Ahilan Ratnamohan is a performance-maker working with non-classically trained performers to create cross-disciplinary pieces. He is inspired above all by sport and language-learning processes. In his early twenties Ahil attempted to make a career as a professional footballer spending time in the Netherlands, Germany and Sweden. He began concentrating on contemporary performance in 2007, collaborating with a range of companies in Sydney, most extensively with Urban Theatre Projects, Branch Nebula and Martin del Amo.

Since 2012 he has been based in Antwerp, where he began to lead his own projects. His work is disparate and straddles many different themes and aesthetics.  In the last 10 years his work has developed into three trajectories: the choreographic investigation of football; language learning as performance and; and his collaboration with the Star Boy Collective, the performance troupe which grew organically out of his first production, Michael Essien I want to play as you...  Since 2020 Ahilan is a member of the collectively, autonomous production house ROBIN vzw.  He is currently rounding off a series of language-learning monologues with Une traduction infidèle.  In these performances, he and other language learners have tested and improved their language abilities through the medium of live performance at the same time using language learning strategies to arrive at new dramaturgies.

Within the ON MOBILISATION project Ahilan’s research starts with the question who has the right to learn and what resources are used for this purpose, and further looks into link between performance making and language learning.