armies during World War I, our massively scaled first industrial war - and, alas, not our last. Khan is a lone soldier and he draws his embodied portrait of a battle-scarred from the experience of more than 4 million non-white men who were mobilized by European and U.S. Strangers in a strange land, embattled, war-torn, identity-less, lost. It is the ending of the world.”Īnd we are fully part of Khan’s world.
Then a recorded voice intones: “Do not think this is war. Disoriented as lights flicker and the air seems to crackle.ĭarkness. He drags a heavy rope to sounds of dogs barking and engines rumbling. As the lights dim, Khan stumbles out as if thrust unwillingly into this barren and inhospitable landscape. A pair of musicians, B C Manjunath on percussion and singer Aditya Prakash, seated on the floor in front of the sloping wall play with soulful ecstasy. Khan states in the program that it “is a reflection of how I feel about our world today … How can we as humans have such ability to create extraordinary and beautiful things from our imagination, and equally, our immense ability to create and commit violence and horrors beyond our imagination.” Akram Khan in ‘Xenos.’ Photo by Jean Louis Fernandez.Īs one enters the theater, the striking set by Mirella Weingarten captivates with its steep, dirt-colored incline with lengths of ropes hanging down. The Greek word for stranger or foreigner, Xenos is a masterwork for the globalized yet contentious early decades of the 21st century. At 47, Khan, who has had a prolific career as a dancer and choreographer drawing from his childhood training in the classical Indian dance form Kathak and his modern dance studies, will no longer take on major roles, like the 70-minute solo Xenos, which he performed in the Eisenhower Theater November 18 to 20, to an appreciative, if not sold-out, audience.
Yet his first appearance at the Kennedy Center stage is his last in a leading role. The British-born dancer and choreographer with Bangladeshi heritage is one of the most acclaimed and innovative dancemakers today. Watch Akram Khan dance and you’ll see the weight of the world and the gravitas of history coursing through his muscles, bones, sinews.
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