:20:52. > :20:53.you have to work hard, you have to sacrifice stuff
:20:54. > :20:56.and you if you feel it is a sacrifice then
:20:57. > :21:03.If you consider you, to be where you are,
:21:04. > :21:09.you had to put in many, many hours of work,
:21:10. > :21:11.you have to do it, you have to go through it.
:21:12. > :21:14.What now, then, for you, because you do an awful
:21:15. > :21:18.I'm just going to make other people go through it now.
:21:19. > :21:23.I'm done doing it. Going through the pain.
:21:24. > :21:25.You mean, you're seriously contemplating quitting
:21:26. > :21:28.I think and slowly winding down, yes, for sure,
:21:29. > :21:33.Maybe a few more years and then I may do a small role,
:21:34. > :21:39.But, I love to dance for my children, you know,
:21:40. > :21:43.I love to dance in the living room, I love, these days, the training
:21:44. > :21:45.part is the bit that I don't like any more,
:21:46. > :21:48.used to love it before but it hurt so much.
:21:49. > :21:51.It's like running, when you were born at 20,
:21:52. > :21:54.it's different to anyone at 30, go for a jog, the spring changes
:21:55. > :22:05.the way you run changes, and when you run at 40 it's
:22:06. > :22:08.different from the way you run at 30, you feel it, and so,
:22:09. > :22:11.I feel a huge different is what I felt at 20 and 30,
:22:12. > :22:14.so I enjoy the performance part of it but not the training part
:22:15. > :22:19.I just wonder whether you're going to be happy when you have quit
:22:20. > :22:20.dancing professionally, because you've said,
:22:21. > :22:22.sometimes you feel overwhelmed with the amount of stuff,
:22:23. > :22:24.politics, administration that comes with running a company and doing
:22:25. > :22:27.all of the stuff that means that you can get your shows around
:22:28. > :22:32.the world, but not actually involving you dancing on the stage.
:22:33. > :22:35.If that becomes your life, will you find that deeply frustrating?
:22:36. > :22:39.I think I will, but I will still keep dancing in the privacy
:22:40. > :22:47.I love to explore the ideas that I cannot do in my own body
:22:48. > :22:51.Like working with English National Ballet, their extraordinary ability
:22:52. > :22:54.facility that they have, pushes the language further and,
:22:55. > :23:04.they come already with a very solid training of ballet so this kind
:23:05. > :23:08.of connection between what I do and at the ballet body,
:23:09. > :23:15.And what women can do one point, it's just extraordinary,
:23:16. > :23:17.I've seen it before, but until you work with them
:23:18. > :23:21.directly you truly, really, you really respect it because it's
:23:22. > :23:28.What it did was transform the material that I usually create
:23:29. > :23:36.To end, any thoughts on the next big sort of theme
:23:37. > :23:43.You've talked a lot about immigration and though walls
:23:44. > :23:46.that people build between cultures, what's the big theme that
:23:47. > :23:51.Definitely the body, but I'm interested in the mythological body,
:23:52. > :24:32.Akram Khan, it's been a pleasure to have you on HARDtalk,
:24:33. > :24:34.Hello. Here's the latest live weather update from BBC