Akram Hossain Khan, is an English dancer and choreographer of Bangladeshi descent. His background is rooted in his classical kathak training and contemporary dance.

“The rules of Khan’s new company were simple: take risks, think big and daring, explore the unfamiliar, avoid compromise and tell stories through dance that are compelling and relevant, with artistic integrity.”

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In August 2000, he launched Akram Khan Company. His first full-length work Kaash, a collaboration with Anish Kapoor and Nitin Sawhney, was performed at the Edinburgh Festival in 2002.

In Kaash, Hindi for ‘if’, the British-Bengali choreographer Akram Khan presents his own vision of Shiva, the god of both destruction and creation. The world-famous artist Anish Kapoor translates this transcendent theme into a poetic stage setting. With his compelling rhythmic structures, the English-Indian composer Nitin Sawhney then creates parallels with Khan’s powerful movement idiom, rooted in the Indian dance form Kathak.

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DESH —- Premier: September 15, 2011

DESH is a new full-length contemporary solo and the most personal work to date from celebrated choreographer and performer, Akram Khan. DESH meaning ‘homeland’ in Bengali, draws multiple tales of land, nation, resistance and convergence into the body and voice of one man trying to find his balance in an unstable world.

Moving between Britain and Bangladesh, Khan weaves threads of memory, experience and myth into a surreal world of surprising connection. At once intimate and epic, DESH explores fragility in the face of natural forces, and celebrates the resilience of the human spirit in the rhythms of labour, in dream and story, and in transformation and survival.

For this production, Khan teams up with Oscar-winning visual artist Tim Yip (Production Designer for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), fellow Sadler’s Wells Associate Artist lighting designer Michael Hulls, writer and poet Karthika Nair and Olivier award-winning composer Jocelyn Pook.

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Zero Degrees —- Premier: July 8, 2005

An exciting collaboration between Akram Khan and Sidi Larbi, this is an opportunity to see these remarkable artists working with sculptor Antony Gormley and composer Nitin Sawhney.

Khan and Larbi first met in 2000 when they quickly discovered strong similarities in their work. Both are sons of Islamic families brought up in Europe, and both draw upon this meeting of cultures, combining complex Indian Kathak dance with the speed and precision of contemporary movements.

zero degrees was borne out of their longing to create work together, and follows them on a journey to seek the reference point, the source, the ‘0’ at life’s core. Inspired by their own dual identities, the two search for this middle point through polar opposites; becoming/death, light/dark, chaos/order.

Creating the environment for this journey is artist Antony Gormley, most famous for his ‘Angel of the North’ sculpture. Working closely with the two dancers, his design will reflect the concept of duality explored in zero degrees. Specially commissioned music is by composer/producer Nitin Sawnhey. This is a rare chance to see four of today’s greatest artists join forces.

VERTICAL ROAD —- Premiere: 16 September 2010

In Vertical Road Khan has assembled a cast of very special performers from across Asia, Europe and the Middle East. With a specially commissioned score by long-term collaborator composer, Nitin Sawhney, Vertical Road draws inspiration from the Sufi tradition and the Persian poet and philosopher Rumi. Exploring man’s earthly nature, his rituals and the consequences of human actions, Vertical Road becomes a meditation on the journey from gravity to grace.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akram_Khan_(dancer)

https://vimeo.com/user5239431

https://www.youtube.com/user/akramkhancompany

https://www.akramkhancompany.net/

The Extra People

Ant Hampton

The Extra People is an immersive theater performance where 15 audience members sit and watch another 15 onstage. After half an hour, they find themselves replacing those onstage, only to discover that another 15 have appeared in the seats they’ve left behind. And so it continues, through the hours… The theater building—dormant, empty, and unlit save for your flashlight—seems unable to be deactivated. And within this strange process, wearing headphones and a “hi-viz” vest, you’re cast along with everyone else as some kind of extra. But an extra for what?

Starting with Rotozaza’s Etiquette (2007), Ant Hampton has created nine “autoteatro” works, including his recent Bessie-award-winning collaboration with Tim Etchells for library reading rooms (The Quiet Volume). The “protocol” behind autoteatro—automated processes (often audio) where instructions are given to audience members who find themselves experiencing the work from the inside—is now taken back to the theater building to operate on a larger scale.

Ant Hampton (British, b.1975 Fribourg, Switzerland) made his first show as Rotozaza in 1998, a project which ended up spanning performance, theater, installation, intervention and writing-based works, and often focusing on the use of instructions given to unrehearsed “guest” performers, both on stage and in public settings. Solo projects include ongoing experimentation around “live portraiture”: structured encounters with people from non-theatrical milieu.

https://vimeo.com/anthampton

http://www.anthampton.com/Extra_People.html

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DESCENT reimagines the story of Greek mythical figures Venus and Andromeda as an interracial love story with choreography that conjures the aesthetics of August Rodin’s sculpture Toilet of Venus and Andromeda. Performing in wheelchairs, dancers Alice Sheppard and Laurel Lawson traverse a stage built with hills and curves. The duo climb to the summit of a ramp where they precariously balance on its edge and let gravity take over as they barrel back down, moving together and apart. Through emotional peaks and valleys, DESCENT explores themes of disability, race, and beauty to reveal how mobility is fundamental to participation in civic life.

Kinetic Light is a collective made up of professional disabled artists Alice Sheppard, Laurel Lawson, and Michael Maag. Sheppard is the artistic director and choreographer for Kinetic Light who performs the role of Andromeda in DESCENT. Lawson, performing the role of Venus, is a collaborator in choreography, costume and makeup design, as well as the software developer for DESCENT. Michael Maag is DESCENT’s lighting and video designer.

Alice Sheppard: Alice Sheppard is a disabled choreographer and dancer from Britain.Sheppard started her career first as a professor, but later became interested in dance. She became a member of the AXIS Dance Company and toured with them. She had also found Kinetic Light and leads it, an artistic coalition created in collaboration with dancer, Laurel Lawson, and lighting and video artist, Michael Maag.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Sheppard

Influenced by James Whale’s Frankenstein films, Radiohole explodes the tumultuous and tragic life of Mary Shelley. Blood chilling and completely strange, Inflatable Frankenstein is brimming with whims, technological absurdity, and bodily fluids. A larger-than-life, Radiohole gothic teen sex dream. With Maggie Hoffman, Eric Dyer, Erin Douglass, Joseph Silovsky, and Mark Jaynes. Also introducing The Creature Without Organs.

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Radiohole was birthed in a Brooklyn basement in 1998 by Erin Douglass, Eric Dyer, Maggie Hoffman and Scott Halverson Gillette. The company has produced ten original shows that have been presented at venues around New York City including PS122, the Kitchen and the Collapsable Hole (sic) and have toured nationally and internationally. Radiohole’s most recent show, “Whatever, Heaven Allows” was commissioned by PS122, The Walker Art Center and the Andy Warhol Museum through the Spaulding Gray Award. “Whatever, heaven Allows” had it’s European premiere in April 2012 at Katapult Teater at Godsbanen in Århus, Denmark. Over the years, Radiohole has earned a reputation as one of New York’s most tenacious and uncompromising ensembles.

http://www.radiohole.com/

https://empac.rpi.edu/

The Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) is a multi-venue arts center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, which opened on October 3, 2008.

The founding director of EMPAC is Johannes Goebel. He was previously the director and founder of the Institute for Music and Acoustics at the Center for Art and Media Technology (ZKM) in Karlsruhe, Germany.

Curatorial Program

EMPAC’s curatorial program is dedicated to the commissioning, production, and presentation of ambitious performances and time-based artworks that foster meaningful engagement among artists, artworks, and our audiences. Over the past 10 years, EMPAC’s curatorial program has brought hundreds of artists to Rensselaer to create and perform new works across three areas of expertise: music, theater and dance, and time-based visual art.

EMPAC is committed to the in-depth support of artists over extended periods of time to realize complex projects that require not only EMPAC’s acoustic, spatial, and visual technological infrastructure, but also the interdisciplinary expertise of its curatorial, production, and administrative staff. 

EMPAC’s artists-in-residence generate the diverse range of events which open the studio doors for campus and the general public. The curated program provides visitors with a breadth of experiences from theatrical productions, concerts, audio and video installations to a rigorous interdisciplinary program of films, talks, and workshops.  

Many artworks produced at the center are made in collaboration with peer institutions, presenters, and museums, expanding the audience for an artist or artwork beyond Rensselaer and the Capital Region, centering Rensselaer within the international discourse around time-based arts and technology.

Residencies

Curated Residencies

Artist residencies are the heart of the curatorial program at EMPAC. Much of the work that we present is first developed in residency. In some cases, residencies serve as preliminary work for co-commissioned performances that find their premiere elsewhere. In both cases, curated EMPAC residencies figure into the overarching programming vision of the attending curator and often provide space, resources, and expertise unavailable elsewhere.

Example: Commissioned and partially developed through the EMPAC artist-in-residency program, Extra Shapes is a performance for lunging figures, a musical concert for loudspeakers, and a light show.

https://empac.rpi.edu/events/2015/extra-shapes

Seanson

Curated Events

EMPAC—The Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is where the arts, sciences, and technology meet under one roof and breathe the same air. Four exceptional venues enable audiences, artists, and researchers to inquire, experiment, develop, and experience the ever-changing relationship between our senses, technology, and the worlds we create around us.

he 220,000-square foot building includes many firsts in the fields of acoustics, performing arts infrastructure, and architectural engineering. The integration of these features with audio, video, lighting, computer, and stage rigging networks makes EMPAC an ideal environment for human interaction with digital media.

Both a performing arts center and research and production facility, EMPAC provides an environment that supports the realization of complex artworks and research projects at any stage, from inception to completion.

The center has three curators focused on the areas of time-based visual art, theater, dance, and music. Within an interdisciplinary framework, each EMPAC curator is responsible for supporting the development and production of new works that stretch the boundaries of their field, interface with a diverse roster of international artists, and program challenging, adventurous performances for the Rensselaer campus and Capital Region communities. The team is led by founding director Johannes Goebel, who continues to be involved worldwide in the intellectual exchange on art, science, and technology, pursuing the questions of political, cultural, educational, and aesthetic relevance of the field.