Last summer Akram Khan’s fifty-strong ensemble wowed millions of people as part of Danny Boyle’s epic Olympic Opening Ceremony. Out on his own, Khan continues to delight, move and inspire with his first full-length solo piece,Desh. The piece, which explores Bangladesh and Khan’s relationship to the country of his parents’ origin, fuses Khan’s fluid movement with a pulsating musical score and achingly beautiful design from Tim Yip, who won an Oscar for his work on Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
A tiny tree centre-stage represents the country that Khan and his team of collaborators interrogate through poetic stories and re-creations of conversations with Khan’s parents. His father is cleverly portrayed by drawing eyebrows and a mouth on his bald head. Head down, hand on ‘chin’ Khan inhabits his father who is desperately trying to teach his young son the importance of his country’s language, traditions and customs. This moment underpins the entire piece, as Khan travels across lands and seas exploring his parent’s homeland.
As a performer Khan is mesmeric. His movement is fluid, incredibly precise and radiates confident energy. His choreography cleverly roots itself in a reality; with each movement his story gently unfolds and allows us to further invest in his world. In one sequence he tells a beautiful fairytale of a ‘magical kingdom where honeybees light up the earth and demon tigers save mangrove forests’. Khan’s hands spin wildly in the air in front of him as he dives into his story. Delicate, hand-drawn animation fills a transparent screen and Khan responds to the arrival of an elephant, climbs a giant tree and finds himself surrounded by a swarm of bees having dipped his hand in to taste the nectar. His hands spin wildly in the air in front of him, as he tries to wave away the bees.
As well as being an inspiring performer and choreographer, Khan is a master collaborator. Alongside the charming animations (by Yeast Culture), Tim Yip’s design complimented by Michael Hull’s bold lighting is wondrous. Yip’s sea of white strips of curtains drowning a lone Khan, then lifting him upside-down, floating, is spine-tingling. Writer Karthika Nair’s poetic language and storytelling helps to weave a poignant yet urgent narrative though the piece whilst Jocelyn Pook’s musical compositions perfectly evoke a country and man struggling with the modern and ancient living side by side. As a whole, Desh is a striking piece of work that deserves to be seen by as many millions across the globe as tuned into that Olympic Opening Ceremony.