‘His precision was really inspiring to watch’
Nitin Sawhney, composer, collaborated on multiple projects with Khan, including Kaash (2002), Zero Degrees (2005) and Vertical Road (2010)
I think I saw Akram first at the Bhavan Centre in London when he was about 16. He moved like lightning. His speed was incredible but his precision as well was really inspiring to watch. He approached me in the late 90s to work on a project called Fix and then I continued to work with him on many, many other projects. The tabla player in my band ended up marrying Akram’s sister.
Not only have I written music for him, I’ve performed on stage with him, in Confluence in 2009. We were over in Holland one time, due to perform, and Akram turned up on crutches with an injury, but still found a way to get through the whole thing. And was brilliant. He was using them to do twirls and things like that.
He’s got a really good sense of humour, but is able to encapsulate very profound concepts, trying to represent through movement a sense of the struggle for the meaning of humanity.
When I did Vertical Road with him, I’d just had pneumonia and the only time he was available to meet in my studio was 1am, so neither of us were in the best of moods. We were sitting there pissed off about everything and grunting at each other, and he said that for the music he wanted just a constant banging for the first five to 10 minutes. I said, I’ll get ripped to shreds if I do that! He said, that’s what I want. But then we started to talk it through and think, well, how could we make that work? And it was, for me, the most exciting thing I had done for a long time. This is what a great director does: they have a sense of vision, they take you somewhere you wouldn’t think to go.
‘Very relaxed but totally in command’
Hanif Kureishi, author, worked with Khan on A God of Small Tales (2003) and Ma (2004)
Akram was quite young when I first met him and I remember meeting his dad who was a bit like my dad, being a proud Asian father of a kid that had succeeded in the UK. On A God of Small Tales we were working with a group of older women, in their 70s. I said to Akram, what’s this going to be about? And Akram is such an intelligent, creative person, 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 designed some movement with them. We played the voices over the women dancing, and it was a very beautiful show and incredibly moving. He could make something beautiful out of what looked to me like rather unpromising material.
I’ve worked with a lot of different directors over the years, and some are very strict, they want to be worshipped and make people feel intimidated. Akram’s not like that. I always enjoyed being in the rehearsal room, the dancers loved to work with him, he’s very relaxed, he doesn’t frighten people but he’s totally in command.
The thing about Akram is that he’s a genius, which means that he doesn’t really listen to other people very much. Or he’ll listen to you, and then he does exactly what he wants to do, which is both frustrating and blessed. He has a strong idea of what he wants to do and he does it. It’s a great quality of a true artist.
‘I remember travelling to Brussels with a life-like rubber copy of Akram’
Antony Gormley, sculptor, collaborated on Zero Degrees, a duet for Khan and dancer/choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, for which he made human-sized sculptures
I think I met Akram through Anish Kapoor, who had worked with him on Kaash which I saw and loved. It must have been about 2003. I was immediately amazed by the paradoxical sense of a man who was both calm and sparking with energy.
We collaborated on Zero Degrees in 2005. Akram would come to our development days having spent two hours or more doing intense, rhythmic [Indian classical dance form] kathak footwork on the lino kitchen floor at his mother’s house. It was a touching feeling how much his parents, and particularly his mother, not only nurtured him as a child but were the ground on which he grew as a dancer.
I still cherish all my memories of the performances. I remember travelling to Brussels with a lifelike rubber copy of Akram. We hadn’t bought him a seat so we had to put it in the luggage rack. People on the train were suspicious. The minute we arrived, Akram and Larbi started dancing with this rubber doppelganger and then copying its movements, learning from its awkward falls.
What I took from Akram is that the old is not the enemy of the new, but its foundation. There were moments in many of his pieces where fresh choreography morphs and returns to a vibrant demonstration of kathak. You could see Akram being absorbed in its ecstatic spinnings. Here were rhythms and energy fields that translated him into a timeless, limitless zone of heart, mind and soul.
‘He’s actually a very good percussionist’
Jocelyn Pook, composer, wrote scores for Khan shows including Desh (2011), Itmoi (2013), Dust (2014) and Jungle Book Reimagined (2022)
The first project I worked on with Akram was Desh. That was a fantastic experience. They started off the project by taking the whole creative team out to Bangladesh for a couple of weeks [Desh was an autobiographical work exploring Khan’s Bangladeshi roots]. Without planning it, I ended up making lots of field recordings in Dhaka, the chaos and noise of the city, the traffic and the thousands of bicycles and kids nearly getting run over all the time. I made a percussive sketch with it and threw that into the mix and it ended up becoming a central piece of the show. It’s a very rewarding way of working: you’ve got that freedom and there’s an implicit trust. It brings out the best in you and gives you such confidence.
Akram’s very open, positive, very considerate. And playful as well. We worked on Chotto Desh [a children’s version of Desh] then Itmoi, and Dust with English National Ballet. With Dust I was struggling with one of the sections and he remembered a sketch I’d done years earlier that I’d totally forgotten about, and he said what about this, mixed with drums, and he came up with this concept I’d never have thought of. He’s very musical – he’s actually a very good percussionist.
I think we connect because there’s a primal aspect to some of his work, and the same in my music. It’s very grounded, and earthy, but there is a sort of spiritual aspect there as well.
‘I could find answers that were true to myself’
Alina Cojocaru, ballerina, danced the title role in Khan’s reboot of Giselle for English National Ballet (2016)
Giselle is a role I’m deeply connected to and I’ve performed it many times, so it was fascinating working with Akram on his version. Physically, of course, it was completely different [from the original ballet], but what I loved was how he brought to life the soul of Act II and Giselle’s reality as a woman.
I vividly remember rehearsals 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 could go into myself and find answers that were true to myself. You go home and you’re still thinking about it, you see everything through the lens of Giselle. It was a full-immersion experience emotionally and physically and in the curiosity to find something new within something that’s so traditional.
What I love is that Akram doesn’t settle. He has to find what he is searching for. In the studio, he’s hugely focused, he sees everything – you can’t hide in the corner. And everything he does, it needs time. The world moves so fast these days, you want to create new ballets in two weeks, but he’s true to his way of working, and discovering a deeper meaning for everything he does, which is why his work is so moving and has so many layers and such power.
‘Akram just seemed like the right person’
Danny Boyle, film director and director of the London 2012 Olympic Games opening ceremony, at which Khan performed accompanied by singer Emeli Sandé. Khan was given the one-word brief: mortality
What do I admire about Akram? Ah, he’s gorgeous. He’s very similar to Brian Eno: very wise, and very quiet and modest, and yet they’re incredibly certain of what they want to do and where they want to go.
I saw Akram in Desh and it was sort of my introduction to dance. I’d just spent a year travelling around south Asia making a film and when I saw it I was astonished that he’d caught what I thought was impossible to capture.
You feel his work makes sense but you can’t explain it, it pulls you in. And that was most perfectly expressed in the piece Akram made for the Olympic opening ceremony. The Olympics demands quite grand universal statements. Akram just seemed like the right person to do it. It was about a feeling, a sensation 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 transfixing to me. I remember talking about fishes and evolution and stuff that sounds silly out of context, but in context it produced that absolutely beautiful piece. As the director, you create [the ceremony] among all the collaborators, and you rehearse it like mad, including camera rehearsals, and then on the night, you could almost check into a hotel and watch it from there for all the use you are. But I remember seeing Akram and being very moved by what he’d created for us. It was extraordinary to witness.
