Akram Khan's World Influences

"Work created in the performing arts, consciously or sub-consciously, strongly reflects the world we live in through the artist’s eye"
- Akram Khan, February 2008

Akram Khan was born in 1974, and while many world events affected him through his lifetime, much of his inspiration for choreography comes from a broader, more humanistic approach. His tendency is to explore topics related to the psychology of culture, the group, and the individual, pushing acceptance of the human being while acknowledging and appreciating the varying differences between us.

Here is a video of Khan discussing his London influences at the Olivier Awards in 2012.

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 must have influenced him, even in his youth. Other world events such as the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Rwanda Genocide in 1994, India and Pakistan’s testing of nuclear weapons in 1998, as well as the rapid growth of globalization, technology, and media are happening within his time and no doubt affect him as an artist.

While all of these events are critical, Khan focuses less on specific events for his choreography than the way that these current events reflect and affect humanity. On the Akram Khan Company website there is a description of his work Bahok, created in 2008:

“Bahok brings together 8 dancers from diverse cultures, traditions and dance backgrounds: Chinese, Korean, Indian, South African and Spanish. As such, they resemble a present day version of the tale of Babel, speaking different languages both with their bodies and tongues. They meet in one of this globalised world’s transit zones and try to communicate, to share ‘the things they carry with them’: their experiences, their memories of their original homes, the dreams and aspirations that made them move.”

Here is a video of the outstanding performance.

Akram Khan Company 'bahok' from Article19 on Vimeo.

This is a great example of how Khan is affected by the world he lives in, and shows the human spirit within it. About Vertical Road (2010) he states that it is related to the fast-paced lifestyle and losing track of our spirituality.

"In a world moving so fast (horizontally), with the growth of technology and information, I am somehow inclined to move against this current, in search of what it might mean to be connected not just spiritually, but also vertically."

In his work Desh (2011) he draws upon his own past in British and Bangladesh cultures and fuses it with nature, spirit, and legend.

“DESH meaning 'homeland' in Bengali, draws multiple tales of land, nation, resistance and convergence into the body and voice of one man trying to find his balance in an unstable world…DESH explores fragility in the face of natural forces, and celebrates the resilience of the human spirit in the rhythms of labor, in dream and story, and in transformation and survival.”

Akram Khan explores world events and conditions by looking at humanity through an individual, group, and cultural perspective. He is also inspired by a variety of other topics, such as Stravinsky’s compositional revolution, in his new work iTMOi.