Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s performances are big storybooks, with clear references to reality. The space is a concrete location, demonstrable but not necessarily unambiguous. The scene is a demonstrable space, now defined as a Purgatory, or a waiting room outside a big gateway, but you do not know whether the people will be sent to heaven or hell, to a doctor or a god, or back into the world.

The characters who end up in this in-between world either archetypically represent or are divided between earthly (material) and heavenly (spiritual) poles; between their female (receptive) and male (active) sides; between and eastern (holistic) and a western (dualist) consciousness; between good and evil; they are visited and guided by their shadow side, by their animal nature.

With a compositional technique comparable to the paintings of Brueghel and Bosch, Myth creates a pictorial encyclopaedia of mainly Western myths and archetypes that are brought to life in three dimensions. The contemporary visual idiom of the Japanese manga is also a source of inspiration.

For Myth  Sidi Larbi Chekaoui works together with Nienke Reehorst and the 21 performers who include Damien Jalet and Christine Leboutte, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui ‘draws’ an eclectic world of movement that is accompanied live by the polyphonic singing of Patrizia Bovi and her Micrologus ensemble.