Financial Times | Akram Khan on Brazilian jiu-jitsu and his beautiful midlife crisis

In November 2021, Akram was interviewed for the FT’s How To Spend It magazine:

Before lockdown, I felt my passion for training becoming depleted – I’ve trained intensely in dance since I was a small child, and I’m 47 now. But I made a documentary called Extreme Combat: The Fighter and the Dancer, and it was a real eye-opener into the world of mixed martial arts and violent sports. There was one particular form that really attracted me, because there was a huge conceptual and psychological approach – it was like a chess game. It was Brazilian jiu-jitsu. I decided to study it, and became obsessed. It’s been my passion for the past year and a half, what I spend all my spare time and money on – my emotional, psychological and physical saviour, really.

Brazilian jiu-jitsu developed when a Japanese master went to Brazil just over 100 years ago, and a couple of brothers transformed it. The aim was: how do we make this form not just beautiful, but usable in a practical situation? It’s a grappling form, predominantly on the ground, and it’s about being able to pin parts of the opponent’s body. I was lucky enough to take one-on-one classes throughout lockdown in my dance studio in my back garden. It was so exciting to learn something new. I often refer to what I call “the pleasure of drowning” – that sense of being in the absolute unknown, a total novice. I did think: “Well, I’m pretty OK at dance – I can’t be that bad with another form of movement.” But I’m useless!”

To read the rest of the interview, click here. Image created by Celina Pereira.