The return of the great Khan

Akram Khan is no stranger to Taipei, or the capital's dance lovers. He's performed here twice as part of the Novel Hall Dance series. But his most recent visit was different he said, because he was seeing the country through the eyes of its own dancers.

Khan is fascinating to talk to because he's fascinated by almost everything. Fascinated is a word he uses over and over again when talking about his life, his work and his process of creation. He's intensely interested in other people, in how the human body works, in art, life and death; obsessed even, with finding out not just what is on the surface, but what's behind, what's underneath, what's kept in the dark.

As the noted dancer-choreographer talked, quickly and quietly, both at the Cloud Gate Dance Theater (雲門舞集) studio and at a press conference at the National Theater, the quicksilver sharpness of his mind and his innate inquisitiveness shone through.

Listening to him, it's not hard to understand why this London-born dancer/choreographer became the "boy wonder" of Europe's modern dance world in just a few short years; it's how he did so that takes some time coming to grips with.

He's clearly on the fast track. He's only 33 now and his travel schedule and choreographic commitments have been set for years.

He arrived to work with Cloud Gate in January. There's been enough of a gap between this year and his previous visits (in 2002 and 2004) that he's noticed the differences in Taipei. He was in Australia, Hong Kong and Japan before coming here. He returned to England early last month to get ready for shows in Paris and Vienna. He's in Hong Kong this weekend to perform with famed French prima ballerina Sylvie Guillem in his piece Sacred Monsters and then in Seoul next week for several performances before coming back to Taipei and more work ahead of the premiere of his latest work Lost Shadows by the Cloud Gate Dance Theater.

How did the son of Bangladeshi immigrants, grandson of a famous Indian mathematician-scientist, someone trained in classical Indian Kathak dance since childhood, go from a traditional dance background to starting his own contemporary dance company, to being awarded a MBE (Member of the British Empire) for his services to dance in 2005 — at age 31?

Khan frequently refers to the influence of both his immediate family and his community — the Bengali/Bangladeshi/Indian/expatriate/Moslem community, both in England and in Bangladesh.

Family, in the form of his mother, an aspiring dancer herself who could never perform in public because of her religion, who started teaching him folk dances when he was three and enrolled him with the famed Kathak teacher Sri Pratap Pawer when he was seven.

"Her passion [for dance] she wanted to pass on. Wanted to pass on [our] cultural roots," he said.

Family, in the form of his grandfather, whose influence was so strong on the young Khan, that not only was he sure he would also become a mathematician, but he saw the world in terms of numbers.

"When I was a child, I saw things in terms of mathematics — because I was rather isolated because the other boys were into academics, I wasn't, … I codified every human being around me," he said.

Luckily for the dance world, though, reality intruded on his dream of being a mathematician. In high school he failed his maths exam, and had to think of something else to do. But there was strong pressure from his community to follow an academic path, to be a "professional," to go to university. He did eventually go to university, but for an unconventional degree in dance.