Auckland Arts Festival: Inside the mind of Igor

Picture / Jean Louis Fernandez

"Do you have a phone number for Stravinsky?" When Sadler's Wells' artistic director Alistair Spalding first asked Akram Khan to contribute to the Islington theatre's 100th anniversary commemoration of the first performance of The Rite of Spring, the Wimbledon-born dancer and choreographer was disappointed he couldn't speak to the late Russian composer about his most famous and controversial ballet.

"I wanted to ask him about his process," he laughs. "But Alistair said, 'I haven't got a number for him so unless you have the number for God, there's no way because he's dead.' It was my stupidity for not knowing that. But I thought it would be an interesting challenge because I haven't previously worked with music from a composer who's no longer alive. I like to be in a studio with them and to see what they're doing because it's so collaborative. But the more I researched and thought about it, the more I found it to be totally fascinating."

First staged at Sadler's Wells in May 2013, In The Mind of Igor - or iTMOi for short - incorporates elements from Stravinsky's numerous other works. "The subjects of sacrifice and ritual are very much at the core of the piece, which comes straight out of The Rite of Spring," says Khan. "But I also took a lot of things from other places. It just became as though I was creating something that was not soundscapey but more a surreal world within a world; as if we were inside his mind."

Having studied contemporary dance at Leicester's De Montford University, Khan was more familiar with The Rite of Spring than he thought. "Before I did my first audition, I saw Pina Bausch perform it on a VHS video tape," he recalls, referring to the late German dancer.

"When I hear that music, I always think of her movement and when I see her movement, I always think of that music. It's like a marriage made in heaven. So I always kind of knew it but I thought, 'What can I do that will add something different to it?' Initially, I couldn't think of anything but at the time I was looking to create it, I'd ruptured my Achilles tendon, so the concept of breaking something and becoming very fragile became very important."

Displeased by its avant-garde nature, the audience at The Rite of Spring's opening night in 1913 at Paris' Theatre des Champs-Elysees notoriously reacted so angrily that a riot almost ensued. "We all know what happened when it was first presented because nobody could conceive of classical music like that," says Khan. "It completely changed classical music and was about 100 years ahead of its time. But I decided that I wasn't going to try and do anything like that, because if I did it would just be pre-conceived and contrived to provoke people in that way, so I just wanted to celebrate Stravinsky."

With Stravinsky obviously unavailable, Khan turned to three contemporary musicians: Nitin Sawhney, Jocelyn Pook and Ben Frost. However, he was determined they would never liaise directly with each other. "They all kept on asking 'can we meet the other composers?' and I was like 'of course, you can', but when they would individually leave the studio, I would tell my team to never book them on the same flight, so they would never actually meet," he says.

"Because what I loved about what Stravinsky did in The Rite of Spring and other pieces like Infinite Loss was that he has musical influences from different worlds. There was classical music in there but also the eastern European folk music that inspired him as a child.

"That for me was the starting point, as I wanted to work with three composers, who would work independently with me. I would be the only connection and then I would put it together. So it wouldn't fit perfectly, as I didn't want it to feel like it was all one world."

Known for mixing western styles with traditional kathak techniques, Khan's diverse approach mirrors Stravinsky's eclecticism. "It was just my situation," he recalls. "My parents were putting pressure on me to study at university and I wanted to find one that had some dance in it. De Montford University had some contemporary dance, which I'd never seen before. Coming from a classical Indian background all your life, when you see something like that it completely shocks the hell out of you. I was immediately hooked as I suddenly had so many questions I never had before.

"Before that, I took everything for granted and it was like if your master told you to do something, you'd do it. You'd almost be like a receiver so to become a questioner was fascinating. My mind started to become very active."

Having founded the Akram Khan Company in 2000, he found himself propelled on to the world stage after his intimate dance to the Emile Sande-sung Abide With Me at the 2012 London Olympics opening ceremony. "At the time, I was terrified because we were working on a scale, on which we'll probably never work again," he says.

"It's very rare that you'll work on a stage that's about a hundred times that of Sadler's Wells. The other thing was that it was a one-off so if you get it wrong, about a billion people watching on TV will know about it."

Having performed Sacred Monsters alongside Sylvie Guillem in New Zealand in 2008, Khan is disappointed he won't be joining his company when they bring iTMOi to the Auckland Arts Festival in March. "It's one of my favourite places in the world and I'm also a secret All Blacks fan, so I'm sorry I won't be there," he says. "I've only ever been there once myself and I was really inspired by what I saw, especially the countryside, which is just phenomenal."

Auckland Arts Festival

What: iTMOi, with the Akram Khan Company
Where and when: Aotea Centre, March 19-21