"bahok"

After the intimate duets with Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui (“zero degrees”) and Sylvie Guillem (“Sacred Monsters”), this year Akram Khan presents a very special ensemble piece for three dancers of the classically oriented National Ballet of China and five dancers of his own contemporary company. In “bahok”, eight different performers also means eight different nationalities, languages and dancing techniques: a vast treasure for Khan’s sensitive search for what could be home in a world in which everybody is permanently on the move.
The loose sequence of scenes, in which Khan creates a babel of languages of movement, develops at a place of transit – a waiting room. Stylised hip hop meets ballet, Western sportiness meets Eastern delicacy. Khan contrasts poetic images of individual isolation and virtuoso solos by the excellent dancers with ensemble scenes that develop their very own momentum out of the hard impulses characteristic of Khan.