akram khan, welcome to hardtalk. thank you, welcome.eems to me so many of the great professional dancers have been raised in one very strict discipline, one cultural tradition. that isn't quite true of you, is it? er, no. iwas... you know, i was born and brought up in london so already i was exposed to many, many different cultural activities from 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, the language? idid. she refused to speak to me in english because she knew i'd learn english in school, because i was born and brought up here. so she wanted me to be in touch with her language, but also her culture, something that was classical and close to her culture. classical indian dancing, the right thing, so that's what she