In the past three years, dance lovers in Taiwan have had more opportunities to see the works they'd previously only heard of come to life on local stages.
The Novel Dance Series 2002 Plus is the brainchild of Lin Huai-min (
It was this desire to show dance's cutting edge that led Lin to invite dancer/choreographer Akram Khan to Taipei for a series of performances beginning Sept. 24., including the 27-year-old's first full-length production, Kaash.
Born in London to parents from Bangladesh who insisted on handing down the traditions of their homeland, Khan began studying the 500-year-old classical Indian dance tradition of Kathak at the age of 7 under Kathak guru, Sri Pratap Pawar.
Kathak is the traditional dance of northern India which emphasizes the movements of the feet. Dancers decorate their feet with heavy bells and rotate to complicated rhythms. It is meant as a dramatic interpretation of Persian poetry and Indian mythology. Developed between 1526-1761, it has influenced other dance forms such as Flamenco.
The talented teenage Khan was no longer content with the traditional form and decided to learn contemporary dance at De Montfort University and later at the Northern School of Contemporary Dance in Leeds, England, where he recorded the highest marks ever for his Performing Arts degree. Before graduating, he had performed worldwide, including in Pandit Ravi Shankar's The Jungle Book, and in Peter Brook's Mahabharata.
In 1999, he worked with senior British choreographer Jonathan Burrows on a duet. As Khan later recalled, Burrow's commitment to dance as a medium in its own right and his attempts to integrate other media in his works influenced him greatly and marked a turning point in his career. In 2000, Khan spent six months participating in the X-group choreographic laboratory in Brussels along with other young dancers and choreographers from around the world. The experience helped him form connections between contemporary dance and traditional forms like Kathak.
Later that same year, he launched the Akram Khan Dance Company, which was soon invited to some of the world's most important contemporary dance festivals. For his work in 2000 he was awarded the Outstanding Newcomer to Dance Award by both the Critics' Circle-Dance Section and Time Out Live.
Not wanting to confine himself to the orthodox Kathak, he found inspiration from both Asian and Western dance forms and created something uncategorizable by era or culture. Khan calls his style "contemporary Kathak."
Currently a choreographer in residence at Royal Festival Hall, Khan has teamed up with celebrated sculptor Anish Kapoor and composer Nitin Sawhney in Kaash (Hindi for "if").
Set designer Kapoor is a British-Indian artist who has exhibited around the world over the past 20 years in venues such as Kunsthalle Basel and the Tate Gallery in London. He has participated in Documenta IX in Kassel and was awarded the Premio Duemila at the Venice Biennale in 1990 and the Turner Prize in 1991.
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