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When I interviewed Akram Khan in 2009 (see the ‘Articles’ section, if you’re interested), he told me that he is fascinated by the spiritual, and that his next piece would reflect that interest. Well, ‘Vertical Road’ certainly fulfils its brief, but I’m afraid I didn’t find his interpretation of the subject as fascinating as Khan clearly does. The piece is a series of vignettes, held together by tentative, slow sections, which explore different forms of worship, love and what it might mean to be human. The whole evening was a little too worthy for my taste.

I agree wholeheartedly with my companion (who liked the piece more than I did), that in order to pull off something that invests in such emotionally complex territory the choreographer and dancers must believe in what they’re doing. Where we disagree, however, is whether this was successful in Vertical Road. That Khan believes in what he’s doing, I have no doubt. That the dancers do, too, I am more sceptical about: there were times when it felt like watching a play where the actors are not keen on the script but giving it their all in an attempt to salvage it.
And, to some extent, they did. The dancers were stunning, as Khan’s company usually are. His lines, leaps, drops and spins are spikily graceful and rhythmical menacing by turns, and the dancers come together and flow apart as a skilled unit. The unison moves are affecting and effective, and the piece often feels energetic, witty, exuberant. However, the slow passages were frustratingly self-indulgent. Frankly, they were dull. Short, slower passages make an interesting juxtaposition with the more dynamic moments, but the slow outweighed the fun for me and left me checking my watch.

Although the piece had some arrestingly beautiful moments, the aesthetic pleasure was, for me, somewhat overwhelmed by the feeling that one needed to ‘get it’ and to see the deeper meaning behind the piece. Its lack of momentum prevented me from swallowed up in the movement, and instead left me frustrated.
Nitin Sawhney’s score is often more of a soundscape than a melody, but has enough thumping rhythm to drive the dancers forward in the faster passages. His music perfectly complements the slow moments – I’m just not sure that’s a compliment. All in all, although I cannot fault the dancers, this piece did not speak to me. Perhaps it was too subtle, too spiritual for this sleepy atheist – certainly, I seem to be alone in my ambivalence. It has been positively received elsewhere, so I leave you with more upbeat reviews: The FT here, Guardian here and Telegraph here.

My sound and music

I think kathak has made me more interested in music. As part of the training you have to learn an instrument, and initially I learnt singing. I had one lesson and the teacher said “Sing the note Sa”, so I sang the note Sa, and he said
“Get out, you’ll never be a singer”, which was really quite horrific, especially as a child. So he sent me to the next room and said I’d be better off in tabla class. I really persevered at the percussive side, and now I love anything that’s percussive. In kathak you are both musician and dancer, and that has absolutely affected how I listen to music. Because of the training I had I’m much more interested not just in the melody but also in the craft of the performer, the musician. Are they really accomplished, are they really good at what they do, do they speak through what they do?

A lot of dancers respond very honestly to music, and so when the music’s speaking from the heart, from the musician, somehow the dance connects with it much more easily. I was also into Michael Jackson as a child, his physicality and his musicality, how he physicalises music, that I just find absolutely fantastic. He responds to the music, rather than dancing on the music, and there’s a big difference. That’s something I was very drawn to. So, kathak and Michael Jackson are two influences I had growing up.

In terms of who I’d like to choreograph to, I’d love to collaborate with Salif Keita, a beautiful singer from West Africa. He’s got a song called Folon, and it’s just beautiful. I like Bjork. I also love Massive Attack; I’d love to do stuff with them, especially their early stuff. Nitin Sawnhey and I have made a few collaborations together, and Nitin I love. I love his music because he’s scientific, he’s fascinated by science, but he’s also very spiritual. These two worlds are something I’m fascinated by, the spiritual has the narrative, and the science has the information. The spirituality is more about faith and trust, you don’t need it to be ‘in your face’, you just believe it. And then, in the middle, where you meet, is the human being. And so you make a choice, you either accept both or you choose one direction or the other. For me, Nitin really encompasses both. There’s something extremely spiritual about him as a performer, but he’s also extremely scientific, it’s amazing.

I did a collaboration with Steve Reich, but for me, contemporary music’s hard; I find it hard to listen to, to get into. I look at it more as an experiment, so that’s why I enjoy working with the London Sinfonietta, because for me it’s like a science lab. It’s like being in a laboratory, wearing a white coat, and thinking “Hmm, that’s interesting”, but I’m not emotionally moved. I don’t know why, I just don’t ‘get’ contemporary music; it’s just something not in me. If you put on Flamenco, if you put on Arabic music, or African music, I kind of feel where it’s coming from, the stories it’s speaking, but the disjoint-ness of contemporary music I don’t get. I don’t see the spirituality in contemporary music, I don’t feel it’s made from the heart, I feel it’s made from the brain. It’s intellectual; the brain creates the music rather than the instinct, the heart. There’s no such thing as a piece of music that you couldn’t choreograph or dance to, but there is music that I don’t want to choreograph to. To be entirely honest, when I did the piece with Steve Reich, it was music I couldn’t find a story in, and I was really struggling with that. He created the music specifically for the piece, we collaborated, and it was the first time he created music for the concept of dance. Eventually, my story became about searching for the story. In a way, I psychologically changed the whole thing because I was so frustrated that I couldn’t find a narrative in this music, that in the end I thought, “OK, your story is going to be about searching for the story”, and I never found the story. And so, even if the narrative is that I don’t know how to choreograph to this, then it becomes all about “I don’t know how to choreograph to this”. I always find a story. Because the second I put the music on, I’m responding to it, even it it’s negatively, I’m still responding to it, and that means that a dialogue is taking place. So long as I react to the music, it’s OK. It’s only problematic if I don’t react to it, then I have an issue.

When I’m tired and I need to focus, or when I can’t sleep, I listen to Indian vocal music. It’s so soothing, it creates an atmosphere. I don’t really listen to a lot of Western Classical music, although I like it. I put on stuff like Justin Timberlake, I’m kind of cheesy in that way, I like that stuff. There’s a hint of him being influenced by Michael [Jackson], with the dancing and stuff, it makes you want to groove. I like a lot of hip hop, but I tend to like just one or two songs from each person, a specific melody, or what they’re saying, I like it when it’s about themselves.

Because of my dance, I work with a lot of different cultures, people, dancers and collaborators, and the way to get to know them is to get to know what they eat and get to know the music they listen to. I’ve been listening to a lot of Arabic music recently, because my next piece is inspired by stories from the Arab world, the Muslim world. Before that, I made a piece called Bahok, with the National Ballet of China, so I was listening to a lot of Chinese music. It was kind of Chinese Opera, which was really strange! I like Tan Dun, who did the score for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and we’re planning to work together in the future.

I love Japanese music, I’m a big fan of Ryuichi Sakamoto. I’m working with a Japanese Taiko drummer at the moment, and she’s incredible. I want to see her perspective of what I’m doing. Rather than going to a musician and saying, “this is what I’m doing, this is what I want you to do, this is the story, you follow”, I show them what I’m doing and then I ask, “What do you see in it?” So she, coming from a different place, has a different opinion of what I’m doing. You’re always seeing from your own perspective, but what’s interesting is when you transfer that perspective, to try and see from someone else’s.

Henryk Goreck’s Symphony No.3 is just phenomenal. Phenomenal. It starts at the Earth. You can barely hear it, it’s so bass, so low. And it just… transcends. It comes out of the ground and then starts to go to vocals, which is the angels. There’s a journey, a kind of vertical road, (which is the name of the next piece I’m creating), and this journey is very spiritual for me. As an artist, there’s a sense of a journey towards perfection, but of never quite reaching it. The piece repeats itself, but it changes a tiny bit, layer by layer. I love the sense of transition, of mutation, of it evolving. This music really reflects that journey. I feel very attached to it because that’s what happened to me. I trained in Indian Classical dance for many years, and then I went to university and discovered contemporary dance, and my classical got contaminated. Contamination is used as a negative word, but then I realised, no, I’m evolving. Even if people hate it, I’m evolving. That’s why I relate to the music.

This article first appeared in INTO magazine, November 2009.