DANZ QUARTERLY - Issue No 9: October, November, December 2007

A CREATIVE PRODUCER

By Lyne Pringle

 Farooq Chaudhry is a charismatic guy and, as a highly successful producer, has some compelling things to say about the way arts can be funded.

Since 1999 Farooq has worked with dancer and choreographer Akram Khan and together they founded the British based Akram Khan Company. Farooq addressed the World Dance Alliance congress in Singapore recently, when the company’s production Sacred Monsters was performed as part of the concurrent Singapore Arts Festival.

He began his address with a Rudyard Kipling quote: “Success and failure are imposters” and then proceeded to qualify this remark by stating that when he feels too successful he becomes a little edgy as this can lead to complacency. Consequently, their company continues to forge new directions in order to challenge themselves and surprise their market.

Farooq bankrolled their first production by mortgaging his house. By the second production they had 15 co-producers on board, willing to invest and share the risk. Farooq said he was fascinated and inspired by the collective structure of Belgian company Les Ballet C de la B, as “it appeared to offer its family of artists a broad business ecology within an overarching framework”.

After establishing the company’s exact artistic aspirations – to seek to establish a new tradition of storytelling by drawing on influences from the North Indian classical dance form Kathak, Indian classical music and western contemporary dance and music - the team developed a unique and three-pronged structure that supports the creative work - not the other way around. It includes:

• A limited liability Akram Khan Company (AKC) which manages and delivers the productions and subsequent touring,
• AKCT (advanced Kathak and contemporary dance training) which co-produces small independent works for dancers who have worked with Akram and other choreographers. They also provide funding for research, development, workshops, commission academic studies, travel and study. This is open to members of Khan as well as artists from emerging economies. This is funded by AKC’s international touring income surplus,
•  Khan Chaudry Productions initiates and seeks ideas and then provides the artistic and financial framework for realisation. The focus is on artist to artist collaboration – for example Sacred Monsters. Many of these are semi-commercial and do not sit comfortably within the present subsidised culture.

Farooq says “It is three companies serving different specific needs with one artistic heartbeat, tailored to current market opportunities.” He is not big on public funding and is committed to AKC receiving only one third of its funding from this source. He thinks the arts should be ‘invested’ in not ‘subsidised’. However he stresses that “ you need to support young artists – you get unlucky it you don’t give back”.

Whilst the company has the benefit of easily accessible markets, perhaps there is something Kiwis can learn from their desire to be self-sustaining. Akram Khan Company have focussed themselves globally and are successfully taking their particular brand of dance to large audiences with the ‘commercial’ work providing funding for their more
adventurous and risky programming.

He advises that, in artistic practice, you must know exactly what you want to achieve and who the audience is. While this is not news, Farooq is a necessary and highly competent midwife to this ambition: truly a ‘creative’ producer. We need more of this kind of individual working in the arts in New Zealand. It begs the question “why aren’t we training creative producers alongside our performing artists?”

Further information was sourced from an article in Dance UK Summer 2007 entitled “Lets talk about investment not subsidy” by Farooq Chaudhry.

Akram Khan and Sylvie Guillem will appear in Sacred Monsters at the New Zealand International Arts Festival in 2008. For more information see: http://www.akramkhancompany.net.

Return to Contents page of DANZ QUARTERLY N0 9 October 2007