bahok

World Premiere: 25 January 2008, Tianqiao Theatre, Beijing
Last performance: 15 May 2010, Mei Lanfang Theatre, Beijing

“For nomads, home is not an address,
home is what they carry with them.”

(John Berger, Hold everything dear. p. 129)

After creating intimate duets with Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui (zero degrees) and Sylvie Guillem (Sacred Monsters), Akram joined forces with long-time collaborator and multi award-winning composer Nitin Sawhney, creating an original score for bahok. Originally in collaboration with China’s classical ballet flagship company, the National Ballet of China, bahok brought together eight dancers from diverse cultures, traditions and dance backgrounds: Chinese, Korean, Indian, South African and Spanish. As such they resembled a present day version of the tale of Babel, speaking different languages both with their bodies and tongues.

They meet in one of this globalised world’s transit zones and try to communicate, to share ‘the things they carry with them’: their experiences, their memories of their original homes, the dreams and aspirations that made them move. They are carriers. They are bahok.

 

bahok

An excerpt

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Artistic Director/Choreographer Akram Khan
Composer Nitin Sawhney
Chinese Music Advisor Gisele Edwards
Additional Music
My Friend of Angel Tribe by Mari Boine

Lighting Designer Fabiana Piccioli
Set Conceived by
Fabiana Piccioli and Akram Khan
Dramaturge Guy Cools

Material devised and performed by
Eulalia Ayguade Farro
Young Jin Kim
Andrej Petrovic
Saju
Shanell Winlock
Cheng-Fang Wu
Set Byeol Lim
Sung Hoon Kim

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