Akram Khan: ‘My father hated my waitering – how I’d prance around’

The dancer and choreographer on rehearsing in the kitchen, snacking in the studio and getting his head around broccoli

When five or six months old I was taken to Bangladesh by my father for four months or so to be presented to his family, while my mother stayed in Wimbledon, quite traumatised. I’m not sure how I was fed. When I went back to Bangladesh as a boy, I remember being unable to cope with the powdered milk there. Anything mixed with that milk is contaminated for me.

My mother says my strongest curiosity as a little boy was to taste things and this caused great problems – I’d clean stones of mud with my tongue and I’d eat worms. But my earliest actual memory is of sitting in a pram, sticking my tongue out to catch snowflakes and being very excited by their temperature and tastelessness.

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