click on the imageSidi Larbi Cherkaoui (1976) is a dancer and choreographer. As a child he wanted to draw reality: people, clouds and everything associated with reality. Yet these drawings always conveyed more than just the bare facts. When the two dimensions of pen and paper no longer satisfied him, Sidi Larbi began to dance. Dance as a temporary sketch of reality: the drawing disappears when the movement ends. His dancing led to choreography: Sidi Larbi’s productions are also storybooks in motion, which indirectly tell the audience about the world around them – the nearby world and the distant world – and preferably both at once. He uses a dance language which combines the best of very diverse styles and traditions to produce something that is surprisingly original.
In 2008 the dance magazine Ballet-tanz declared Cherkaoui ‘Choreographer of the Year’ and in 2009 he won the prestigious German Kairos Prize. His work is accessible, universal and complex and that is what makes it so attractive, as Sutra, Myth, Origine, OOK, Apocrifu, etc. have shown. At Toneelhuis he has since put his signature to the choreography for Guy Cassiers’ House of the Sleeping Beauties and Olympique Dramatique’s Adams appels.
January 2010 was a watershed for Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui: he founded his own dance company Eastman, which is currently in residence at Toneelhuis. These two separate structures are committed to working together. With the new Eastman company, Cherkaoui immediately revived Foi (at the Bourla) and he is creating new work including BABEL (Words) and Play (at deSingel). Earlier productions like Faun, Dunas, Apocrifu, Sutra, etc. are now touring the world to great acclaim.
