The highly acclaimed dancer and choreographer Akram Khan, 30, is contemplating a mould of his body, lying prone on the stage at Sadler’s Wells theatre in London. Sculpted by Antony Gormley, the Khan mould is a key to Zero Degrees, a collaboration between Khan, his fellow choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Gormley and the musician Nitin Sawhney. “We are going to try to burn it every night,” smiles Khan. “It resembles a body on an Indian funeral pyre. But we can’t afford to have a fresh one every night, so we need to burn this without actually burning it, if you see what I mean.” Fair enough; at market rates a new Gormley sculpture on a nightly basis for the nine-day run would set the production back about £1 million.
Khan, who was once described by Debra Craine, the Times chief dance critic, as “a gripping performer of exceptional grace and thrilling rhythmic precision”, looks elegant in wide-bottomed trousers. As he gazes at the Gormley sculpture, moulded on his slight frame, he says: “We start this show with a dead body and the notion is that you can never really achieve stillness. In life, you are breathing, but in death your body continues to decompose. So what is the transitional point? When do you die? Nobody knows because once they go, they are on the other side. This is about that transitional point, the point I call zero degrees.”
The show explores the human journey towards death. Its narrative stems from an experience that Khan had in India seven years ago. “I was travelling with my cousin from Bangladesh to India, and went against my mother’s wishes. I decided to travel by coach, the way Bangladeshi people do, crossing the border, and then by train to Calcutta. The passport controls on both sides were hugely corrupt with officials demanding that we give them something. Because I had a British passport, I felt I had power and said ‘No’. How naive I was. My cousin said, ‘Of course we will.’ I was very upset. I thought being British would have had some effect. But their eyes said, ‘Foreigners pass through here all the time. Don’t try to threaten us.’
“We boarded the train, and there was this body lying there, asleep. Or so I thought. I realised it was a dead man. A woman, possibly his wife, was pleading for somebody to help move him. I turned to my cousin and said, ‘We must help her.’ Shockingly his response was, ‘Don’t! If you touch him, the police will blame you for his death.’ I had never seen a dead body before. I think I would have handled it better if people around me had been equally emotional, but they were so detached; that really disturbed me.”
He considers Kathak — a dramatic form of Indian classical dance, which includes mime — the perfect medium to express this. “Kathak is extremely scientific and symmetrical. At the same time it has an immense amount of spirituality. In the middle of these two, there is a clash. Which is more important? Spirituality or science? The answer is both. One does not exist without the other. It’s this in-between place that interests me, and it is from there that Kathak dancing emerges.” He says that unlike contemporary Western dance, in Asia “dance emerged from religion, whether from the Sufis, doing the whirling dervishes, or Kathak, which relates to the Hindu gods.”
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Khan, who took a dance degree at the Northern School of Contemporary Dance, in Leeds, and has been an associate artist at the Royal Festival Hall, was destined for a life in dance. His mother, Anwara, has played an important role in his life and spiritual beliefs. Growing up in the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka, Anwara yearned for a career in dancing but was forbidden it by her parents. So when her life translated to England and her young son showed promise, she hurried him off to the Indian Institute, in West Kensington, London, where he became a skilled exponent of Kathak dancing. Five years ago he set up the Akram Khan Company.
Even now he dedicates his performances to his mother. “She is my pillar. And my harshest critic. I do it for myself, but more importantly for her. Dancing was her dream. Now it is my dream.” Every morning he whispers a prayer from the Koran that his mother taught him as a child. “I pray before I start my morning dance practice, I pray when I finish. I pray before I go out. It takes only ten seconds. As a child I was a slow learner, so she would whisper it in my ear.
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Brought up a Muslim in the South London suburb of Balham, he attests to living under a “pick and mix” spirituality. He acknowledges myths from Hinduism, the spiritualism of Islam and what one might loosely call a Christian sensibility of life. Again, this seems to stem from his mother. “When I was young, I remember treading on ants and my mother said, ‘You know, maybe that ant is a mother. And if someone trod on me and I died, how would you like it?’
” Khan seems very sure what will happen after he makes his own journey to the place of no return. “After I die, I feel I will be in another story, a different kind of story. And then I will be judged, depending on what I have done, whether I go to Heaven or Hell.”
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What is his current position? “I don’t know. From an Islamic perspective, or an orthodox Christian one, maybe I’m not doing so well.”
We talk about the point where life begins, but Khan has no children as yet. “I’m getting married in August to Shanell Winlock, a mixed- race South African, who is a dancer in my company. As she is a Christian, we are having two ceremonies. First a traditional marriage in Johannesburg and then we will come back to London and have a big Bollywood- style wedding, with drummers and lots of music and dancing.
“In fact, I wanted to hire an elephant. It’s not traditional Islamic, but my mother loves the sense of energy and fun in traditional Hindu-type celebrations. She’s delighted that I’m getting married. When she met Shanell, I disappeared from the picture.”
Yet again, the thought of Anwara Khan illuminates her son’s face. “When she disappears from this world, that’s the day I will stop dancing,” he says.
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Zero Degrees will have its world premiere at Sadler’s Wells, London EC1, on July 8. For further information and tickets, call 0870 7377737