The 36-year-old refined the production over three years, crafting a work which mixes Korean music, South Asian vocal traditions, contemporary dance, kathak dance, sculptural installations and live video.

If that sounds like one too many elements in a single production, he will have you know that he 'wants the audience to go through a process, an experience which they can be part of'.

The performance draws on three ancient Asian texts, namely the Anarkali, a tragic Indian court romance; the Bhagavad-Gita, the climactic scene of the Sanskrit epic Mahabharata; and the Risale-t-ul-wujudiyyah, a 12th-century Sufi text on unity and being.

The production will be performed at the National Museum Gallery Theatre from today until Sunday.

It explores the shared histories and stories of South Asia through a radical transformation of space and one's experience of time and rhythm.

He says: 'We live in a world based on control... It's imperative you break out of it to get back to yourself. You have to be conscious of yourself and the space you're in.'

Audiences are dynamic consumers of the performance. There is no main stage and they can move freely about the performance space and choose what to concentrate on.

He says: 'There's a difference between Western and Eastern dramaturgy. In the West, stories are based on climaxes but in the East, there are multiple earthquakes.'

The son of Pakistani diplomats, the Kenya-born Quraishi travelled throughout Africa, the Middle East and Europe during his teens. His cerebral approach to the arts is not surprising, since it was the late literary theorist and academic Edward W. Said who inspired him to work as a performance artist when he was a student at Columbia University in New York.

He says he does not consider his work fusion. Rather, it is 'a research of traditional forms and observation of what new things emerge from that research'.

He says: 'Every search for a new language is coming from tradition or seeks to break tradition. You can't escape tradition and change doesn't happen in a vaccuum.'

junec@sph.com.sg