Xenos: Akram Khan bows out with moving tribute to Indian war dead

Swansong: Akram Khan, who is retiring from solo performances, pays tribute to Indian soldiers who served for Britain in WWI
Alastair Muir
Emma Byrne31 May 2018

Xenos, the latest and final solo work by the acclaimed dancer-choreographer Akram Khan, is not your average retirement party.

Within minutes, the 43-year-old has plummeted down a steep trench; by the end of the hour he’s battled a forest of thick rope, falling earth, and pirouetted and tumbled across the stage. Many younger dancers would be defeated by this piece’s physicality; the endlessly energetic Khan still has seven London shows to go.

Xenos, which means “stranger” or “foreigner”, is inspired in part by the 1.5 million Indian soldiers who fought for Britain in the trenches of the First World War. We hear their words read aloud — “This is not war. It is the ending of the world” — and we listen to their names, a litany of death and despair, spat out from a ghostly gramophone.

But it is through Khan himself that we most acutely feel their suffering. His everyman is a shell-shocked soldier, picking his way warily across Mirella Weingarten’s gloriously hellish set. At one moment he wrestles with rope dropped from the trench’s edge; in another he scrabbles to collect a pine cone thrown at his feet.

Slowly, the complex rhythms of Kathak, an Indian classical dance form, give way to a more loose-limbed contemporary style, punctuated by Khan’s trademark stillness.

There’s much to praise in Xenos: the wonderful musicians, Michael Hulls’s sensitive, moody lighting and Vincenzo Lamagna’s sound design. But most impressive of all is Khan’s sheer stage presence and charisma. A thrilling end to a remarkable soloist career.

The best dance to see in 2018

1/15

Until June 9

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