Martial monks dance down genre barriers
* Rosemary Sorensen
* From: The Australian
* July 09, 2010 12:00AM
THIS hybrid creation is one out of the box.
THERE are more new waves in artistic creation than at Bondi Beach, but the term is useful to describe the work of Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. The Moroccan-Belgian choreographer started out as a hip-hop dancer entranced by Kate Bush and Madonna, progressing through jazz-inspired entertainments to more thought-provoking theatrical creations.
An ambitious project begun in China in 2007 and touring regularly since then (it comes to the Brisbane Festival and Spring Dance at the Sydney Opera House in September) will likely stamp his name permanently in the annals of choreography.
While he has already moved on to other, quite different ideas (such as a collaboration with a flamenco dancer and a filmed installation about the role of technology in contemporary living) his Sutra, performed by the Shaolin monks from Henan province in southern China, gives real meaning to the term new wave.
Ignoring boundaries between martial arts and physical theatre, and fusing ritual movement with contemporary dance, Sutra also pays homage to the romance of traditional ballet while acknowledging the 21st-century yearning for new approaches to spirituality.
In Sutra, a stage is set with 21 boxes the size and shape of coffins. These boxes each contain a young man. One by one the superbly fit acrobatic monks from Shaolin leap from the boxes and begin to manipulate them to create images: fortresses, flowers, havens and mazes, mysterious retreats and challenging barriers.
As well as the troupe of monks (dressed in kung-fu outfits for the most part, but startlingly in suits for part of the performance), there are two other dancers: a man dressed like the monks but clearly not one of them and a boy monk. These two talk together in mime, a private conversation the audience tries to decode, about the boxes and the leaping monks. They attempt to work out how to interact with the potent troupe and how, subtly, to control them.
The outsider man is acolyte and teacher, learning from his interaction with the monks and with the boy and bringing to them his own interpretations of their world.
It is esoteric and exuberantly physical, visually simple and complex, setting off in the viewer's mind meanderings of ideas and inspirations.
Cherkaoui agrees that his Sutra is "groundbreaking", because "it feels, for some people, that we have not seen this".
"So they say, 'Is this dance?' And I say, 'It's up to you'," he says. "I consider the monks' movements dance, because I am a dancer, and if you are willing to open your mind, it doesn't matter if it's called martial arts or dance. So long as it's movement that can express itself in performance that is physical, energetic and meaningful."
Cherkaoui first developed Sutra with himself as the non-monk dancer. On stage he is unprepossessing, his balding head and slender body a mild presence, particularly alongside some of the monks whose presence has the potency of an aroused cobra.
Off stage he is younger looking, slightly fragile, his beautiful hands constantly gesturing to illustrate what he is saying. Sitting down for a cup of herbal tea straight after a public interview as part of the New Zealand International Arts Festival in Wellington, he is pumped, an excitable boy, surprisingly voluble.
What makes him an extraordinary dancer is his acrobatic suppleness and tensile strength, which means he can almost match it with the monks when it comes to the spectacular high-flying stuff and then inject into their performance the elegant imagery of contemporary choreography.
When he greets you, he touches his heart, Morrocan-style, and dips in a small bow, which he says he learned from his friend and collaborator Akram Khan.
"I'm very chameleon in my movements," he says, his huge eyes bright with intelligent enthusiasm, "which is sometimes good but it also makes me prone to new influences, so I have to choose those influences very carefully.
"I have to be in the right environment, because I tend to follow very easily."
The Shaolin Temple, which Cherkaoui first visited in 2007 following a commission from the Sadler's Wells Ballet in London, is an unusual Buddhist monastery. The monks there are also open to new influences, and this willingness to embrace change led to their developing performances in the 1980s based on their martial arts discipline.
Success brought with it problems, with copycat troupes claiming to be Shaolin monks springing up all over the place.
They were also embroiled in an unpleasant legal dispute over rights when it became clear the performers, who are first and foremost practising monks, were being exploited by the German company promoting them.
Burned a little, the monks pulled back from performing but, Cherkaoui says, they remained "open to artists they feel they can trust".
Cherkaoui understands, and is attracted to, the religious life that places the individual within a system of ritual and discipline. His interaction with the monks, and the dance production that has developed from it, used the tension between artistic and religious impulses as a source of creative energy.
"There is a part of me that likes success, and I went into art for that," he says. "I would be a monk, if there wasn't that part of me, but I also see how negative success can be, and how it can destroy you if you let it.
"If success defines you and it takes over your entire being, you become nothing. It disengages you from your own path, and your own desires."
Cherkaoui smiles angelically and admits that he does have a "monkish" side, and loved the time spent at the monastery. Fanatically vegetarian and glowing with good health, he nevertheless says he could not actually be a monk. "I have a partner and sexual desires, and although for me it's fascinating to see people who sublimate that, I didn't go into the monastery with that kind of curiosity."
Growing up Muslim in Belgium, Cherkaoui says he was delighted by the way, at the monastery, there is a much broader understanding of what constitutes masculinity and femininity, with more blurring across gender identity.
"I love that, because it allows me to be what I am, which is a mixture of the two, and they found that endearing." In other communities, he says, his own "ambiguity" would be seen as a threat, but the monks accepted him "with serenity".
Cherkaoui says that with his success has come acceptance in his own Muslim community and he sees it as his responsibility to talk, therefore, about what it means to be a gay artist in a world where such acceptance is "still fragile". "There are places you can die for being that, and places too where you can die for being an Arab, being Flemish, being a woman, being white, so it's important to defend it and at the same time to be a bridge, to make people understand you are a link between things that might not be understood."
When you see Cherkaoui balance on his head and manipulate his body through space without a discernible muscle tremble, it is almost impossible to believe that he was once "very weak".
A good student, the son of adoring parents who pushed him academically, he rebelled because he decided his sensitivity and puniness were going to be the death of him. Faced with the prospect of "getting killed in a football game", he hit upon dance as a way to get strong, and discovered that he was also talented.
He won a Belgian dance contest in 1995, "mixing hip-hop with classical ballet and African moves", and that brought him to the attention of such contemporary dance greats as Alain Platel, whose Compagnie C de la B has been so influential in providing opportunities for the most experimental and talented dancers in the world.
Cherkaoui still works with that Belgian-based company and recently set up his own troupe, Eastman (a translation of his own name). One of the reasons for wanting his own company is to be able to transmit what he has learned to other dancers.
"I think a lot about transmission of a role, which gives the opportunity for the work to live on," he says, "but at the same time, you have to be careful who you transmit it to. It must make sense and bring a source of happiness in the transmission."
So many dancers want to "make a work their own", he says, and that can mean that the coveted role in a successful work might, instead, create sadness instead.
Cherkaoui worries about this as he worries about so many other things, in his own behaviour and in the wider world. But in the end, he says, "life shows you" the right path on which to proceed. "It always tells you what to do."
Sutra is at the Queensland Performing Arts Centre, September 8-11, and the Sydney Opera House, September 16-19.
