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Akram Khan and Oscar Winning Designer Tim Yip Announce the Launch of DESH
- World Premiere: Curve Theatre, Leicester, 15 September 2011
- New full length contemporary solo from acclaimed dancer and choreographer Akram Khan
- Oscar Winner Tim Yip (art director: Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon) set, costume and video designer
- World tour follows Curve Theatre. Dates and locations below.
- IMAGES: http://bit.ly/my6dY0
Akram Khan, the internationally acclaimed dancer and choreographer, returns to his roots to create his first full-length contemporary dance solo DESH, inspired by his home country of Bangladesh.
DESH, meaning homeland in Bengali, is a deeply personal exploration of the power of the human spirit in the face of natural adversity. Created after a year of research both in the UK and Bangladesh and performed during the year Bangladesh celebrates the 40th anniversary of its independence from Pakistan, DESH draws together multiple tales of land, nation and resistance that converge into the body and voice of one man trying to find balance in an unstable world.
Moving between Britain and Bangladesh, Khan weaves threads of memory, experience and myth into a surreal world of surprising connection. At once intimate and epic, DESH explores fragility in the face of overwhelming natural forces, and celebrates the resilience of the human spirit in the rhythms of labour, in dream and story, and in transformation and survival.
Devised during residencies at Curve Theatre, Leicester and MC2: Grenoble, DESH will create a completely new environment on stage that symbolises and embodies the chaos, but also hope of Bangladesh and its people, who are among the most economically and environmentally vulnerable in the world. A world-class collection of artists brought together from all over the globe have collaborated with Khan to create a set of staggering breadth and scale for DESH, to bring the beauty and brutality of Bangladesh to the stage. Oscar and BAFTA winning Chinese designer Tim Yip (Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon) has created the set and costume designs for DESH. Renowned for the precision and sophistication of his Eastern aesthetic, the complexity and scale of his staging are a perfect metaphor for the natural energies that cause the cyclical and extreme metamorphoses of Bangladesh’s landscape under the forces of the elements. This is the first time Yip’s work will be seen on Curve’s impressive main stage – a generous and exhilarating space which welcomes audacious and powerful design.
Other artistic collaborators for DESH include British award-winning lighting designer Michael Hulls and Olivier award-winning composer Jocelyn Pook, and the French-Indian writer and poet Karthika Nair.
Akram Khan says: “The voice of this journey is Bengali, the first language and sounds I heard as a child. Bengali provokes thoughts of home, but despite being at my core, I cannot dream or think in Bengali, only in English. This duality of self, of origin and of lives lived is explored through DESH, together with the elements of earth and water that are central to Bangladeshi culture and the sad reality that Bangladesh is likely to be one of the first countries to perish under the rising sea levels caused by world environmental pollution: our disposable culture wiping away the country of my ancestors.”
DESH is sponsored by COLAS, and co-produced by MC2: Grenoble, Curve Theatre, Leicester, Sadler’s Wells London, Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg and Concertgebouw Brugge. The work has been produced during residencies at Curve Theatre, Leicester and MC2: Grenoble.
Akram Khan is an Associate Artist of MC2: Grenoble and Sadler’s Wells, London in a special international co-operation.
Akram Khan Company is supported by Arts Council England.
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DESH tour dates:
- Public dress rehearsal: 12 September at Curve Theatre, Leicester, Rutland St, Leicester LE1 1S, box office: +44(0)116 242 3595
- World premiere: 15 September, Curve Theatre, Leicester
- 13, 16 – 17 September, performances, Curve Theatre, Leicester.
- 4 – 8 October, Sadler’s Wells, London
- 18 – 19 November, Kwai Tsing Theatre, Hong Kong.
- 1 December, Concertgebouw, Brugge, Belgium
2012
- 18 January, Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg, Luxembourg
- 18 February, Große Saal, Festspielhaus St. Pölten, Austria
- 14 – 16 March, MC2: Grenoble, France
- 9 – 10 May, La Comète-Scène Nationale, Châlons-en-Champagne, France
- 19 – 20 May, Stadsschouwburg, Amsterdam, Netherlands
- 18 – 29 December, Théâtre de la Ville, Paris, France
About Akram Khan Company
Akram Khan Company was founded by Akram Khan and his producer Farooq Chaudhry in 2000. The company has established a worldwide reputation for work that is ambitious, powerful, fresh, relevant and profoundly moving. Few dance artists are able to reach out to audiences in Europe, the Americas, the Middle East, Australia and Asia and are able to be understood and enjoyed by them in the way Khan is. A classicist and a modernist, the storytelling in Khan’s work has an uncanny ability to reflect our times and in the past ten years he has reinvigorated perceptions of dance, other art forms and cultures.
The company has won an array of awards including The Age Critics Award for ‘Best New Work’ at the 2010 Melbourne Arts Festival and the Helpmann Award for ‘Best Choreography in a Dance Work’ at the 2007 Sydney Festival. Khan was awarded the South Bank Sky Arts Dance Award and ISPA (International Society for the Performing Arts) Distinguished Artist Award in January 2011. The company has also collaborated with some of the world’s best- known performers and artists including Kylie Minogue, Juliette Binoche, Antony Gormley, Anish Kapoor, Sylvie Guillem, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Nitin Sawhney.
DESH
Artistic credits:
- Artistic Direction, Choreography, Performance Akram Khan
- Set and Costume Design Tim Yip
- Music Composition Jocelyn Pook
- Lighting Design Michael Hulls
- Devised by Karthika Nair, Akram Khan
- Written by Karthika Nair, Akram Khan, Polar Bear
- Dramaturge Ruth Little
- Video Animation Yeast Culture
- Set Construction and Video Sander Loonen (Arp Theatre)
- Technical Director Fabiana Piccioli
- Creative Acting Director Zoë Nathenson
- Painted Head Sequence: Devised by Akram Khan, Damien Jalet
- Producer Farooq Chaudhry
Akram Khan gratefully acknowledges the contribution of the following artists: Kate Braithwaite, Sue Buckmaster, Renee Castle, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Leesa Gazi, Sreya Andrisha Gazi, Daniel Hart, Chris Janschke, Labik Kamal, Samuel Lefeuvre, Urmee Mazher, Nicola Monaco, Andrei Nazarenko, Bhasker Patel, Sebastien Ramirez, RootlessRoot (Linda Kapetanea & Jozef Frucek), Shantala Shivalingappa, Shamsur Rahman, Syed Shamsul Haq and Shlomo.
Special thanks to Michel Orier, Paul Kerryson, Alistair Spalding, Béatrice Abeille Robin, Mr & Mrs Khan, Raihana Ahmad, Shahidul Alam, Eeshita Azad, British Council Bangladesh, Ruby Ghuznavi (textile curator), Irene Lu, Tareque Masood, Ramendu Majumdar (ITI), Susan Mearns (ActionAid), NariMaitree, Sreya Andrisha Gazi (Eshita’s voice), Eela Muhaimin (Jui’s voice), Eesha Desai, Amy Hollis, Gemma Ottey and Yohan Zeiton.
Akram Khan Company gratefully acknowledges the support of the Bangladesh High Commission, London
Tim Yip
A renowned artist, Timmy Yip has multidisciplinary works in costume design, visual and contemporary art. For his work in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Tim won the Oscar for Best Art Direction and Costume Design in 2000 and he won the British Academy Film Award for Best Costume Design in 2000.
Tim graduated from Hong Kong Polytechnic with a degree in photography. Since working on his first film A Better Tomorrow directed by John Woo in 1986, he has accomplished costume designs and art direction for many film and theatrical performances over the past two decades. Tim has collaborated with film directors of international acclaim such as John Woo, Ang Lee, Tsai Ming Liang, Tian Zhuangzhuang, Li Shaohong, Stanley Kwan, Chen Guofu, Chen Kaigeand Feng Xiaogang to name just a few. Tim has also worked with many renowned Taiwan theatrical groups such as Cloud Gate Dance Theatre, Contemporary Legend Theatre, Han Tang Yue-fu Dance Ensemble, Tai-Gu Tales Dance Theatre, U Theatre, with performances that have toured all over the world. His striking costume design and art direction for the theatre production Medea, television drama Oranges Turn Ripe, feature films Temptation of a Monk and Double Vision have further attracted worldwide attention to his work.
In earlier works, Tim introduced his concept of the “New Orientalism” aesthetic, making him an important artist in helping the world understand the beauty of Chinese Culture and arts.[5] Since 2002, he has held many costume exhibitions such as Faces of the Time at the Taiwan National Palace Museum, Bourges Maison de la Culture in France and a special photography exhibition in Spain, conveying his interpretation of beauty in Oriental art to Western audiences. In 2004, Tim Yip was the art and costume director for the Beijing handover performance at the Olympic Games closing ceremony in Athens. In recent years, he has held various solo art exhibitions in New York, Beijing and Shanghai, and in 2005 he was invited by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts to participate in the China Red exhibition. The Beijing Today Art Museum organized his solo art exhibition Illusions of Silence in late 2007. Tim has several publications including Lost in Time, Flower of the Wind, Floating, Circulation, Rouge: L’art de Tim Yip (published in both French and English), Illusions of Silence and Passage.
Jocelyn Pook
Best known for her score for Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, Jocelyn Pook is an award-winning composer who writes music for film, television, theatre, dance and the concert platform.
Jocelyn graduated from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in 1983, where she studied the viola. She then embarked on a period of touring and recording - with artists such as Peter Gabriel, Laurie Anderson and PJ Harvey - both as a soloist and with The Jocelyn Pook Ensemble, performing repertoire from her albums and music from her film scores. For her music-theatre piece Speaking in Tunes she won a British Composer Award and, for the National Theatre's production of St Joan, she won an Olivier Award. Jocelyn has established an international reputation as a highly original composer of screen music following her score for Eyes Wide Shut, which won a Chicago Film Award and a Golden Globe nomination. Other film scores include: The Merchant of Venice (Dir: Michael Radford), Time Out (L'Emploi du Temps, Dir: Paul Marcus) and Brick Lane (Dir: Sarah Gavron). She also contributed a song to the soundtrack of Gangs of New York (Dir: Martin Scorsese).
Jocelyn has composed scores for television shows and commercials, and was nominated for a BAFTA for Channel 4's The Government Inspector (Dir: Peter Kosminsky). With a blossoming reputation as a composer of electro-acoustic works and music for the concert platform, Jocelyn continues to celebrate the diversity of the human voice. Her work Mobile was a commission from the BBC Proms and The King's Singers and is a collaboration with the Poet Laureate Andrew Motion. Portraits in Absentia was commissioned by BBC Radio 3 and is a collage of sound, voice, music and words woven from the messages left on her answerphone. Ingerland, Jocelyn's first contemporary opera, was commissioned and produced by ROH2 and performed in the Royal Opera House's Linbury Studio Theatre in June 2010. Jocelyn has chaired and been a judge on various panels including the British Composer Awards, Ivor Novello Awards and BBC Proms Young Composers Competition.
Michael Hulls
Michael trained in dance and theatre at Dartington College of Arts and in 1992 was awarded a bursary by the Arts Council to attend dance lighting workshops with Jennifer Tipton in New York and Paris. Since then he has worked exclusively within dance and developed a close collaboration with the choreographer Russell Maliphant. Their collaborations, including Shift, Two, Sheer, and Push, have won international critical acclaim and many major awards. In 2002 their piece Sheer won a Time Out Award for Outstanding Collaboration, Choice won a South Bank Show Dance Award in 2003 and in 2006 Push, danced by Russell and Sylvie Guillem, won four major awards including the Olivier Award for Best New Dance Production and a South Bank Show Dance Award.
Michael and Russell also collaborated in 2003 on Broken Fall, commissioned by George Piper Dances as a trio for Michael Nunn, William Trevitt and Sylvie Guillem. Broken Fall won the 2004 Olivier Award for Best New Dance Production. Michael first worked with GPD when Russell re-staged Critical Mass for Nunn and Trevitt, and again with Russell on the commissioned duet Torsion. Michael has also worked with GPD on Christopher Wheeldon’s Mesmerics, which was nominated for an Olivier Award.
Michael has also worked with Javier de Frutos on the works Cattle Call, Paseillo, Los Picadores and Blue Roses. Michael has worked closely with Jonathan Burrows, lighting many pieces including The Stop Quartet for his own company and Walking/Music for Ballett Frankfurt. Michael has also worked with Akram Khan on in-I, his duet with Juliette Binoche, which toured extensively during 2008 and 2009, and with Meg Stuart on her works for Deutsche Oper Ballett and Mikhail Baryshnikov.
In 2009, Michael’s work Eonnagata, a collaboration with Sylvie Guillem, Robert Lepage and Russell Maliphant opened at Sadler’s Wells and Two : Four : Ten, a retrospective celebrating the creative relationship between Michel and Russell Maliphant was presented at the London Coliseum.
In 2009, Michael was presented with the “Knight of Illumination” Award for Best Lighting Design in a dance production for Eonnagata.
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