Time Out meets Akram Khan as his exhibition, From One Side To the Other, opens at The Lowry

Collaboration. Meeting Akram Khan as he puts the finishing touches to his new exhibition at The Lowry, this is the word which would seem to define so much of the man's work.

The dancer and choreographer has been doing it for years of course, notably in 2008 with 'in-i', a theatre piece which saw Khan work with actress Juliette Binoche and artist Anish Kapoor to create an exploration of love and relationships which saw the Oscar winner having to learn contemporary dance and Khan having to learn to act. This they did, swapping and sharing disciplines, against a moving wall by Kapoor. Khan is certainly not averse to taking risks.

Kapoor features here too, and is clearly one of Khan's favourite artists. Work by Anthony Gormley, Nadav Kander and other artists who have inspired, influenced or pleased Khan is here too in an exhibition which is part of The Lowry's 'Performer As Curator' series, something which began last year when Alison Goldfrapp was given free reign to create an exhibition of her own. Khan's is a very different experience, mixing performance and visual art in a series of rooms through which you are guided.

When we meet, Khan describes the collaboration with The Lowry as a courageous one.

'The experience has been like being part of a collective, in that I have had the right team to work with. The artist Sasha Milavic-Davies has co-directed the exhibition with me and has been instrumental in putting it together, but The Lowry has been very courageous, basically allowing me to do what I want to do.'

Was there a piece of work which started the process of curating this exhibition?
'Yes. My body. It contains all of my memories. The body is like a museum - you carry your past in your DNA and each generation gets a new collection of memories. We don't have the same memories, obviously, but we carry something of our past within them. The show is autobiographical in a sense. Sasha spent a lot of time talking to me, going through my background and influences, right back to childhood. Out of this collaboration, I wanted to create something which was different to expectations of me, to awaken the senses, all of them - touch, smell, feeling.'

Who influences you?
'Pina Bausch, William Forsythe, Merce Cunningham. Cunningham always wanted his dancers to show no emotion, to be like moving objects to look at. But trying to suppress emotion in itself creates an emotion. I feel that work like that of Anish Kapoor is spiritually emotional and I feel that objects can have that spiritual emotion to them.'

Presumably collaboration is also about learning. What has the experience of putting on your own exhibition taught you?
'I've learnt that creativity takes time. I've learnt about timelines and schedules. My wife is pregnant at the moment and it takes 9 months to have a baby. No matter what has happened, no matter what advances there have been in science or technology, it just takes 9 months. I learnt that I would have liked to have even more time to create this, my fucked-up "Alice in Wonderland".'

From One Side To The Other
The Lowry
Sat Nov 15 - Sun Feb 1