Akram Khan's 'DESH' premiered at the Curve in Leicester in mid-September and was acclaimed as "the most urgent, beautiful and confident work of his career" by Judith Mackrell (source) and "a masterpiece, the best thing that he has ever done" by Luke Jennings (source). After the disappointment of Vertical Road, it was wonderful to see Akram Khan back on form, returning to what he does best. It also reminded us of the exquisite pleasure of simply watching Akram Khan move.

'DESH' has been described as a personal journey reflecting on life in Bangladesh, assisted by several notable collaborators including Oscar-winning Chinese visual artist Tim Yip and lighting designer Michael Hulls. Throughout the course of the evening, we saw Akram Khan adopt various persona: dodging traffic, hassling with technical support, an elderly village cook, a father trying to connect his small daughter to her Bangladeshi past, a son struggling to connect with his father through voicemail messages... Each of these characters embellished the story, returning at later points in the evening, narrated by light choreography. The driving force of this work was the storytelling, which was enhanced by Tim Yip's designs, which led to a section of interplay between Khan and Yip's images, including Khan riding a boat through line-drawn mangrove swamps and even plucking a fish from out of an animated crocodile's mouth (and discarding it).

Akram Khan is a master of his art, but his art involves more than just pure dance, whether that of narrating a literal or figurative journey, as in Bahok or last year's Vertical Road. Each piece he creates is personal to Khan and so represents an aspect of his own personal journey. The joy of exploring each is Khan's unique movement vocabulary, fusing his native Kathak dance with contemporary dance and other influences such as martial arts, which is always mesmerising to watch. Composer Jocelyn Pook's score was exceptionally haunting, reminiscent of the tribal/Celtic fusion music of Baka Beyond, or of Lisa Gerrard's vocals from Dead Can Dance.

There are few people whose sole physical presence can captivate audiences' attention for an hour or more, but Akram Khan is one of them, and the full house at Sadler's Wells was fully engrossed, enthusiastically giving him a standing ovation at the end. And yet DESH felt somewhat empty, with too much emphasis on narrative and special effects, with the dance content secondary to both, dispersed to fit around and between the story segments. We were left with many haunting images and sequences.... just not enough for the length of the show. And so it's probably worth seeing for a second time appreciate it all the more fully.