Akram Khan

Akram Khan Zero Degrees

Zero Degrees

About a decade ago, the London-born choreographer Akram Khan and his Bangladeshi cousin were boarding a train from India to Bangladesh when police confiscated their passports and wouldn’t return them until Khan’s cousin slipped them some money. Then the cousins found a dead man in their carriage.
Khan moved to help the man’s distraught wife, but his cousin told him to stay put. “They’ll just blame you for the death,” he said. “They need to blame someone, so they’ll blame you.” They’d recognize that Khan was a foreigner–he had insubordination in his eyes–and they’d throw him in prison and he’d never get out.
When Khan and the Moroccan-Belgian choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui sat down to plan a joint work in 2005, Cherkaoui asked Khan to tell him something he’d never told anyone before. Khan told this story.

Portrait of the artist Akram Khan

Sacred Monsters by Sylvie Guillem, choreographed by Akram Khan (Youtube).
(The fact that Juliette Binoche is not a professional trained dancer like Sylvie may bring more surprises and warmth to Khan’s work, as evidenced by the sample of this clip).

Rhada’s Dance (traditional Indian dance excerpted from Jean Renoir’s film “The River”)