Akram Khan’s Jungle Book reimagined, a vivid new retelling of Rudyard Kipling’s much-loved classic, opens at Birmingham Hippodrome on Friday 29 April.

In this dance-theatre production, Mowgli’s journey is brought up to date through the eyes of a climate refugee. Featuring an original score, ten international dancers and state of the art animation and visuals, Jungle Book reimagined is set to be a compelling and relevant piece of storytelling about our need to belong and bond with others, placing the importance of connecting with and respecting our natural world at its heart.

Akram Khan speaks to Martin Ballard about his lifelong link to Kipling’s tales, why he feels the stories of The Jungle Book are more relevant than ever and the importance of truly listening.

I want to take you back to your childhood first of all because from a very early age, both dance and particularly the tales of The Jungle Book had an influence on you. You played Mowgli in Peter Brookes’ The Adventures of Mowgli when you were 10 years old, didn’t you?

That’s right. It was quite an incredible experience - it was a dance/drama production and what made it so extraordinary was that a lot of the young adults who were performing in it eventually became giants in their own fields and disciplines. It was beautiful to be amongst so many exceptional Indian classical dancers who really influenced and inspired me at the time.

The Jungle Book started as a collection of stories, not as one book. Were you aware of the tales even before you played Mowgli?

No, I wasn’t really. It was only when, alongside my collaborators, I delved deeper for my own production that I started to realise it’s a much bigger book. Disney took one part of it – Mowgli – but The Jungle Book is steeped in lots of different narratives that interweave through and around each other. Kipling did publicly say that it was taken from a lot of the traditional myths from India. He interweaved stories of his own, but he also took a lot of inspiration from traditional Indian myths.

This is your first production as a director. How does that feel?

It doesn’t feel any different really. I like to think my work is more cinematic, so I have always felt like a director for each of my works. The only difference is that with this production we have a script and that’s something new for me - I've never started with a script. It’s exciting and I’m learning and discovering new things, but as a director I don’t feel like my role has changed as such.

You have an incredible creative team on this project, don’t you?

I work with an exceptional creative team, some of which I have collaborated with for years and some are new. Lighting design comes from the wonderful Michael Hulls; Sharon Clark is someone I’m working with for the first time as a dramaturg; and Tariq Jordan is a dear friend of mine who is an actor and a writer, but a very young writer in the sense that he started writing recently. I love the way he thinks and I wanted to work with a young writer - a new writer. I think it is really important to have the voice of today and so working with someone who’s sensitive and very conscious of the politics of the world right now was key. For instance, if you talk to my children, they’re even more connected to climate change because they’re the ones who are inheriting our mistakes.    

Then we’ve got Gareth Fry who’s this amazing sound designer; Jocelyn Pook – a composer who I worked with for DESH and Dust; Miriam Buether who has done the visual stage design; and finally Nick Hillel and Adam Smith who have a team of wonderful animators.                

And we mustn't forget of course the incredible cast of 10 amazing dancers. Why did you want to present Jungle Book reimagined right now?                    

Well, I feel I’ve been through a phase of making very dark work. My daughter, who’s eight, said, “Enough’s enough Papa. Every piece of work that you make is so dark”. So I thought I actually want to make work for young people, children and adults alike, and I wanted to make something that did not neglect what’s happening in the world today. The Jungle Book felt very relevant, especially after reading Amitav Ghosh’s book on climate change. That really inspired me to do something with my work.             

And this is a piece you’re going to take around the world because it carries an important message, doesn’t it? It's about our relationship with the planet, our belonging. And of course, how we interact with others.

I feel like the lesson in this work is about listening. We've lost the art and the skill of listening. I mean listening to our instinct, we trust technology more. True listening happens when you stop waiting to speak. I feel that ancient tribes – those that still exist in the Amazon and Africa – are so connected to the earth, they are so connected to nature and they are constantly aware. They were aware of climate change before our scientists told us, because they are living within nature. We are dependent on other things like technology. If we want to find our way through somewhere, we go to Google Maps but what about our human instincts? Really the piece is about our lack of listening but also the sadness of not being able to listen and how important it is to be able to listen to the earth. It's one of our biggest mistakes. Climate change is here and we were aware of it a long time ago.                        

Is that why perhaps the arts, dance in particular is more important more than ever now? There is a time where people will sit in an auditorium to watch a performance and they will listen, they will take it all in and it will cause them to go away and have a conversation with others about it afterwards.

I think it’s the last ritual left for humankind. The last ritual used to be eating with family and friends. But now when I eat with my family, everyone’s on an iPad or iPhone. So, theatre used to be the last refuge, if you like. The moment we buy the ticket is a contract to say; we’re going to leave everything behind for those two hours and we’re going to give you our attention. I think theatre is so important for two reasons. There's one thing about being able to focus on something without the noise that surrounds us all the time. To listen to silence before a show starts is important too. The second thing about theatre is the sense of gathering people. When I did the Olympic opening ceremony in 2012, just before our piece started, everything quietened down when the piece before us ended. And the silence of 70,000 people was so loud and so powerful. I was in awe of it. There is this real sense of power when we collectively listen rather than individually that still happens in theatre which is beautiful.            

Akram Khan’s Jungle Book reimagined runs at Birmingham Hippodrome on Friday 29 and Saturday 30 April followed by an international tour. Tickets are available here.