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Abdul-Rehman Malik (VO): Welcome to This Being Human, I’m your host Abdul-Rehman Malik. On this podcast, I talk to extraordinary people from all over the world, whose life, ideas, and art are shaped by Muslim culture. 

 

Nasir Sirikhan: Every single time we step on that stage or every single time we press record or we do something in this industry, it feels like we are taking a risk. That’s why we go all in.

 

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Abdul-Rehman Malik (VO): I’ve been wanting to sit down with Nasir Sirikhan for a long time. In fact, let me be up front: I’m an all out fanboy.  Along with his childhood friends Bilal and Suleiman Malik, Nasir is one of the founding members of Quick Style, a dance crew and academy. They have been instrumental in blending traditional dance forms with contemporary styles, creating performances that resonate with audiences around the globe. I’m not the only one who thinks they’re dope. From Bombay to Berlin and Dubai to New York, they’re a sensation whose popularity only continues to grow. Quick Style’s unique choreography and powerful storytelling have not only captivated millions but also opened doors for cross-cultural dialogue and understanding. After winning Norway’s Got Talent in 2009, Quick Style started a dance studio to train students with their unique approach to choreography. In 2016, they opened a second studio in Chengdu, to set up a homebase where they help train the next generation of K-Pop stars. I talk to Nasir about his early inspirations, the evolution of Quick Style, and the challenges and triumphs they have faced along the way. Although they have been well-known in dance communities worldwide, in 2022 the boys rose to stratospheric international fame. A 12-minute video of the team dancing at Suleiman’s wedding went viral. At first glance it looks like mates dancing at most South Asian weddings. It’s anything but that. The dancers are super diverse, and as my son would say, they have some mad skills. Because they never meant to release it, the boys are just cutting loose and having fun. With 141 million views, I had to start by asking Nasir how it all came together.

 

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Nasir Sirikhan: It was completely real. We didn’t prepare. We were always only five or six people at rehearsal, so it was very spontaneous. We just felt like we had to pour our heart into this because this is for our brother Suleiman who got married, and he’s usually the main choreographer. So all the seriousness of our technique and everything just went out the window. We didn’t put anything more into it, other than our hearts and a lot of passion. I feel like that really spoke to the viewers more than any technique. We have toured a lot in the US and in Japan and built our names in the dance community. But this was definitely a turning point for us, because this was the first time we won the hearts of families. We had kids. We had grandmothers. We had mothers. When we were at the airport and you see grandmothers come to us in a wheelchair and be like, “You are my grandchildren.” You don’t get that by being cool. So we just realized that who we are, not what we are able to do, but just who we are, speaks a lot to the world and how we chose to present our relationship with each other through dance, also really connected on a very non-egoistic kind of way. Because to be able to dance, you have to throw away your ego. So it’s very pure and not intimidating at all, because we are a group of boys from, I don’t know, 10 to 20 different nationalities. When you meet us, it can be pretty intimidating because we’re so many and we’re all guys, but we are just like brothers. Everybody’s really disciplined and very nice.

Abdul-Rehman Malik: It’s so interesting you say that, Nasir, because it’s so true as a viewer. When I’m seeing you guys dance, particularly in that video, I want to be your friend.

Nasir Sirikhan: You are! [laughter]

Abdul-Rehman Malik: Take us into that moment where you’re in the dance, where you’re in the number, you’re in the moment. What’s going through you, emotions, feelings, and energies?

Nasir Sirikhan: I can tell you the emotion of the opening, because that was a very emotional moment for all of us, especially for me, because for 20 years, we’ve been standing next to each other and performing together, 20 years. We have never in our whole lives had to look each other in the eyes and be like, “Now you’re going to watch me,” you know?

Abdul-Rehman Malik: Wow.

Nasir Sirikhan: So I’m opening the whole thing, and I remember that moment when I was connecting, because you see that my eyes are locked in on something in the opening of the show, and that was Suleiman. So I was locking in with him, and I was basically telling him that we are…It’s a very healthy rivalry, if you could say it like that. So I was just telling him, just wait and see, because what we are about to bring is something that even you cannot bring, you know what I mean? So it was a boost of confidence, self-confidence, even though I was like, okay, this is the first show we do where Suleiman is not there, we just made this on the spot, but I’m going to just put everything into this, even though the choreography is very simple and everything is just for fun. But I was like, this one, I’m just going to give everything. And everybody felt that. We felt like we had to overcome Suli and his expectations. He was telling us, the girls are going to be so much better than you guys. You guys didn’t prioritize the show. Then that was the moment when I opened the show. It just went from this personal thing to, now I’m in the zone. Then when we got into the zone and the music started hitting us, we even forget what songs we used. This showcase was like a mixtape where we were like, “Which song is it now? Oh, it’s this song now.” You can see it. That’s why we look at each other, because we’re talking to each other. Then we’re kind of directing each other here, and it’s very spontaneous. But that is also the beauty of it, because when you see a professional dance show, people are so in sync. But here, I think the beauty, you saw someone laughing, someone super focused, someone who were just running around, not understanding anything. So it was just very human. I think that is why you connected with, and that is also why you feel like you could have been a part of it.

Abdul-Rehman Malik: It’s so true. 

Nasir Sirikhan: It’s very beautiful, the way everything happened and Alhamdulillah, I’m so happy that it happened the way it did and that we shared it with the world, because we weren’t supposed to share it with the world.

Abdul-Rehman Malik: Quick Style is Nasir Sirikhan and Suleiman and Bilal. How did you meet Suleiman and Bilal?

Nasir Sirikhan: We met in school, so I think it was 2003, 2003, I would say? 2003, 2002, that summer. So that’s where we connected as kids, and we started hanging out together and realized that we had the same role model, which was Michael Jackson, the way he…you know, it was MTV at that time. I’m talking what, 2003? So MTV was everything we got. “You Are Not Alone,” “Billie Jean,” all of these things, we watched music videos together in the break in school. Then I feel like that was the whole beginning of our friendship. We’ve always been friends before anything. Yeah, we’ve been friends, brothers, and colleagues and partners for 21 years now.

Abdul-Rehman Malik: That’s incredible. What first sparked your interest in dance? When do you guys start vibing and dancing?

Nasir Sirikhan: So we’re from Norway, right? Oslo, Norway, so B-boying came a little bit later, of course, than the States and Canada. It has always been a huge B-boy community and movement in Norway. I think I would say end of ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s. We trained with B-boys in the beginning. The twins listened to Tupac Shakur, Bone Thugs-n-Harmony. They were very on the rap side, while I was more on the Eminem, not so serious, but more fun side of rap. We connected, and I think You Got Served was one of the movies that came out that we watched and felt inspired to want to live that way. So we watched that movie all the time, and then we would battle each other in the bedroom. This is 2004. We would battle each other. We would watch the movie so much that we would know all the lines, and we lived it. We lived it. Where we’re from, it’s kind of the hood in Oslo, which is not as scary as the hood other places in the world. But people are carrying weapons. People are selling. People are doing things, but still with respect for each other and the elders. It’s not ugly. It’s just survival.

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Abdul-Rehman Malik (VO): Nasir, Suleiman, and Bilal kept hanging out, watching You Got Served, and danced to music videos, until one day they decided they wanted to take it to the next level. They enrolled in a youth club called X-Ray, where professional b-boys, graffiti artists, and music producers taught classes, and joined their youth dance crew. After 3 years, they started thinking about how they could bring their multi-hyphenate identities into their dance.

 

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Nasir Sirikhan: Then we figured that we liked our own music. I liked Asian instrumentals, Oriental instrumentals. They have background from Bollywood and all their sisters playing music in their house all the time, dancing all the time, the tabla, different instruments. So we had influence from our roots that we felt like we wanted to get in touch with with our new skill set. So we started meeting up and just creating choreography that was so weird, but really spoke to us. That is when we started Quick. Quick was the original name of Quick Style. We started Quick and that became an addiction, because with the other team, we had only rehearsal once a week. While with Quick, we had every single day, six, seven hours meet up. We didn’t even want to go home to eat. We just kept hanging out, listening to music, dancing, just grinding our passion. That continued for three more years, additional years, to 2009. That’s when we attended Norwegians Got Talent and won actually. We won Norwegians Got Talent.

Abdul-Rehman Malik: And this is where things sort of explode for you, but let me take you back just for a second, Nasir. One of the things that, as Quick Style was gaining this international popularity and you were showing up on my social media feeds all the time, and I saw Suleiman and Bilal, you know that to me, they look like Pakistani boys, right?

Nasir Sirikhan: They are Pakistani boys.

Abdul-Rehman Malik: Yeah, so I’m like, “Okay, I get them.” Then I see you, Nasir, and I’m like, “Nasir, that’s interesting. I want to know where that guy is from.” Tell me a little bit about where you’re coming from, Nasir. You’re a Thai Pakistani kid growing up in Oslo. What was that like?

Nasir Sirikhan: It’s a blessing, man. It’s a blessing. Because where I grew up, it’s Turkish, Indian, Albanian, Somali, Kurdish, Iranian, Moroccan, Filipino. We are a melting pot in this little hood. Growing up, you learn, okay, you have the Pakistani Ding Dong snacks. You have the pizza with the green chilies. You learn the culture through food, through their sisters, through their mom yelling at them. Then you have the Somali influence where they have a lot of siblings. They’re so raw in the way they treat each other. The brother, the family is very tight-knitted together. Then you learn the strictness of the Albanians and how they have so much pride and how you have to learn how to drive a car when you’re eight years old and how … You just consume culture all the time. I’m born here. As a Thai background, I speak Thai. My family speak Thai and everything, but we make Pathan food at home. We make biryani. We make curry. My mom do chapati, naan, roti, whatever, everything, and we drink a lot of chai. I felt like I didn’t feel this border that I know that a lot of my other Asian, Southeast Asian friends would feel. Let’s say if you’re Vietnamese or you’re Filipino or you’re Thai without the Pakistani background like I do, you initially feel like we’re the same, but it’s some kind of border because the cultural differences. But for me, I would meet the little brothers of the Desi people I just meet, and I just grab their neck and just hold them as if they’re my own brothers. My body language speaks like I’m Punjabi or Pathan or whatever. That was confusing to a lot of my friends. They told me that when we first met you, one thing, your name was confusing. Nasir is an Arabic name, and I’m Asian. The second thing is that I was always Muslim. So I would always do the Ramadans with everyone and always get this question, “Are you Muslim? I didn’t know you’re Muslim.” Even my family name, Sirikhan is…so Khan is from the Pakistani big family history background of the Pathan families. And Siri is a very common used name in front of your name. So you’ll have Siri and then a lot of other types of name in Thailand. 

Abdul-Rehman Malik: Yeah, it feels like your cultural background in many ways is at the very heart of what Quick Style is and has become.

Nasir Sirikhan: True.

Abdul-Rehman Malik: In some ways, I guess the question for me is, how did that hybrid culture influence the style that’s emerged?

Nasir Sirikhan: So, I feel like our first priority in dance was for us to be very synchronized. So from physical synchronization to a mental synchronization. So when I hear a song, the same shapes, movements, and references should pop up in your head as well. That is the deeper level that I think almost no dancers in the world dare to even touch on. Because when you do that, when the same color, the same smell, the same references, the same shapes, the same moves pop up in not only your head but your partner’s heads, It’s much clearer. It’s clearer. If we’re creators that has different references, different move patterns, then we are not sure of what we’re communicating with our dance. So I feel like that was the very foundation of when we started choreographing and started creating together. We had to understand what we wanted to communicate. When that landed, we danced to all types of music. We did Jolene on the NBC World of Dance. We did French music. We’ve done Asian music, all types of music. But that was just all sounds to us. Even English was just sound to us, because even English is our third language, right? We have our mother language and then Norwegian. So all of that was just beats to us, and that was basically how we connected with any types of words and languages. It could be Vietnamese, Japanese, Korean. It would all be the same. We wouldn’t feel any border because we don’t understand what they’re saying. We were just like, “This is just a different sound,” the same way you would hear a drum and a piano or a different instrument in any other country. So I think that was our loophole into not having any borders.

Abdul-Rehman Malik: Tell me about that, Nasir, because it’s one of the things that we all notice. We see Bilal and we see Suleiman. Then I see you coming at me, and then I see Yasin and I got to look him up, right? Where is Yasin from? Then I see the blonde-haired, blue-eyed kid who looks totally-

Nasir Sirikhan: William.

Abdul-Rehman Malik: Norwegian, but then I got all these ethnicities coming at me. I got the whole world in your crew, and I’m like, “How did Nasir, Bilal, and Suleiman gather this diverse crew? 

Nasir Sirikhan: Our group of friends is even more diverse, the friends that are not dancing. But how these guys came about is we started a dance studio once we won Norwegians Got Talent. We won about, I would say $30,000 each. We just took a little piece of that money to ourselves as a reward, and then we gave some of it to charity. Then we opened our own kind of a youth club, because we felt like we needed our own space. We needed our freedom, our creative freedom. So that is when Quick Style Studio was born in 2010. So we opened up. The rent was about $3,000 a month, and we were 17. We were 17. We paid rent every month.

Abdul-Rehman Malik: Incredible.

Nasir Sirikhan: Then I used my Photoshop skills from when I was 12 and I made flyers. I made a timetable and I said, “Classes with Nasir.” Then Monday was Nasir, Suleiman, Nasir. Tuesday was Suleman, Nasir, Nasir. So it was only us, and we would teach the younger kids our dance. We were not qualified teachers, but we would just teach and hang out with them. Yasin was the first student that came in.

Abdul-Rehman Malik: Wow, that’s awesome.

Nasir Sirikhan: And William was also the first student. So William and Yasin came in. William was only nine years old. Yasin was 14, I think. So those two were the first students that stepped into the studio in 2010. Then after that, the studio grew crazy. Everyone was talking about Quick Style Studio. Everybody wanted to come and take classes. We realized that we have something that people really love. The way we ran our studio was very personal. If we saw a student hang out in the streets and doing not good things, we became a second home. We became parents. We became mentors. That is also why we’ve never given up on the school, even though it was a huge…it really bad business, because we took almost no money from anyone. That wouldn’t cover even a month of rent, but we kept having the place because it gave us so much, and it still does.

 

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Abdul-Rehman Malik (VO): I have a small favour to ask you. If you enjoy this show, there’s a really quick thing you can do to help us make it even better. Just take five minutes to fill out a short survey. This is the Aga Khan museum’s first-ever podcast and a little bit of feedback will help us measure our impact and reach more people with extraordinary stories from some of the most interesting artists, thinkers, and leaders on the kaleidoscope of Muslim experience. To participate, go to agakhanmuseum.org/tbhsurvey. That’s agakhanmusic.org/tbhsurvey.  The link is also in the show notes. Thanks for listening to This Being Human. Now, back to the interview.

 

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Abdul-Rehman Malik: You’ve talked about your faith and you’ve talked about the spirit. I feel it, man. I feel that when you guys are in sync and when you’re performing, it’s actually a really spiritual thing to watch. That connection that you talked about, the body, mind, spirit, heart connection, the connection between all of you, the love, the camaraderie-

Nasir Sirikhan: The presence.

Abdul-Rehman Malik: The presence that you have with each other. Tell me, let’s dig into that. How does your Islam, how does your faith weave through your dance? 

Nasir Sirikhan: It’s been many years, and I would say the most spiritual years in our lives would be the past five years because we went on Umrah about five years ago right before COVID, and then the whole COVID hit and we got time to reflect a lot on life and death, mostly death because it was so much of it during COVID, and just reflecting and taking time more seriously. Now I’m 32. I’m entering the year of 33, Inshallah. And during that transition, we’ve been very much more … spent much more time in the mosque. I went Umrah again in January just recently.

Abdul-Rehman Malik: Ma sha Allah. Congratulations.

Nasir Sirikhan: Thank you, thank you. So I brought my brother this time, which was also a very special feeling, because he’s never been there. But dancing, to be 100% transparent with you. We have understood that we are feeling that we are in a place that is dangerous to our spirits. We know that, but we also see the good that is coming out of it, because it’s so many people that have gone the criminal way in a society that has encountered us and then understood that, wow, these guys are from the hood. They are religious. They are also hanging out with celebrities. So we know that our industry is dangerous for us. And the things that we create and the time that we take from people can and cannot … We don’t know. Allah knows best, but can be hurting. So that’s why every single time we step on that stage or every single time we press record or we do something in this industry, it feels like we are taking a risk. That’s why we go all in. That’s why you see that presence. We cannot do it just to do it. So we have much more emotions rooted into every action we take in that field of work. I feel like we haven’t spoken too much about it, but it’s definitely something we share with the boys as well. We have different religions in our crew, but we tell them that we cannot play around. Every time we do something, this means a lot to us because we’re risking a lot. That’s how we feel every single time, and not risking things that are material that are in this lifetime. We’re risking a lot in our next life, which for us is something very deep and personal. We are seeking a lot of forgiveness for the things we do. We are seeking help all the time because we know that everything we have gotten up until now is only all praise to Allah, and everything that we are about to get, if it’s good or bad for us, we also know that that’s from him. So we are just living through it.

Abdul-Rehman Malik: It’s powerful that you speak about Quick Style as a movement. You’ve talked elsewhere about it as a tool for cultural exchange and communication, but you’ve shared something even more deep here, that not only is your intention in this work to bridge cultural gaps, but actually you’re doing something more. You’re bringing meaning and you’re bringing connection. That’s a powerful thing to happen between people in a world that feels even more disconnected while we’re hyper connected. I’m wondering if there’s a particular incident or anecdote or a moment where you felt like all of these threads, exchange, communication, bridging, and connection come together. Was there a moment where you guys experienced that and you were like, “Yeah, Mashallah. This is it. This is it?”

Nasir Sirikhan: Yeah, definitely, and it happens all the time. We’re witnessing this almost every single day. Only a week ago, we were in Mumbai. We were shooting a commercial for Crocs shoewear. Then we had this set that we came to from the airport. You have my student who is a Norwegian, blue-eyed blonde William who came to me when he was nine-years-old in the middle of a crowd of Indian people who was … We were replicating a monsoon scene, so it was raining on us. The kids were holding his hand and jumping. The way I could see that he had no, any … He didn’t hold back on any love, or he didn’t feel like there was any barriers between him and the people. That is when I feel like this is how the world should look like, the way he loved them as if it was his own, so we witness this a lot, even in Japan and Korea and wherever we go. We feel like we communicate. We respect culture. We respect the norms that they have, but at the same time, love is very general and happiness is and joy is. So we can connect with everyone, so we experience that all the time, actually. Alhamdulillah.

 

Abdul-Rehman Malik: Alhamdulillah. I wonder about how you have evolved as a dancer, as a creative, as an artist over the years. How do you see yourself emerging as a creative? How have you evolved? How have you changed? How are you growing?

Nasir Sirikhan: I am a very curious person. From the very beginning, before I started dancing, I learned Photoshop when I was 12. I hacked PSPs. I wanted to play more games than I could afford, so I learned how to hack my PSP to download ISO files and then play games. I would learn computer science. I would have Nokia phones and I would dismantle the phone and build the phone. I was always very curious. When dance came into my life, it was just a gesture that my sister told me that you should try it out. It looks fun. I was always in my room. I was always playing games. I think that was one of the biggest blessings that I’ve gotten into my life. When I started dancing, I didn’t find it fun until I found my nerd entry point. So my nerd entry point was musicality.

Abdul-Rehman Malik: I love that. I love that.

Nasir Sirikhan: I wanted to understand how I can just hit all the beats that I hear, and I didn’t have that body control. So it was almost as if you saw level 20, but you knew you were level one. I had to just grow my body control, my skill sets. I would take a lot of push-ups. I would run. I train my body so that I had that control. So as a dancer, my journey has been finding motivation within dance for me to be able to control different segments. So the way my style is is very more an animation, popping, I would say a visual, illusional kind of style. I like to play with time because you perceive a beat. Now I’m going to go a little bit nerdy. When you hear a BPM, you would hear one BPM, and you automatically expect the next beat. But if I move in a way where I go super slow and then I go super fast just to be on beat, I’m messing with your head. I make you think that I’m going to be late for that beat, but I will make it. But I still gave you the feeling of experiencing slow motion and super speed within a very average beat per minute. So I like playing with time and the way your visceral experience dance. For me, it’s a full nerd. I’m nerd in the way I structure my choreography. I’m nerd in the way I play with musicality. I’m nerd in the way I like to stop all movements just to give you the illusion of a freeze-frame in real time. Now we are at a point where we feel like we don’t want to convince anyone, but we want to be able to inspire, bring hope and joy, and communicate our mentality through dance.

 

Abdul-Rehman Malik: I’d love to get inside your heart and see what’s happening from your insides out as you’re dancing.

Nasir Sirikhan: It’s different every single time, because you can go into it with frustration. You can go into it with stress. You can go into it feeling lost. Once you’re done with moving, you just get out of it feeling like, first of all, you feel healthy. The second, you feel like you’re much more ready to go through whatever you’re about to go through. Because if you’re moving, and I’m about to hit you with something, you’re much more likely to dodge or you’re much more likely to move around or repel it or whatever. If you’re still for 12 hours and I’m bringing my hand to you, you will get slapped hard and you will get dizzy and you will hit the wall and you will be like, “I don’t know what happened. I’m done for today.”

Abdul-Rehman Malik: I’m done.

Nasir Sirikhan: So I feel like this is just a metaphor, of course. I feel like when you’re moving, you’re much more physically, mentally prepared to whatever that’s about to hit you, and you’re much more prepared to go through harder times. So for me, sometimes I don’t even identify what my problem is. Then once I go into it and come out of it, I just feel much more ready. I feel like I have a different kind of energy. I can go into meetings without feeling like I’m inferior to anyone. I feel like I’m on top of the world. I feel great, because it’s a superpower. You feel like you have a superpower and you can share tables with people who are billionaires, and you have what, $10 in your account? You feel like you’re better than everyone, and that’s because you know that not everyone can do it. You have the best gift of all, and that’s your body. Your body can move in a certain way, and no money can buy that, and it just feels good.

 

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Abdul-Rehman Malik: Nasir, tell me about a joy or a meanness that came to you recently as an unexpected visitor.

Nasir Sirikhan: My unexpected visitor or guest of awareness, I would say is I have realized that trust, full trust, the meaning of full trust is not something that I’ve had in my life before. I’ve trusted my parents. I’ve trusted my friends, but now I’m entering a time where I fully trust God, which is very new to me. But it’s also a beauty in accepting whatever comes your way. It just helps me mentally and spiritually. I am ready to go whenever I’m meant to go, and I’m ready to continue. 

Abdul-Rehman Malik: Nasir, may you and the Quick Style team forever have great success and openings and continue to do beautiful, creative, powerful things in the world. I love you guys, I really do. Nasir, thank you so much for joining us on This Being Human.

Nasir Sirikhan: Thank you so much for having me.

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Abdul-Rehman Malik (VO): You can visit Nasir on Instagram @nazquick—that’s N-A-Z-Q-U-I-C-K. You can see more of Quick Style’s incredible work on Instagram and Youtube @TheQuickStyle. This Being Human is presented by the Aga Khan Museum. Through the arts, the Aga Khan Museum sparks wonder, curiosity, and understanding of Muslim cultures and their connection with other cultures. This Being Human is produced by Antica Productions in partnership with TVO. Our senior producer is Imran Ali Malik. Our associate producer is Emily Morantz. Our executive producers are Laura Regehr and Stuart Coxe. Mixing and sound design by Phil Wilson. Original music by Boombox Sound. Katie O’Connor is TVO’s Managing Editor of Digital Video and Podcasts. Laurie Few is the executive for digital at TVO.