At the age of 32, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, associate artist at the Toneelhuis of Antwerp, has already compelled recognition as one of the virtuoso dancers of his generation, and one of the most inventive choreographers calling on eclectic and surprising music in his shows with their very diverse styles and techniques. He danced with the Ballets C. de la B. in Its Op Bach by Alain Platel in 1998 and quickly became known as a choreographer with Rien de rien (Absolutely Nothing) in 2000, a piece for six dancers influenced by the melancholy of folk songs. In 2002, in Avignon, his work as an interpreter in the solo It by Wim Vandekeybus was hailed as the event of Vif du sujet. The same year, with Damien Jalet and two of Sasha Waltz's dancers, he premiered D'avant (Before), a show inspired by 13th century songs that went deeply into the violence of bodies and the fanaticism of minds while mixing in gentle breathing and poetic suspensions. Foi (Faith, 2003), Tempus fugit (2004), In Memoriam (2005), Mea Culpa (2006), Myth (2007) and Origine (2008) have since confirmed his inspiration, blending sophisticated, erudite, medieval sources and generous, colourful, subtle and spectacular interpretations. Straddling cultures, naturally comfortable in crossing sources and in encounters, his work with the English dancer and choreographer of Bengali origin, Akram Khan, Zero Degrees (2005), finally made Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui an important figure on the European stage. Baroque in his heart, curious, demanding, he will continue to regard dance as an adventure. At the Festival d'Avignon, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui presented It (in collaboration with Wim Vandekeybus) in the Vif du sujet program in 2002 and Tempus fugit in 2004; he was scheduled to present Foi in 2003.
Sutra is a kind of travel log, which led Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui to one of the sources of his inspiration, the Shaolin temple in China, the cradle of kung-fu, the mythic site where one comes across the ghost of Bruce Lee and one of the world's most elaborated body of thought on the human body, the monks' spirituality and the practice of martial arts. Working at the Henan monastery, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui sought a dual initiation: he received gestures, rituals, rhythms and intuitions from the monks at the Shaolin temple, while offering them a contemporary choreographic framework, composed of the arrangement of bodies, other speeds, other types of musicality. This exchange, transferred to the stage of a show, resembles the learning of a new language, written between East and West, that respects the kung-fu tradition and contributes an original viewpoint to it, as though it concerned going back to the origins of an art that is also a life-style. It is the body and its energy – mastered, released, vital, animal – that enlivens the stage of Sutra, where 17 Shaolin monks encircle Sidi Liarbi Cherkaoui in a choreography that shuns folkloric recreation to better reinvent a philosophy of life through its speeds and pauses, its bursts and its withdrawals, its apparent vivacity and its internal release, its animal inspiration and its spiritual surges. The English artist Antony Gormley composed the visual and scenographic part of this universe while the Polish musician Szymon Brzóska worked on its most intimate revelation, between pulsing rhythm and melancholic discretion. In this strange zone, where bodies use all the physical means at their disposal while preserving the soothing powers of mediation, a physical grammar composed of tradition and modernity, of matter and imagination has been written that tries to build a passage between a civilization and those who discover it: this journey of initiation that leads to the beauty of gesture.
Distribution
mise en scène et chorégraphie: Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui
création visuelle et décor: Antony Gormley
musique: Szymon Brzóska
avec: Shiyan Bo, Shiyan Chuang, Shiyan Ci, Shiyan Da, Shiyan
Dong, Shiyan Hao, Shiyan Jiao, Shiyan Jie, Shiyan Li, Shiyan Mo, Shiyan Nan, Shiyan Peng, Shiyan Qun, Shiyan Tao, Shiyan Ting, Shiyan Yong, Shiyan Yuan, Shiyan Xing, Shiyan Zhu
piano: Szymon Brzóska
violon: Alies Sluiter, Olga Wojciechowska
violoncelle: Laura Anstee
percussions: Coordt Linke
production déléguée: Sadler's Wells
Production
production: Sadler's Wells (Londres), en coproduction avec le Festival d'Athènes, le Festival GREC (Barcelone), le Grand Théâtre de Luxembourg, La Monnaie (Bruxelles), le Festival d'Avignon, la Fondazione Musica per Roma et la Shaolin
Cultural Communications Company
avec le soutien: des autorités flamandes et de la Ville d'Anvers