Hello, I'm Kirstie Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Disks from BBC Radio 4.

For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

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Radio 4. The My cast away this week is the dancer and choreographer Akram Khan.

His on-stage style is daring, exquisite and explosive, combining the intricate mathematical

discipline of classical movement with contemporary dance.

A compulsive collaborator, he's worked with everyone, from Prima Balarina Sylvie Guillaume to disco

Queen Kiley Minogue. Anish Kapoor has built his set, Anthony Gormley, his props. He's never been

one for sitting still. As a child of Bengali immigrants, he started learning

Indian dance almost as soon as he could walk, and was then plucked from a lackluster school

career to spend two years touring the world with Peter Brooks Mahabarata.

For 12 years now he's led his own dance company who sell out theatres around the globe.

He says the way I communicate best is through my body that's my language and if that's taken

away from me words are not enough well Akram Kan we hope that for the next little while at least

words will be enough and what kind of give me an idea of the kind of training you do each day.

It's different now to the way I used to train before. I mean you know when I was younger I used to train

eight hours a

day but now I usually train for three hours you know I put on my bells it's like a ritual it's like a prayer

for me it's like brushing your teeth you get up and you have to do that and you say

you put on your bells they're wrapped around your ankles and I would train for about an hour

and half to about three hours but the last six months has been very difficult period for me

because I had an Achilles tendon rupture and it's really the first

...