About Adnan

Adnan Jahangir came to Kathak as a design student and stayed for a lifetime.

He studied communication design at the National College of Arts in Lahore, where he began training in Kathak with Bina Jawwad in 1999. Two years later he founded a dance society at the college so that other students could find the form too. He has since trained extensively with senior Kathak artists and built a practice that moves between performance, choreography and teaching.

Kathak is his first language: the rhythmic footwork of tatkar, the spinning chakkar, and the abhinaya that turns a thumri or ghazal into a story told by one body. Alongside it he performs Bharatanatyam and teaches several other dance forms.

He has represented Pakistan in the United States, the United Kingdom, India, Italy, Turkey, China, Sri Lanka, Qatar, South Korea and Germany. In Germany he performed at Deutsche Welle's celebration of sixty years of its Hindi and Urdu services, where the audience asked for an encore, and then at the Embassy of Pakistan's Colours of Pakistan evening in Berlin.

At home he has worked on projects with UNESCO, choreographed for the National Performing Arts Group, and directed his own productions, including Chakkar and Goonj. He has taught dance in schools and institutions since 2003, and in 2026 he joined the panel of the first Lahore Kathak Festival at Alhamra.