When Akram Khan attended a panel discussion three days prior to his Dhaka debut, he left little to our imagination about his long-awaited solo. Not that we didn’t already know enough. It was a hit show, Akram having toured extensively around the world (22 countries) before he came to Bangladesh where, he claimed, it “belonged.”
Still, as he entered the stage on Friday, little did the audience know what they were about to experience, a jawdroppingly poignant tale of a man torn between his ancestral past and his diasporic present, portrayed through metaphors and anecdotes in which family, folklore and history become one. DESH (Bengali for “homeland”), while exploring Akram’s quest for identity, introduces us to the technical dazzle of European stagecraft – through spectacular sound effects, visual animations and stage designs – and that universal language of mime where words are redundant.
Personally, I have never seen anything quite like it, and from what I could make out from instant audience response, neither have they. My verdict? Akram Khan has lived up to the hype built around his stage debut in Bangladesh. Not one to settle for mediocrity, the celebrated dancer-choreographer (and his team) rehearsed for weeks before he came to perform.
And what a performance it was!
Born and raised in a London neighbourhood, Akram trained as a Kathak dancer at an early age and moved on to master contemporary dance forms. Although the show was set in the narrative traditions of Kathak, it was his Kathak movements, except for occasional foot-slaps, that the audience missed. This can be partly ascribed to his penchant for fusion experiments, mixing the classic with the contemporary.
The show opens with Akram walking with a lantern, apparently in search of something, and moments later, he is seen with a sledgehammer that he pounds on a grave-like structure. The grave is revealed to be of his father, who died some time in the past, and a series of flashbacks follow.
Visibly, there is only one character, Akram himself, but slowly we are introduced to a herd of other characters, all offstage, appearing only through their vocal interactions with Akram. Some he summons to the stage, others conjured up through his shapeshifting presence. And so we have a son at odds with his father, a mother often reprimanded, a young niece always eager to hear stories, all connected by their link to a country far away from the country of their residence. And then there is a tech support operator based in Chittagong.
What’s brilliant about the show is its deft interweaving of all the stories presented and the images personified, shedding an unflattering light on Akram’s own past and merging it with the past of Bangladesh, the “desh” of his parents. Akram, through DESH, attempts to know the country in order to understand it and himself better. But the show is more than just one man’s soul-searching. It is also about the turbulent birth of a nation, its fight for democracy, the beauty of its wildlife, the unruly streets, folk stories involving forest deities and honeybees.
Stage designs and multi-visual effects of the show deserve a special mention. Although the piece is performed solo, with no other visible onstage characters, its success partly hinges on the fabulous work done by the people behind the scene who made it so appealing visually. Something the audience will remember for a long time to come.
But what’s in it for the man trying to make sense of himself and his roots? The success of Akram is not in his sold-out show, or its live screening – something usually done only in case of important national events. I think his success is in making the audience love him, appreciate his talent, cheer for him every time he made a move out of the ordinary, consider him one of their own.
What more can an artist expect in his home debut?
