Where is akram khans family originally from

He founded his own company in August with the producer Farooq Chaudhry, which provided him with a platform for innovation and a diverse range of work through collaboration with artists from disciplines ranging from theatre to literature, film, visual arts and music.

He was the first non-musician to be appointed associate artist until April at the South Bank Centre, and is currently an associate artist at Sadler's Wells Theatre.

His recent ensemble piece Vertical Road is further evidence of his ongoing desire to explore the relations between different cultures and creative disciplines. Akram Khan brings together a host of performers and artists from East and West.

The piece began touring in September His work Gnosis mingles his classical Indian dance roots with contemporary dance. Working with world-class musicians from India, Pakistan, Japan and the United Kingdom, he brings the opposing worlds of tradition and innovation face to face.

His wife Shanell Winlock, a dancer from South Africa, joined his company early on. Their wedding in was a "Bollywood extravaganza" in Alexandra Palace. His parents live one street away, and his sister, an accountant, moved back to the area with her husband, a percussionist who plays with Sawhney.

His father, from East Pakistan, was a student in Britain in the s then returned to London with his wife after Bangladesh's independence in He opened a restaurant in Wimbledon where Khan helped out. They came when the pubs shut. You'd be there till two in the morning, and we got a lot of racist abuse. It taught me about humility: when people are violent and aggressive, you don't return it and become them. It made me stronger. A hyperactive child, he was steered into dance by his mother, folk dancing aged three, and learning kathak from the age of seven.

She danced, but never performed, since her father, a prominent mathematician, feared a "bad reputation" attaching to the family. In London, she taught Bengali, and Khan grew up bilingual. At school he won a disco competition with a Michael Jackson Thriller routine that made him a "real person; before then I was a shadow — even my teacher didn't know I was in the class.

I read about Ramanujan, about science and spirituality. After touring with Brook, he felt his path was being "laid down for me by my parents and guru, and pressured by the community". He sees the body as a sponge for new influences. I was stuck in my classical body. But my body started to change, and it influenced my mind. Its process is organic not intellectual.

From the classical form, "I take things I feel I can make universal and leave other things till I'm ready, till I know the pathway. But I always see through a kathak eye. Classical is me in search of the spiritual, and contemporary is me searching for science, destroying and taking things apart. He has classical roots in common with Michael Clark, the Royal Ballet prodigy turned punk choreographer. In kathak, he says, the male dancer reflects the icon Krishna, with long hair.

I said, 'it's nature; I'm losing my hair'. My parents recreated their culture in a foreign land. Zero Degrees , in which Khan's dancer was harassed by border guards and found himself sharing a train carriage with a corpse, premiered in London within days of 7 July I grew self-conscious in a way I never was before — especially in London.

There's a paranoia. But the use of text was less compelling, even banal. For Kureishi, a huge admirer, Khan is "naive in the way dancers are.

When dancers talk about narrative, that's for them, not necessarily for the audience. It's their process. When choreographing, "first I conceptualise what we want to explore. That's usually a year, then it's inherent in your bloodstream. In the studio, I let go of everything.

Licensing laws were different in the 90s. People would rush their beers before the pubs closed and then come and be obnoxious in restaurants where alcohol was on sale for another hour. I needed to make money while studying contemporary dance at De Montfort University so worked as a pizza delivery boy, which really put me off pizza. I shared my kitchen with students who never tidied up. I never really learned to cook, partly because I returned to live with my parents until I was 31 and married my first wife.

Last year, my second wife and I had our dream marble kitchen built, but we still eat most evenings at my parents, who live on the next road.

My wife and I both like a very tidy and minimalist kitchen and table. We eat separately from the kids. The first time I saw green on my plate was after marrying my second wife in , who is Japanese. The quality of Japanese food never makes my body work hard to digest it.