The journey to Sutra with Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui

In 2007, Flemish-Moroccan choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui travelled to China. In an attempt to break out of his comfort zone, he temporarily locked himself up with a group of Shoalin monks. The result is the stunning performance Sutra, which runs from Wed 28 to Fri 30 May.

I was a bit stuck in my work,' says Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. And I felt the need to get off the beaten track. I talked about it with a friend, the producer Hisashi Itoh, and he asked me: what are you really interested in? I mentioned all sorts of things that were important to me - including martial arts and yoga - and he said, "Why don't you go to Shoalin Temple? You can meet the monks and talk to them.

Whatever Cherkaoui's personal passions, it is no wonder that Itoh's suggestion proved irresistible. Cherkaoui was born in Belgium to a Flemish mother and a Moroccan father. He is teetotal and vegan. He has always had a sense of otherness, which has led him to explore other cultures in order to discover what unites us as human beings. In conversation and in his work, he displays a contagious optimism about how seemingly different cultures can be found to have something in common.

Only someone with a mind as hungry and fertile as Cherkaoui's could create such an extraordinary dance performance out of dissatisfaction with the dance world. Sutra ('Thread'), which emerged from the conversation with Itoh, was an immediate success. It premiered in May 2008 to lyrical reviews and has since toured 83 cities in 33 countries, attracting over 250,000 visitors - not bad for a dance performance with a cast of 20, only one of whom is a dancer.

Cherkaoui's trip to the temple was a revelation. I had a picture in my head of what the life of the monks would be like," he says, "but when I was there, it took on so much more depth. Especially when I understood what an emotional journey it must be to want to become a monk. Everyone had their own reason for going, and I had mine. I was there because of the things I was struggling with.

Cherkaoui's connection with the monks did not end there. I met Master Shi Yanda and felt I had finally met someone I could ask the questions that really mattered. Like: why do they preach peace but fight like madmen? He explained that meditation is for calming the mind and kung fu is for calming the body. It's about connecting with the animals. I could relate to that because when I choreograph I want to think more and more like an animal than a human being.

Antony Gormley's wooden boxes

But who would design the scenography for the production that was beginning to germinate in Cherkaoui's mind? He had been friends with Antony Gormley since they worked together on Zero Degrees in 2005, and knew that the British sculptor had previously travelled extensively in Asia to study Buddhism. I called him immediately and said: you have to come here. We had previously expressed our desire to work together again, and I just felt: this is it.

Gormley didn't need any convincing. I am very interested in China," he says, "because I think China, whether we like it or not, is the future. I think Buddhism and Taoism have a lot to teach us about how to balance body and mind.

Gormley's career grew out of his fascination with the human body, and his crucial contribution to Sutra reflects this. In my very limited and amateurish role as a dance designer," he says with characteristic modesty, "I'm not interested in manipulating light to tell you what emotion to feel, or illustrating a story, or creating scenes so you know where you are. I am interested in giving dancers something that allows them to stretch their bodies and create new shapes all the time. And that is how Antony came up with the idea of the boxes. I felt we were on to something big,' he says.

I wanted to deal with space and, in a way, architecture. And a brick, as a minimalist piece of architecture, can be used to create larger structures. The proportions of the box are really important: 60cm x 60cm x 180cm. You could say that is an average human size.

Szymon Brzóska's score

For the music, Cherkaoui turned to a composer at the beginning of his career. Polish-born Szymon Brzóska was 27 at the time and had just finished his composition studies in Antwerp. That year I saw Larbi's piece Myth (2007),' he recalls. I liked it so much that I saw it three times in a row. After one of the performances, I went up to Larbi and gave him my CD. A few weeks later he suggested that I collaborate with him on Sutra!

After writing some musical 'sketches' for Cherkaoui, Brzóska arrived at a melancholy composition for violin, viola, cello, piano and percussion that in many ways contrasts with the powerful physicality of the monks' movements.

I never intended to write music inspired by Chinese music in a clichéd way," he says, "but I did want to evoke a specifically Chinese feeling. We used some percussion instruments from China and from the temple, but it was more about creating a specific atmosphere. The strings helped me with that, as well as the harmonies I had in mind. I used the piano because I'm a pianist myself and I thought it could be a bridge.

From rehearsal room to stage success

In early 2008, Cherkaoui returned to the temple with an early recording of Brzóska's composition and suddenly found himself in an improvised rehearsal room with the monks.

The first time it was all about movement," he says. Martial arts and Shaolin Kungfu have fixed movements, so I just asked: what is your movement vocabulary? From what they showed me, some things were really interesting and some things I didn't really know. I loved their animal incarnations, like when they move like a panther or a snake. It's really theatre and dance. When you dance Swan Lake, you have to believe you are a swan. When a martial artist believes he is an eagle, it is the same imagination.

When Cherkaoui talks about the production that emerged from those early workshops, the word 'journey' comes up again and again. Indeed, Sutra feels like a journey: his journey into the mind of a monk; his attempt to understand the monks' existence, to see what they have removed from their lives, to reconcile their physical strength with their spiritual serenity.

The moment I decided to dance myself was in the last two or three weeks before the premiere. I was creating all these collective pieces with the monks and I felt that someone had to go against the grain. There are little moments where it is clear that there is a leader, and that leadership is constantly shifting between the monks. But I felt that the larger story would still be my own perception, and that my character could offer a perspective, a form of identification. That's why I think a lot of people liked it - because they could identify with the character.

Many people' is actually an understatement - 243 performances (and counting) in a decade is an extraordinary achievement for such an experimental show. It begs the question whether Cherkaoui considers such an intercultural venture to be more important than ever, at a time when the West seems to be turning increasingly inwards. I think it is absolutely important to always reach out to the other shore,' he says. To understand that there is someone like you who can inspire you. I had to go all the way to China to find myself. I was stuck and I didn't like what I saw in the mirror. Going to the temple taught me to take care of myself and made me realise: oh, I'm OK. And it was the monks who gave me that strength by welcoming me and asking me questions that were both naive and essential. They simply asked: 'What is a choreographer? And I thought: That's the best question I've ever been asked! What am I?

‘I wish everyone this feeling,’ he concludes, ’the feeling of a new beginning.’

This text was written by Mark Monahan and adapted to Amare's editorial guidelines.