One of the UK’s best known dance makers comes to Article19 with ‘Bahok’ a show created in collaboration with the National Ballet of China, and it’s not often you get to work with those guys.
The show follows the theme of a group of travellers trapped in an airport where the mix of cultures and languages all come in to play as they transition through the airport. A giant information board hangs ominously in the background, as if giving the dancers instructions on how to behave.
The company say this much about the work;
“After creating intimate duets with Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui (zero degrees) and Sylvie Guillem (Sacred Monsters), Akram Khan once again joins forces with long-time collaborator and multi award-winning composer Nitin Sawhney, who has created an original score for bahok.
Originally in collaboration with China’s classical ballet flagship company, the National Ballet of China, bahok brings together 8 dancers from diverse cultures, traditions and dance backgrounds: Chinese, Korean, Indian, South African and Spanish. As such they resemble 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’ is performed by Eulalia Ayguade Farro, Young Jin Kim, Andrej Petrovic, Saju Shanell Winlock, Cheng-Fang Wu, Set Byeol Lim and Sung Hoon Kim with choreography by Akram Khan and music by Nitin Sawhney.
This video was filmed at the International Dance Festival in Birmingham produced by DanceXchange.