“More and more, we’re bypassing process. That’s what I’m interested in: the process itself”
The first work that British-Bangladeshi choreographer Akram Khan saw by Saudi artist Manal AlDowayan was Now You See Me, Now You Don’t, a 2021 installation of circular trampolines dotted across the desert in the Saudi governorate of AlUla. “People just turned into children trying to jump higher and higher,” Khan recounts on a Zoom call from Moncalvo, Italy, where he has been teaching over the summer. “All of us were trying it. I thought, she [AlDowayan] must be literally bonkers… I really want to meet her.” The result was that AlDowayan became a key collaborator on Khan’s latest production, Thikra: Night of Remembering, helping to shape a stage set – what Khan describes as a mountain- or cavelike structure – and a storyline inspired by AlUla’s cultural history. Infused with themes of ritual and remembrance, the piece premiered outdoors last January in the parched landscapes that inspired it.
According to Khan, the experience was deeply spiritual: people were guided through the desert at night, offered tea, wrapped in blankets and surrounded by incense as the all-female cast of performers arrived in a 15-minute procession before beginning the performance. While that experience would be impossible to recreate onstage, he notes, “the theatre has its own magic”. Audiences will see an indoor version of Thikra as it tours France, Germany, Italy and the UK this autumn.
Over the past 25 years, the fifty-one-year-old Khan has established himself as one of the leading choreographers on the international dance scene, celebrated for his seamless fusion of Kathak – the classical dance form of North India – with contemporary influences. The results have ranged from a 2016 retelling of the Sanskrit epic the Mahābhārata from the perspectives of its female characters to a 2022 postcolonial reimagining of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book (1894), exploring themes of climate change and migration.
Thikra will be the final touring production by Khan’s eponymous company before he and his longtime producer, Farooq Chaudhry, pursue new creative directions after a quarter of a century of collaboration. As Khan prepares to embrace the next stage of his career, the themes of Thikra feel especially resonant. ‘It’s a personal and spiritual reflection on remembering – on what we choose to carry forward and what we must lay to rest,’ he wrote in a press release. Which memories, lessons and ideas will he hold onto, and which will he let go as he moves forward?
The Wisdom of the Maternal
ArtReview What was it about AlUla that inspired you to create Thikra?
Akram Khan The most important thing for me is finding an entry point into a particular place or culture. For Thikra, there were several hooks. One was going to the desert and being in the presence of such epicness. Until you go there, you can’t imagine the scale of it, how small you are in comparison. The second thing was connecting with Manal. She showed me the beauty and complexities of the people of AlUla. She’s not from there, but she works a lot with the locals. Through her, I met one of the tribe leaders. Nabatean tribes were in AlUla way before our history began. The city was on the incense trade route, so there was a lot of exchange. Judaism, Christianity, Islam… many cultures and religions coexisted here, but the Nabateans are older than all of them. So, using Manal’s lens, I wanted to focus on the stories of AlUla through the Nabatean tribe.
AR Which stories stood out to you?
AK One of the most important things was witnessing the power of women in those communities, the quiet sense of authority they hold. Culturally, these tribes have an ingrained celebration of and surrender to the knowledge and wisdom of the maternal. Of course, in all cultures and religions, you find the patriarchal world trying to control things, either through erasure or submission. And we’ve become more patriarchal than ever before. So it was really beautiful to discover, through Manal and Um Firas – the leader of one of the tribes – how people in Saudi see [the Western world]. But AlUla is not quite Saudi. It has its own culture. That’s what I fell in love with.
AR You ended up working with an all-female cast of dancers, inspired by your encounters with the Nabatean women.
AK I knew people were going to think it was a political move, but it wasn’t. I’m very aware of politics, and I’m very suspicious of all countries. But I’m not suspicious of the people who actually live and work [in them] – people who work with the earth and understand the fragility and the power of that relationship. In tribal culture, women are not usually allowed to perform for strangers, especially for men. Um Firas had researched me and wanted her granddaughter to show me this traditional hair dance – which is ironic, because I don’t have any hair! [We were at her house, and at one point] Um Firas started dancing too. Manal turned to me: “She’s never done that before, and she’ll never do it again. She’s doing it because she feels comfortable in front of you.” It was a very beautiful moment. That movement became our starting point.
AR How did experiences like this come together to shape a cohesive narrative for Thikra?
AK The story is about a ritual led by a tribal leader. Women are trained to perform this ritual for the village to bring one of the ancestors back. The spirit comes from the earth, comes alive, and then has to be embodied. It’s not a sacrifice, but one of the women becomes the vessel for the spirit, living it physically for a brief moment before returning to herself. [In Thikra] there’s a mother bringing back her ancestor, who was a princess.
AR Exploring the concept of remembering through dance is interesting. As an artform it is often described as ephemeral, ambiguous and fleeting – characteristics cited as the reason for its marginal place in museums and history books. Yet, as your work shows, embodiment itself has long been a vital means of transmitting knowledge across generations.
AK What you’re describing is very matriarchal and connected to nature. Museums that pin things down and control them – that’s patriarchal. Why is it ‘his’-tory? Why is it not ‘her’-story? Because history is written predominantly by the Western men who win wars.
If It Isn’t Seen, Does It Exist?
AR You’re best known for reimagining Kathak vocabulary with contemporary dancers, blending the two forms together. For Thikra, though, you worked predominantly with dancers specialised in Bharatanatyam, another Indian classical style. Why?
AK It’s difficult to convince contemporary dancers – unless it’s already part of their cultural world – of the intangible: the idea of feeling something without showing it. If it isn’t seen, does it exist? Hindu mythology and Indian classical dance are built on embodiment, on the belief in gods who are not physically present but represented through statues.
There are some contemporary dancers in the Thikra cast, like Azusa Seyama Prioville, who is Japanese and plays the mother character. She naturally carries this sense of spirituality. But it was hard to find dancers I didn’t have to spend too long convincing. We’re living in a world of immediacy and efficiency, but to make something truly profound takes effort and time. More and more, we’re bypassing process. That’s what I’m interested in: the process itself. Indian classical dancers understand that.
The Body Should Have Always Been the Top Genre
AR You collaborated with AlDowayan for this production, but you’ve also worked with many other visual artists over the years, including Antony Gormley and Anish Kapoor. In a Financial Times interview last year, you said, ‘I think the dance world has partly been hijacked by visual artists and curators, because that’s where the money is.’ Could you elaborate on that?
AK I think there is an element of colonialism there. It’s the Western colonial approach – concepts and ideas are regarded as higher in the hierarchy than experiential ideas.
AR Higher than craft, too?
AK For sure. Everyone can have a clever idea, but it’s about how you use your craft to make that idea experiential. Dance festivals used to celebrate dance, but don’t anymore. Anything experiential, anything about dancing, is regarded as cheaper or lesser. In contrast, someone doing something conceptual is regarded as more intelligent.
AR I felt similarly at this year’s Venice Dance Biennale, where Brazilian theatre director Carolina Bianchi won the Silver Lion for outstanding contemporary choreographer – even though the work she presented was clearly a play, privileging words and concrete ideas over the more open, poetic language of movement.
AK Dance doesn’t have financial clout because it’s ephemeral. You can’t buy a dance show and put it in your living room. So I understand why there’s more money in visual arts. But what people don’t realise is that those visual artworks, too, come out of the body. Your body is the most important temple you’ll ever have in your life. When you get ill, you realise that no brain can resolve the pain your body will endure, or what you’ll go through when it fails you. The body should always have been the top genre.
AR The body is becoming even less present in today’s technology-centric world, which centres digital over physical experiences.
AK I find the modern world very problematic. And it has been problematic for a long time. Through a lot of cruelty, it erased and destroyed a lot of tribal traditions that have been there for thousands of years because it thought it was superior. Now, it’s almost like our civilisation is unwinding. We’re going to erase ourselves, our own species, through our own doing.
AR This year marks the hundredth anniversary since the development of quantum mechanics. I’ve interviewed several artists working with quantum principles, and all have pointed out that they simply confirm what tribal and Indigenous peoples have understood for centuries. Concepts such as the multiverse and entanglement existed long before Western society ‘discovered’ them.
AK You can find multiple universes in Hindu mythology. [They’re discussed] through [words], colour and music. That’s the only difference – we [explore them] through storytelling rather than data.
You Need to Hear the Other Side
AR On the topic of anniversaries, Thikra will be your last work for Akram Khan Company, which you’re closing after 25 years to pursue other projects. Why is Thikra a fitting final production?
AK I love the fact that it’s all women onstage. Most of my protagonists and antagonists have been women, mostly because my mother was instrumental in feeding me mythology. She always told me stories through the viewpoints of the female protagonists: Adam and Eve through Eve’s perspective, Jesus’s story through Mary Magdalene’s perspective, Bhishma’s story through Amba’s perspective. The list goes on. It was only later that it clicked. I didn’t know she was poisoning me!
AR I love your mum already.
AK Many years later, I was fighting with a lot of other academics about the fact that my version of these stories was completely different. I asked her, “Why did you do that?” She said, “You’re going to get the male perspective anyway. In order to have humanity and empathy, you need to hear the other side.” She had a huge influence on me.
Artists Are Not Politicians
AR Over the past quarter of a century, a key part of Akram Khan Company’s identity has been its commitment to connecting worlds, cultures and generations. In increasingly divided times, what role can dance play in nurturing unity?
AK We have to be very careful to acknowledge that [artists] are not politicians. We can act in small ways, but it doesn’t have the biggest impact. It’s not going to stop the wars happening unnecessarily right now – the most inhuman wars you can imagine.
We’re living in very dark and dangerous times – not for just one particular culture or tribe. The only tribe that matters to those controlling the world is the one symbolised by the colour green: money. It’s not about people. It’s always been about power and money. As artists, we can reach out with our hearts and our work. But policy changes the world, we don’t. Not on a real scale.
Akram Khan Company’s Thikra: Night of Remembering, by Akram Khan & Manal AlDowayan, will be at Théâtre de la Ville, Paris, 2–18 October; Sadler’s Wells, London, 28 October – 1 November; Romaeuropa, Rome, 5–6 November; Berliner Festspiele, Berlin, 11–12 November; and Tanz Köln, Cologne, 19–20 November
Emily May is a writer and editor based in Berlin
