akram khan, welcome to hardtalk. thank you, welcome.seems to me so many of the great professional dancers have been raised in one very strict discipline, one cultural tradition, but that isn't quite true of you, is it? no. i was born and brought up in london, so already i was exposed to many, many different cultural activities from very, very different backgrounds. but, my mother wanted me to learn something from her roots and not just language because language was very crucial to her, because of the independence of bangladesh, the movement originally started for the war to fight between east pakistan and... so, the bengali identity, bangladeshi identity was hugely important. did you learn bengali? i did, because she refused to speak to me in english. she knew i would learn english in school because i was born and brought up here. she wanted me to be in touch with her language, her culture, but also something that was classical. that was close to her culture and classical indian dancing was the right thing, so that's what she forced me