Akram Khan is at an interesting point in his career. The 50-year-old dancer seems to have had endless “final” performances – and it is four years since he has been seen on stage in the UK – but, of course, he is not going to stop dancing. A dancer is simply who he is. Anyone can see that. It is in the way he rips through the air, a powerful storm that magically leaves no damage in its wake; it is in his killer reflexes and rich lyricism, his whirling arms and spins, his movement now a little less about textbook exactitude, more about grabbing the moment and dancing with it.
But for all his main character energy, Gigenis is not really about Khan, far from it. He has gathered an ensemble of Indian classical dancers, all expert in their fields: bharatanatyam artists Mavin Khoo, Mythili Prakash, Vijna Vasudevan and Renjith Babu, young Odissi dancer Sirikalyani Adkoli, and Kapila Venu, who practises Kutiyattam, one of the oldest theatre traditions in the world.
