Award-winning dancer and choreographer joined 50 Roehampton international dance students

• Tuesday, October 20, 2020

Award-winning dancer and choreographer Akram Khan was invited to join the 50 new international dance students enrolled on Roehampton Dance’s MA/MFA programmes for their first session of the term.

Akram Khan was invited to join ‘Ways of Knowing’, a module that investigates ideas and principles that underpin research practices, and that gives the opportunity to apply and test these principles through students’ own research and/or practice.  The first session was Making sense of /knowing dance cross-culturally.

The students engaged in discussions on the topics of multiculturalism, nationalism and transnationalism before watching Akram’s dance piece ‘Abide with Me’ that was featured in the 2012 Olympic Opening Ceremony. Danny Boyle had asked Akram to create a piece on the theme of mortality, which also became a tribute to the 52 people who lost their lives in the 7th July London bombings.

Roehampton Dance students had over an hour with Akram talking about how he came to make the piece, the significance of the small boy who features in it and its concepts of death, life, intergenerational communication and tradition, hearing many stories from him about his life and work.

Akram is the new Pro-Chancellor at Roehampton, appointed in late 2019. He also celebrates this year 20 years with his company. You can find out more about studying Dance at Roehampton here.