Dance

Star power – elusive, thrilling, inexplicable. Whatever it may be, it’s obvious that both Sylvie Guillem and Akram Khan have it. All you need to do is look at them to realise that this is not only a cast-iron truth but a source of luxurious pleasures.

‘When you are on stage,’ says Guillem, ‘you can’t lie. You can’t fake. It has to be “this is why I am alive”. It is so simple, so complex.’

It might be rude to point out that plenty of other performers manage to get away with telling a few fibs in public, but that is something neither Guillem nor Khan has ever done. Those rare artists who possess this enigmatic talent to hypnotise the rest of us mere mortals with their exceptional charisma have long been dubbed by the French as ‘les monstres sacrés’. So it’s not surprising that when Guillem and Khan got together to collaborate on their new duet project the title they finally settled on was ‘Sacred Monsters’. Feature continues

‘In the end, I believe, you look what you are,’ she says. ‘If it’s empty, it’s empty.’ The dismissive Gallic spin she puts on ‘empty’ is enough to wither any populist phoney who doesn’t bother to bare their soul for their public. But Guillem and Khan are brave enough to inhabit that rare realm which Margot Fonteyn once described as a nightly life-and-death venture into the bull ring.

Guillem, undoubtedly the most acclaimed dancer on the planet, has been at the pinnacle since 1984. She was only 19 when she was promoted into the top ranks of the Paris Opera Ballet. She became the youngest étoile – literally, star – in the company’s 350-year history.

‘I just arrived there by chance,’ she says. A potential Olympic gymnast trained by her mother, Guillem ended up being sent to the Paris Opera Ballet’s school for a bit of polish. ‘I never dreamt about being a dancer. But, suddenly, it was the stage that triggered things. It is who I am. I learned that by going on the stage I could transform things.’