STRANGER IN A Strange Land

As he draws a facet of his illustrious career in dance to a close with his final performance in a full-length piece, Akram Khan chooses a poignant theme for the occasion; an Indian soldier in the First World War grappling with the incongruity of it all

- Snigdha Hasan

The theme of XENOS reveals itself peel after peel. An Indian soldier in the First World War. Fighting a war that isn’t his. In a land that isn’t his. For someone who isn’t one of his own. What is or was his, is his identity — that of a dancer in the court of a nawab at the turn of the century, uprooted from his thriving cultural life and transplanted on to the battlefield. In the trenches, he is shell-shocked, struggling to impart meaning to the violence that surrounds him. His ghunghroos semi-wrapped around the ankles, he moves in a complete daze to melancholic strains, from Mozart’s Requiem to ‘Babul mora naihar chhooto hi jaaye’ — that stirring lament of Nawab Wajid Ali Shah on his banishment from his beloved Lucknow.

The sense of a loss of identity is palpable, but this is a work by Akram Khan, where every prop, motif and piece of music is imbued with multiple meanings. One wonders if the lyrics also allude to the celebrated dancer-choreographer’s own moving away from full-length performances. “The idea of XENOS was that I was becoming a stranger to my own body with age — I didn’t recognise the body,” Khan writes in an email interview from London, a few weeks before he travels with his team to Mumbai to bring to a close a facet of his illustrious career.

The venues bookending this momentous occasion are pertinent too. Khan chose the Onassis Cultural Centre in Athens for the premiere of