Review | Akram Khan in Xenos: dancing, design and music all incredible in story of Indian soldier during World War I

Britain’s Akram Khan Company made a triumphant return to Hong Kong with Xenos, which explores the experience of an Indian soldier in the trenches during the World War I. This solo piece shows dancer and choreographer Khan’s mastery of theatre, his trademark brilliant use of design and integration of live music, and his own extraordinary dancing.

The work opens in a happy time in the soldier’s homeland, with a musician and singer on stage performing Indian music. Khan joins them, wearing traditional costume, and performs a dazzling routine that harks back to his roots in classical Indian dance – complete with strings of small bells (ghungur) wound round his ankles, which serve to accentuate the rhythm of the music and highlight the dancer’s footwork (much as tap shoes do in tap dance).

The scene switches to Europe, where Mirella Weingarten’s ingenious set – a steep slope with a ridge at the top – vividly evokes the trenches. The nightmare of the war closes in gradually as Khan takes us through the soldier’s increasing bewilderment, suffering and despair.

Towards the end there is a mesmerising moment where, exhausted, he lies down to sleep on the ridge and slowly disappears over the far side as if sinking into the earth. This image is so poignant that the final sequence which follows it, with a rain of stones coming down the slope and Khan reduced to a dust-encrusted figure with the shambling movements of a living corpse, seems almost redundant despite its power.

Khan’s dancing throughout is a tour de force of speed, control and power, with spins so fast they bemuse the eye, hands that move so fluidly they take on a life of their own, not to mention the fearless athleticism of stunts such as rolling full tilt down the set’s steep slope to crash onto the stage.