Sutra

[uki]

Shaolin monks as backup dancers for Cheryl Cole.

of course only gene would know this bit of information... i didn't even know who she was... LOL... them shaolin monks sure are famous these days.

[GeneChing]

You've never heard of Girls Aloud? Here's a pic.
They are a popstar group that emerged from reality TV in the UK, arguably the most successful act to ever come out of that platform ever. Cheryl Cole is the hottest one in the group.

DANCE THEATRE REVIEW: Sutra at Sadler's Wells, London *****
1:01pm Tuesday 23rd March 2010
By Matthew Jenkin »

BOLD, beautiful and fascinating, Sutra fuses art, dance and martial arts into a show which will lift your soul and leave you catching your breath.

After 90 performances in 29 cities across 18 countries, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s production makes its triumphant return to London’s Sadler’s Wells theatre.

Sutra at Sadler's Wells, London

Featuring kung fu monks from China’s Shaolin Temple, music from composer Szymon Brzóska and a minimalist set designed by acclaimed artist Antony Gormley, Sutra looks and feels like a meticulously raked Zen garden.

Using 16 plain, wooden boxes, which the 17 monks leap, jump and high kick out of and into, both the gentle spirituality of the Buddhist faith and the formidable power of the Shaolin tradition are set in stark contrast.

It is this juxtaposition of the monk’s fighting skills with the peaceful non-violence of Buddhism which informs the show’s performances and, combined with Brzóska’s stirring score, the back flips, shadow boxing and somersaults are infused with a mystical energy.

Sutra at Sadler's Wells, London

The show opens with an inquisitive Westerner (Ali Ben Lofti Thabet) faces a young monk, Shi Yandong.

After trying to communicate with each through gestures the child leads the man, and the audience, on a quest of understanding both the fastidiously disciplined martial art and the alien culture the monks embody.

Along the path to realisation, the coffin-like boxes are arranged into rows, stacked one on top of each other and brought tumbling to the ground like giant dominoes.

Sutra at Sadler's Wells, London

Their function is miraculous, transforming from ordinary pine boxes into temple arches, an impenetrable wall and even a collosal lotus flower upon which Yandong perches like a little Buddha.

On occasions trapped inside the claustrophobic boxes, the ritualism and confinements of monastic life is also cleverly realised.

For those searching for a balls to the wall Shaolin showdown will find themselves disappointed.

But it is in Sutra’s meditative exploration of kung fu’s ancient spirituality and art, rather than just its physicality, which imbues the show with emotional and intellectual depth.

Sutra. Sadler's Wells, Rosebery Avenue, London. Until March 26. 020 7863 8198 or visit sadlerswells.com

[GeneChing]

All the reviews dub it cutting edge art, which is exactly where Shaolin Chan should be.

Theatre review: Sutra at Sadler's Well Theatre
Published: 25 March 2010
by DAMIAN O'LOUGHLIN

IF nothing else, this show stands as a triumph of cultural fusion and not just a technically astounding work of art.

Antony Gormley’s mesmerically simple design, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s concise choreography, superb music from Szymon Brzóska and, of course, the incomparable Shaolin Monks at times seem like they are competing for centre-stage during this hour-long performance, more East versus West than East meets West.

In fact the wildly various disciplines, aesthetics and styles work in synergy to create a wonderful piece of theatre.

We get our first experience of Gormley’s living sculpture when the series of huge wooden blocks lining the stage roll over revealing their contents. Ali Ben Lotfi Thabet pulls out a monk who gives us a showcase of the deadly drunken master style, setting the tone for the first 10 or 15 minutes. We are introduced to the differing arts, at times almost jarring in their juxtaposition, but kept together by the intricate and evocative music setting the backdrop to the tale of clashing cultures – Thabet as the occidental interloper, the monks as the proud guardians of ancestory.

We are treated to some of what the monks do best, both with weapons and open fists, getting a taste of such sacred styles as crane, monkey and what looked like the mythical toad. At times Cherkaoui’s choreography seemed to constrict the high-flying monks, as their katas were moulded into cascading movements, but this was just another discipline the Shaolins mastered.

Gormley’s rolling, tumbling and at times wandering blocks make for stunning viewing, with some set-pieces genuinely leaving the audience guessing, the falling dominoes, monks and all, eliciting gasps.

It’s difficult to theorise where dance goes next from this truly pioneering and brilliantly executed piece. Perhaps the UK premiere of Babel, Cherkaoui’s collaboration with Gormley and Damien Jalet in May will hold the answer.

Until March 26 • 0844 412 4300

[GeneChing]

But I like Bénédictine liqueur...

March 30, 2010, 10:32 am
London Dance Journal: Hurtling Monks and Other Unhappy Tricks
By ALASTAIR MACAULAY

LONDON – Surely not since Bénédictine liqueur was invented at a medieval French monastery have monks produced anything so commercial as “Sutra.” It’s an hour of physical-theater silliness that could be exciting fun if it weren’t doused in solemnity and mystique. At the end the audience went wild while I rushed for fresh air.

The performers are from the Shaolin Temple, which is in the Henan Province of China and was established in A.D. 495; their daily regimen includes kung fu and tai chi martial. “Sutra” began life at Sadler’s Wells here in 2008 and has traveled to 18 countries so far.

The choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui (who has established quite a career in Europe and last year worked with New York’s Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet) has directed and choreographed this twaddle, in which more than a dozen monks climb in and out of coffin-shaped boxes while reassembling them as walls, shelves, avenues, piles. A boy and a mime frame the action with pretentious adaptations of chess, hide-and-seek and other games.

The British artist Antony Gormley takes credit for the costumes and the visual design, which is minimal (16 identical coffins and a 17th in a different color, mist-grey walls onstage) — disappointing if you think of the Turner Prize-winning Mr. Gormley as an important artist. (New Yorkers can see his first public American installation, “Event Horizon” in and around Madison Square Park.)

Like the designs, Szymon Brzoska’s music is forgettable, elegant, harmless and derivative, its sound world derived from composers including Stravinsky, Ravel and Arvo Pärt.

When the monks finally get going in their various martial-arts displays, there’s certainly some athletic excitement, and it’s anthropologically interesting to see that some of their air somersaults are remarkably like those of Brazilian capoeira. But none of these routines are long sustained. Some of the coffin games are fun too: my favorite came when 13 in a line were knocked sideways like dominoes, each with a monk inside.

In its best bits, the show isn’t so far from exhilarating physical-theater romps like “De La Guarda” and “Fuerzabruta,” both international successes. But the high-art cachet of Mr. Gormley’s name suggests one aspect of “Sutra’s” pretentiousness; the solemn mysteriousness with which the man, the boy and the monks pursue one another is a second aspect. And the whole theme of performing monks climbing in and out of coffins or hurtling through the air in between various Buddhist gestures makes it bizarre, like a reverse-gender Asian answer to “The Sound of Music.”

It has been more than 400 years since Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries of England, but more than once during “Sutra” I found myself longing for one more monastery to be dissolved today.

[GeneChing]

There's something inherently common about reporting the Shaolin schedule. I remember writing an article on my personal schedule at Shaolin way back in our 1999 Shaolin Special - Grasshopper Was Make Believe: My Experience of the Original Shaolin Temple. I've seen plenty of other Shaolin reporters do the same thing. It's odd. I'm not sure why we all feel we have to report this. I'm glad I got it out of my system over a decade ago.

Page last updated at 10:32 GMT, Monday, 26 April 2010 11:32 UK
International Dance Festival: Shaolin monks

The Abbot of the Shaolin Temple in China decided to allow Shaolin monks to perform in shows worldwide, spreading Shaolin Kung Fu and Zen philosophy.

He realised there was a real interest in their way of life and believed it was right to let people see some of their practises first hand.

The monks return to the temple in China between each leg of their tours.

The 17 Monks will be performing at the International Dance Festival Birmingham on 27 and 28 April.

A monks' life

Huang Jiahao is the leader of the group coming to Birmingham. He said: "To be a monk is to experience, to feel, so being on tour is a good way for us to experience different life styles.

"It's something a monk should do and it's good for our development in the life we're in at the moment."

When the monks are not rehearsing or performing, they do everything they can to continue the way of life they practise in the temple in Dengfeng City in the Henan Province of China.

Shaolin temple life

* 5.00am : Get up and have breakfast (Chinese porridge made with soya milk, Chinese bread and some vegetables)
* 7.10am : Prayer (either out loud, silently or chanting)
* 8.15am : Study (the same subjects as in a Chinese school, but with an emphasis on buddhist history and philosophy)
* 11.30am : Lunch of rice and vegetarian dishes
* 2.00pm : Kung Fu training
* 5.00pm : Dinner of rice and vegetarian dishes
* 6.30pm : Meditation in the meditation hall
* 9.00pm-10.00pm : Bedtime

Shaolin monks on tour

* 8.00am : Get up
* 9.00am : Breakfast, the same as in the Temple (the monks stay in apartments rather than hotels, so they can cook their own food)
* 10.00am : Study English (one of the musicians travelling with the group volunteered to teach them English)
* 12.00pm : Lunch (the monks bring much of their own food over with them from China, and then supplement it with fresh fruit and vegetables from local supermarkets)
* 1.00pm : Prayer or meditation in between rehearsals at the theatre
* 4.00pm-6.00pm : Return to apartment for dinner
* 8.00pm - Performance (they find time for more prayer during the show itself)
* 10.00pm : Return to apartment for late night snack
* 11.00pm-12.00am : Bedtime

Birmingham appearance

17 Monks will be performing Sutra at the International Dance Festival Birmingham on 27-28 April. They'll be performing the dance work created by Flemish/Moroccan choreographer Sid Larbi Cherkaoui.

101 things to do with a monk and a box, just about sums up this enthralling show.

Sutra consists of 17 Monks dancing/performing on and inside 21 coffin-sized boxes, which form their ever changing on-stage environment.

Against that backdrop, they do everything you'd expect a Buddhist monk to do, from high-flying Kung Fu kicks and back-flips, to elaborate sword work.

17 Monks perform at The Repertory Theatre on 27-28 April 2010.

[monkeyfoot]

I saw this advertised on the sadlers wells website. To be totally honest I was like WTF are the shaolin guys doing in some 'arty' dance show.

I guess since I live in London I should probably just give it a go, but in terms of first impressions, well I wasn't that impressed lol

[GeneChing]

monkeyfoot, there's been other Shaolin modern dance fusions. It's actually very Chan. I hope you go and can give us your first hand account afterwards.

May 3, 2010, 6:00 am
In Istanbul, Theater in Many Tongues
By SUSANNE FOWLER
A scene from “Sutra,” part of the International Istanbul Theater Festival. A scene from “Sutra,” part of the International Istanbul Theater Festival.
Globespotters

The play’s the thing during the 17th International Istanbul Theater Festival, which runs from May 10 through June 10 — and you don’t have to understand Turkish to enjoy the shows. Actors and dancers from the United States, Britain, Germany, Italy, Japan, Belgium and the Netherlands will perform at more than 15 venues on the city’s European and Asian sides.

Two of the shows will be in English — and both, oddly enough, involve madness in some way. John Malkovich stars Friday, May 14, as a serial killer journalist in “The Infernal Comedy,” in which the versatile American shares the stage with two sopranos and a Baroque orchestra. And on May 28 and 29, “Airswimming” by the British playwright Charlotte Jones, tells the real-life story of two women who spend 50 years in an insane asylum.

There are also works in Italian (like Goldoni’s “Holiday Trilogy,” performed by the Piccolo Teatro di Milano) and in German (like “Cinecitta Aperta,” part of René Pollesch’s Ruhr Trilogy, and “The Trial,” based on the Franz Kafka novel).

Then there’s the international language of dance, with offerings like “Sutra” from the Flemish/Moroccan choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, which stars 17 Buddhist Shaolin monks from China.

Tickets are on sale now. Prices range from 10 to 150 Turkish lira (about $7 to $100).

[GeneChing]

Part of the White Light Festival at the Lincoln Center.

Sutra
Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, director and choreographer
U.S. premiere

Tuesday, November 2, 2010 at 7:30

Wednesday, November 3, 2010 at 7:30

Thursday, November 4, 2010 at 7:30

Rose Theater

“This unique, profoundly imagined work takes the concept of cultural exchange to a new level.” —The Guardian

Belgian/Moroccan choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui combines the graceful, spiritual, and gravity-defying athleticism of China’s Shaolin monks with his signature blend of modern ballet, African dance, and hip-hop. Cherkaoui spent several months at the Shaolin Temple, in the Henan Province of China, developing Sutra, drawing inspiration from the skill, strength, and spirituality of martial arts. The production features 17 Shaolin monks, a set designed by groundbreaking British sculptor Antony Gormley, and music by Polish composer Szymon Brzóska.

Antony Gormley, visual design
Szymon Brzóska, music
with monks from the Shaolin Temple

Post-performance discussion with Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Szymon Brzóska, Shi Yanhao, and Shi Yanjie on Wednesday, November 3

A Sadler’s Wells London Production, co-produced with Athens Festival, Festival de Barcelona Grec, Grand Théâtre de Luxembourg, La Monnaie Brussels, Festival d’Avignon, Fondazione Musica per Roma, and Shaolin Cultural Communications Company.

This performance is part of Lincoln Center’s New Visions series.

Please note: Performances begin promptly at their scheduled times. There is no late seating.

[hui]

check out the long-range schedule :
http://www.shaolin.org.cn/templates/...contentid=1929

Upcoming performance in US:

November
Tues 2 Performance 1, Lincoln Center, NY
Wed 3 Performance 2, Lincoln Center, NY
Thurs 4 Performance 3, Lincoln Center, NY

Weds 10 Performance 1, Carolina Performing Arts
Thurs 11 Performance 2, Carolina Performing Arts


Sun 14 Performance 1, Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio

[hui]

some clips and more vids links:
http://www.shaolin.org.cn/templates/...spx?nodeid=275

[GeneChing]

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.

Love this pic.

[GeneChing]

Warrior Shaolin monks will wow Sydney
* Xanthe Kleinig
* From: The Daily Telegraph
* September 16, 2010 12:00AM

THEY are fighters, not dancers, but warrior monks from the Shaolin Temple have made an exception for one production.

Seventeen monks have flown out from the remote mountains of China's Henan Province to perform Sutra, a kung fu-inspired work for the Spring Dance Festival.

They share the stage with 21 boxes designed by award-winning sculptor Antony Gormley, who took his inspiration from China's close living conditions.

Kung fu blocks and strikes are the basic moves in the dance, choreographed by dance star Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui.

"I think I've been extremely influenced by Bruce Lee," Cherkaoui said at the Sydney Opera House yesterday.

"I like Enter the Dragon, I like most of the things he did."

The 1973 film - which opened with a fight scene at the Shaolin monastery - was released six days after Lee's death.

Cherkaoui, who is half Moroccan, said he admired the movie star's ability to present Chinese culture to the Western world.

Lee's fighting moves are still legendary among martial arts fans, including the youngest of the Shaolin monks, Liu Deyu, 9, and Yan Jie, 11.

In one dance sequence Jie executes half a dozen backflips across the stage.

"It is very explosive and at the same it is also very animal-like," Cherkaoui said.

"Most of their moves are based on the moves of animals."

While small boys everywhere envy the monks' fighting prowess, they may be less keen to copy the monks' daily routine - they rise at 5am for a day of classes, kung fu training and meditation.

In Sydney this week, Deyu and Jie visited Wildlife World and the beach, where they held a koala and saw the ocean for the first time.

"Very happy," Deyu told The Daily Telegraph.

Has anyone here seen this show yet?

[GeneChing]

A thoughtful review...

Posted: September 28, 2010 02:40 PM
Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui's Sutra

At the end of Sutra the musicians, who've been visible through a gauze screen at the back of the stage of the Sydney Opera House's Concert Hall, playing the melancholy uneastern music of Polish Composer Szyman Brzoska on strings and percussion and piano, walk onstage in suits and little black ****tail dresses to take a bow. They stand in front of the Chinese Shaolin monks and their raw plywood boxes. Off to one side is Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui with his aluminium box that artist and box creator Antony Gormley wasn't certain about at first: "It reads like the box a magician might have, or a cryogenics experiment. If you were going to be deep frozen for the next 500 years, you might have a box like this." The worlds within worlds that's the hallmark of Cherkaoui's pieces.

Sutra was a remarkable experience for me and exactly what its title suggests -- a set of spiritual lessons, advice for living. Collections of sutras have no plot or narrative, but Sutra's sutra illustrates Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui's story of spending several months with the Shaolin monks in their monastery near Dengfeng City in China's Henan Province, founded in 495 AD. Onstage, he's with a child monk and they're putting models of the human-sized wooden boxes into formations that suggest sutras that the adult monks, with their lifesize boxes, will be shown to be embodying in their lives. The adult monks will draw Cherkaoui, who has the antic grace of a silent movie comedian, and his aluminium box into their world, but he's often at the edges, boxbound, trying to find a way in.

"The monks have a wonderful freedom of spirit," Gormley told The Independent. "They're as interested in hip-hop and contemporary culture as they are in the Buddhist sutras. One of the warrior monks told me that he was there solely to learn kung fu. "I'm not interested in Buddhist philosophy," he said. But through the physical discipline, he is getting it anyway -- no theory, all practice."

The aluminium box made me think of Antony Gormley's sculpture of a man made from metal blocks at the Art Gallery of NSW. It always makes me think of someone who is living a manufactured life, going through the motions of living, as if he were a machine. Gormley visited the Shaolin monastery and the small living areas of the monks, as well as dwellings of factory workers that he saw there, reminded him of shelving, or coffins. Shelving and coffins are just two of the myriad ways the monks use their boxes during Sutra.

A few months ago, there was a debate on Twitter among Australian arts organisations, on whether tweeting during shows expands upon or detracts from the experience. The broader question was, "what's our level of immersion in a show now?" Do we consider a show a complete, closed world, and entirely enter into it? Or is a show a more complex reality now, a zone of engagement that acknowledges the outside world and allows the audience to bring it inside?

I think of Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Akram Khan's dance pieces, the music of Nitin Sawhney, and the artworks of Antony Gormley as a single universe, reflecting Eastern mythologies from their Western lives back to the East. They are Belgian/ Flemish / Moroccan, British / Bangaldeshi, British / Indian, and British but lived in India. Some of their works relate to the Islamic experience in Europe. Sawhney has provided soundtracks for a dance piece for the Hindu spiritual work, The Mahabharata, and an Indian silent movie based on The Bhaghavad Gita -- a fragment of The Mahabharata. At the beginning of his career, Akram Khan appeared in Peter Brook's staging of The Mahabharata. They create works around other topics, with different subjects, but these Eastern works of theirs have become a reference point for me.

I find that their shows both widen and sharpen my experience of Eastern mythologies even when I only read about them, or experience fragments of them, such as the soundtracks, or previews on YouTube. My own introduction to Eastern mythology was through seeing the movie of Peter Brook's Mahabharata, and hearing the Gyuto Monks of Tibet and Phillip Glass perform together at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York. Both experiences were magnificently unsettling, and I found myself gradually reading and seeking out more about Buddhist and Hindu mythology. I felt at home in these stories, and at home in India in when I visited.

Sutra completely engaged my attention, but as I was walking down the concrete steps outside the Concert hall I was also thinking about how I wanted to re-read Richard Bernstein's Ultimate Journey: Retracing the Path of an Ancient Buddhist Monk Who Crossed Asia in Search of Enlightenment, published in 2001. He was the Time Magazine China bureau chief who traced a pilgrimage that the Chinese monk Hsuan Tsang made in 629 A.D. to Buddhist sites in India. Mishra lived in the areas the person the Buddha may have lived in, and traced the growing significance of Buddhism in the world, even though it had effectively died out in India. Mishra had discovered Buddhism through western writers, Nietzsche, Herman Hesse's Siddharta. "I wasn't making any high claims for the Buddha or Buddhism," he told Believer Magazine. "The book was an attempt to think about the world we live in and to think [about] it through Buddhist ideas, not an attempt to persuade or convert anyone that my life is interesting and dramatic enough to read about."

"My work has always been a bit of a search for a moral code -- trying to find the right behaviour to have," Cherkaoui told londondance.com. "In a sense I'm very zen -- but at the same time I'm very not. A Japanese producer friend Hisashi Itoh asked me, 'what are the things you love', and I was talking about yoga, singing and about martial arts. He had a contact with the monks of the Shaolin Temple and he offered to introduce me. My first intention was just to go there to meet them, not to work with them. I went in May last year and I had an incredible experience. It was only for five days. But I really felt suddenly home: I felt home."

[GeneChing]

Anyone going?

Friday, October 29,2010
Bring In the Monk
Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and the monks of the Shaolin Temple dance into town
By Susan Reiter
. . . . . . .
Sutra is part of the White Light Festival / Photo by Hugo Glendinning

Buddhist monks and slashing daggers? Acrobatic dives and tumbles amidst hypnotic, meditative calm? Expectations are bound to be upended by Sutra, the remarkable collaboration between choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and the monks of China’s Shaolin Temple. The focused discipline of their movement might be expected, but the work’s evocative landscape and striking imagery, as the 17 gray-clad monks embark on a journey within, around and amidst coffin-like plywood crates, take the viewer on a surprising journey.

The Belgian/Moroccan choreographer, 34, was last represented in New York by Orbo Novo, his full-evening work for the Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet last year. Zero Degrees, his notable collaboration with Akram Khan, was seen earlier at City Center. Sutra is part of the Lincoln Center's White Light Festival (read about other performances being presented in CityArts). A uniquely flexible, adventurous mover in his own right—he performs in Sutra as a kind of outsider/foil to the ensemble of monks—his wide range of influences range from hip-hop and the dancing he watched as a teenager on TV variety shows, to modern dance and yoga.

Larbi’s rise as a major figure on the European contemporary dance scene was rapid during the past decade, and he now directs his own troupe, Eastman, based in Antwerp.

In 2007, seeking to recharge and renew at a moment of creative fatigue, he visited the Shaolin Temple, in Henan Province, which was established in 495 A.D. by monks originating from India. A fan of Bruce Lee since childhood, Larbi had long been fascinated by the monks’ tradition of practicing martial arts; kung fu and tai chi are part of their daily routine. “My first intention was just to go there to meet them, not to work with them,” he told a British interviewer just before Sutra’s 2008 world premiere at London’s Sadler’s Wells Theater. “They’re very disciplined with their bodies. The way they train I could relate to and the search for peace within the mind through meditation were things I’d been touching upon and there I found some brothers in that kind of thinking.”

Soon, the idea for Larbi’s next work was taking shape, one in which his own layered influences and the monks’ rich tradition would confront and complement each other. Two crucial collaborators became involved: sculptor Antony Gormley, who had designed the set for Zero Degrees, made the visual design unique and malleable, which includes the striking crates that are inhabited and manipulated in imaginative and unexpected ways. Szymon Brzóska, the Polish composer who created the haunting score for Orbo Novo, composed an original score for piano, two violins, cello and percussion.

Returning to the remote mountain temple for several months in early 2008, Larbi began the collaboration in earnest. In addition to their agility and physical discipline, the Shaolin monks were, perhaps unexpectedly, quite connected to modern life. They use cell phones and have access to popular music and the Internet. “They told me this was natural, as the Shaolins have always been on top of new technology. This openness was good for me because it meant the monks were receptive to my ideas,” the choreographer wrote in a diary he kept about his stay. “The monks have a wonderful freedom of spirit and they’re as interested in hip-hop and contemporary culture as they are in the Buddhist sutras,” he told an Australian interviewer when Sutra was performed in Sydney last month.

As rehearsals began—with communication taking place through a translator—some points of familiarity were discovered amid the vast differences in traditions. Larbi found himself “surprised by how familiar certain moves are, as if dance elements cross cultures. There’s a flipping of the shoulders the monks do, like a dolphin, that I use in my own choreography. Some jumps look more like jazz to me than kung fu,” he noted in the diary. Adaptation, exchange and playfulness marked the process. “When I showed them Antony’s boxes and explained how I wanted to use them as building blocks to create different sets, they were very eager. They organised themselves immediately to build up the sets. It was like when my brother and I used to play with Lego,” he wrote.

A 10-year-old monk (the rest of the cast members are mostly in their late teens or early twenties) became a pivotal figure in the work. Sometimes paired with Larbi, suggesting teacher and student, or perhaps father and son, as figures apart from, perhaps observing, the larger community, his remarkable presence evoking both innocence and wisdom enriches the texture of the work. Sutra has toured globally over the past two years, and now New Yorkers will have their opportunity to experience this unusual collaboration.

Sutra

Nov. 2-4, Rose Theater, Frederick P. Rose Hall, Broadway at West 60th Street, 212-721-6500; 7:30, $35 & up.

[GeneChing]

Warrior-Dancer Monks, as Smooth as Silk
Ruby Washington/The New York Times

The choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, in shirt, with Shaolin monks in “Sutra” at Rose Theater as part of Lincoln Center’s White Light Festival.
By CLAUDIA LA ROCCO
Published: November 3, 2010

The history of Shaolin martial arts stretches back centuries. The fascination of Western male outsiders is a more recent phenomenon, but it’s making up for lost time in impressive fashion. Can any boy, whether he’s 8 or 80, resist China’s glorious warrior-monks?

Tuesday night one such iteration of the foreign gaze was on display at the Rose Theater, when Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s “Sutra” had its American premiere as part of Lincoln Center’s White Light Festival. Seventeen Shaolin monks occupied the stage with Mr. Cherkaoui, a Belgian choreographer, who has won international fame during a roughly 10-year career marked by intense, theatrical collaborations like “Sutra.”

For this work, which had its premiere in 2008 at Sadler’s Wells in London, Mr. Cherkaoui traveled to the Shaolin Temple in Henan Province in China, where he spent several months working with the monks. In the theater their shared environment is the Polish composer Szymon Brzoska’s spare score (for percussion, strings and piano) and a movable set of body-size wooden boxes by the British artist Antony Gormley (whose “Event Horizon” took over the Midtown skyline recently in the form of naked male sculptures).

Here the boxes collectively made up the sculpture, as they were dragged, stacked, slid and toppled by the performers, who often ducked in and out of the structures like toys putting themselves to bed for the night. Mr. Cherkaoui began the work seated atop his own silver box, a set of model boxes laid out before him, staring intently at a similarly seated child, Shi Yanle. The musicians, including Mr. Brzoska on piano, were just visible behind handsome gray scrims lining the back of the stage.

As man and child communed, Mr. Cherkaoui manipulated the small boxes, so that the larger world around the two seemed a representation of his storytelling. Soon enough, as the adult monks eased silkily out of and onto the larger wooden boxes, both narrator and child were sucked into a world of whirling combat and meditative stillness, so that the line between instigator and interloper tangled and blurred.

Mr. Cherkaoui is an impressively singular mover. His body flows through mutating phrases marked by languages as disparate as hip-hop and yoga, and it was fascinating to see him try on the monk’s crisp, coiled readiness and brilliant attack (and vice versa when the monks sampled hip-hop moves in a series of solos). In the best moments of this give and take, Mr. Cherkaoui seemed an innocent, lonely onlooker. At one point, as the monks powered their boxes in a big muscular pattern, he stood rooted in his silver one like a man in a small vessel that has run ashore: access to their ritualized, certain world seemed beyond him.

But too often “Sutra” settled for fun with building blocks or, worse, cutesy exchanges between Mr. Cherkaoui and Shi Yanle, in which Mr. Brzoska’s score suggested too-obvious layers of longing and playfulness. There were intense pleasures to be had in watching the monks’ spinning airborne kicks and nuanced, moment by moment shifts. But Mr. Cherkaoui’s instinct for spectacle operates like a relentless undertow, and the delicacies of these pleasures were all too easily subsumed.

“Sutra” runs through Thursday at Rose Theater, Frederick P. Rose Hall, Broadway and 60th Street; (212) 721-6500, lincolncenter.org.

Gimmicky dance not that kind of sutra
By LEIGH WITCHEL
Last Updated: 4:36 AM, November 4, 2010
Posted: 10:46 PM, November 3, 2010
DANCE REVIEW

SUTRA Rose Theater, 10 Columbus Circle, 212-721-6500. Through tonight.

'Sutra" delivers, but not what it promises. Though visually stunning, the fast-paced, hourlong show -- part of Lincoln Center's White Light Festival of spiritual performances -- tries to be the Dalai Lama but winds up more Dr. Seuss.

In Buddhism, sutras are the sermons and teachings of its founder. The piece named after them is more physical theater and gymnastics than dance. It's the brainchild of Belgian choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, a tall, thin, wispy-haired, rubber-limbed man who stars along with a score of Chinese Shaolin monks. As in kung fu movies, they're expert martial artists.


Named for Buddhist teachings, 'Sutra' offers gymnastic thrills rather than spiritual insight.
©Julieta Cervantes
Named for Buddhist teachings, "Sutra" offers gymnastic thrills rather than spiritual insight.

The music isn't Eastern, but a Western string quintet that plays live, visible as shadows behind a scrim.

What plot there is vaguely recalls a myth or a fable, but the show is heavier on winsome atmosphere and theatrical effects. Cherkaoui begins onstage, having a wordless conversation with a child monk; their enigmatic encounters with the adult monks form the story.

We think of monks as contemplative and silent, but these guys are combat warriors mixed with acrobats, and do showy kung fu tumbling runs, kicking into the air and crashing to the floor.

The designs upstage even the amazing gymnastics. Antony Gormley's austere but ingenious set of coffin-like boxes turns out to be anything but morbid. The boxes get turned by the monks into countless configurations, concealing and revealing them and even tumbling like dominos -- with the monks inside them.

The visuals and pacing of "Sutra" are top-notch, but Cherkaoui has a mime's pat sensibilities. He puts himself in a role that's part Buster Keaton, part Marcel Marceau. With a Mini-Me child monk also front and center, you know you're in for cloying sentimentality.

Never mind what the White Light Festival promises: This piece, at least, is more Cirque du Soleil entertaining than spiritually profound.

Anyone in NY check this out yet?