Sutra

[GeneChing]

Did anyone here see this? It reminds me of Alonzo King's Long River High Sky (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?t=53744). Was this the show that was in that National Geographic doc, Secrets of the Kung Fu Temple (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showpost.php?p=891892&postcount=57)?


Sutra (http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2008/may/30/dance)
Sadler's Wells, London
o Judith Mackrell
o The Guardian, Friday 30 May 2008

The Shaolin monks put on a five-star performance just by being themselves. It's not just the collective virtuosity of their kung fu heritage - their flying kicks, their backflips, their shadow-boxing. Practised as part of the monks' spiritual discipline, these maniacally dangerous and beautiful moves also carry the aura of compelling ritual.

For choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and his collaborators, the artist Antony Gormley and the composer Szymon Brzóska, the challenge of working with 17 monks from the Shaolin temple is to make convincing dance theatre out of an already incredible show. They have succeeded in spades. Sutra combines dance, music and design in ways that intensify the mystery of the monks' prowess, even as it opens up new views of their agility.

For those expecting straight physical fireworks, the opening minutes may seem muted. On a stage lined with coffin-sized wooden boxes, Cherkaoui and 11-year-old Shi Yandong sit and face each other. Cherkaoui gestures delicately to the boy, as if trying to communicate in sign language. Then the adult monks rise out of the boxes; as each performs a tiny vignette of martial-arts brilliance, they seem to come from a very alien world.

These are the two threads that run through Sutra: Cherkaoui, a fascinated, interrogative westerner trying to find a way into the monks' culture, and the enchantingly alert, fearless little Yandong, who leads him on his quest. Their journey is a maze of episodic dance stories, each revealing the monks in a different aspect. The stacked boxes, conceived and designed by Gormley, are both functional and miraculous. They can be arranged to resemble the petals of a lotus flower, upon which Yandong sits like a little Buddha, or they can be upended to become a forest of skyscrapers, upon which the monks stand gazing as if on their first trip to the city.

Brzóska's music gives each episode extra emotional colour and gathers the work to its powerful conclusion. Cherkaoui, having choreographed the monks into a climactic ensemble, also reaches the end of his quest, his pale, supple, questioning body finally dancing confidently among them.

It is not just Cherkaoui who has made the journey: the audience, too, gain some kind of privileged intimacy with the monks. This unique, profoundly imagined work takes the concept of cultural exchange to a new level.

· Ends tomorrow. Box office: 0844 412 4300.

[sha0lin1]

When we were there, I noticed several wooden boxes piled up in the corner of the indoor training facility near the monks quarters. I bet those were the ones they used when they were practicing for this show.

[GeneChing]

Anyone in Europe that can fill us in on this?

Author: T. Njezic | 15.09.2009 - 08:41
Sutra at festival opening (http://www.blic.rs/culture.php?id=5181)

Tonight’s grand opening ceremony and the performance of Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s play Sutra – featuring appearances from Shaolin Temple monks – will mark the beginning of the 43rd Bitef Theatre Festival.

The Belgrade theatre audience will have been treated to nine shows in the main festival programme by the time the curtain falls on the event on 26 September. A press conference was held on Monday ahead of the Bitef, where Canada ambassador to Belgrade John Morrison, members of the Ex Machina theatre company from Canada, Jovan Cirilov and Kokan Mladenovic all addressed the media.

One of the special treats of this year’s Belgrade theatre festival will be Robert Lepage’s The Blue Dragon, performed by Ex Machina. The Canadian Embassy in Belgrade has, among others, supported the selection of this play, scheduled to be performed on 16, 17 and 18 September.

Jovan Cirilov reflected on the fact this year it is the 20th anniversary of the death of Mira Trajlovic – the founder and first president of Bitef and that due attention will be devoted to the remembrance of Trajlovic, through the screening of a half-hour movie on Trajlovic, named Talijina kci, directed by Milan Sarac.

After the performance of Jo Stromgren’s play The Writer at Atelje 212 on 22 and 23 September, a round-table discussion is planned with the theme “Quislings in art”. Kokan Mladenovic, the manager of Atelje 212 theatre, has expressed delight over the fact a number of round-table discussions will be organized as part of the Bitef 2009.

The play Sutra, directed and choreographed by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui of London, UK, and performed by the Shaolin Temple monks, takes Confucius and Taoism learning as the starting point, blending ancient kung-fu routines and modern European dances.

[GeneChing]

Not that informative however...

Sep 16, 2009
Do or Dune (http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2BNews/Lifestyle/Story/STIStory_430586.html)

ABOUT four months after Sutra - his Singapore Arts Festival - Moroccan Cherkaoui is coming back to Singapore.

This time, he is teaming up with Spanish flamenco dancer Maria Pages to present Dunas, or Sand Dunes.

Singaporeans will be the first in the world to see this collaborative work, which is one of the highlights of the Esplanade's da:ns festival.

The arts centre is one of the co-producers of the work, along with arts organisations such as Britain's Sadler's Wells.

Pages says the decision to premiere the work here was made because she 'feels very comfortable in Singapore'.

She says: 'We work very well with the Esplanade. In Singapore, we feel very protected and it is a good place to premiere the show.'

The 10-day annual dance festival, now into its fourth year, starts on Oct 23. It has nine ticketed performances and outdoor dance classes.

Cross-cultural themes run through many of the productions at the festival. Indeed, cultural matchmaking is in Cherkaoui's blood.

Sutra, for example, came out of a three-month sojourn in the Shaolin Temple in Song Shan near Zhengzhou City in Henan province, China.

Dunas is inspired by undulating desert landscape.

[GeneChing]

This is another show I would still like to see.

I think I'm going to go expel some inner demons now. ;)


Centring the body through violence
Shaolin Temple's fighting monks explore the paradox that kung fu can expel the inner demons (http://www.montrealgazette.com/life/Centring+body+through+violence/2166996/story.html)
By VICTOR SWOBODA, special to the gazetteOctober 31, 2009

The combination of one of Europe's hottest young choreographers and the legendary fighting monks of China's Shaolin Temple makes Sutra among the most-anticipated dance shows of the fall season. East certainly meets West in this work of cultural fusion by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, who, with a Belgian mother and a Moroccan father, is a work of fusion himself.

Cherkaoui, 33, gained fame in the late 1990s as a choreographer with Belgium's avant-garde Les Ballets C. de la B., which presented his exuberant dance/theatre tour de force, Foi, in Montreal in 2003 (his newly formed company, Eastman, remounts the work next year). Framed by sheer, grey oppressive walls overlooking a prop-ridden floor, the large cast of diverse characters put on a disturbing display of angst and violent acts in their search for faith.

Cherkaoui's own search for faith - he's someone who's constantly looking - brought him last year to the Shaolin Temple, one of the oldest continuously functioning religious shrines in the world. Buddhist monks founded the temple 1,500 years ago in the mountainous terrain of China's Hunan province. Sutra refers to Budhha's sermons. Abstinence is the rule at the temple - meat and alcohol, for example, are not allowed.

The resident discipline, however, is martial arts. The Shaolin style of kung-fu produces a high-kicking, high-flying, nimble fighter of remarkable speed. Small wonder that Shaolin graduates like Jet Li found themselves in kung-fu movies (Li's debut movie in 1982 was called Shaolin Temple, the first Hong Kong movie filmed in mainland China).

Outcries that movies cheapen the Temple's heritage have not prevented Jackie Chan from planning to shoot a movie there "with one thousand monks" next year (as a climax, the temple gets blown up).

In contrast, Cherkaoui came to the temple with great respect for its founding philosophy.

"It's a paradox. Kung fu is violent, but it's a way for the body to be centred and healthy, without inner conflict," said Cherkaoui, speaking in French in a recent telephone interview from his home in Antwerp. "Everyone must find (this paradox) in their own way to varying degrees."

A vegetarian and teetotaler by choice, Cherkaoui found much to sympathize with when he arrived at the temple in the winter of 2008 for three months of rehearsals. The food "was healthy and good for my body and mind - I felt quite strong in myself." But he was still a Westerner who could not yet entirely embrace Buddhism's dispassionate acceptance of misfortune.

Frustration set in, for instance, on his first day in China when local carpenters presented him with 14 wooden boxes that designer Antony Gormley had ordered for Sutra.

"They were the wrong size. We had all the boxes, but they were completely the wrong dimensions. We wanted to thank the carpenters, but at the same time, it wasn't what we needed."

Eventually, the right-sized boxes were made - each large enough for a monk to fit in. Throughout Sutra, the monks under Cherkaoui's guidance manipulate the boxes in unexpected ways as a kind of open-ended metaphor for confinement and release. The boxes could be a metaphor for Buddhism itself.

"Buddhism is a transparent religion that doesn't exclude anyone. All can enter. That's so important," said Cherkaoui, who likes to present conceptual ideas in his works.

"The only things that interest me are those that are all-inclusive, that reject nothing. The problem with many religions is that they exclude people. At the Shaolin Temple, even with its many rules, it's almost without form. You can model it as you want."

Obliged to work with a translator, Cherkaoui found the language barrier a plus.

"It was nice to hear something incomprehensible. We're often in a milieu where we're talking. There, language didn't have the same importance. Communication had to be carried out in other ways."

His initial rehearsals with four monks quickly attracted the curiosity of others. Within a week and a half, he had a band of 20. Cherkaoui found that they were not all cut from the same cloth.

"Some are more spiritual, some are there for the kung fu, some stay for five years, then marry. It's an honour for parents that their son enters the temple, but they like to have them return to take up the family business."

Constantly together at the temple, the monks on tour often prefer to be alone.

"One of them told me it's a way to understand oneself and be at peace, so they look for solitude."

Cherkaoui, by contrast, likes to put on shows partly because it brings people together for a common experience.

"I'm not so religious, but I believe in communion with others - being in a ritual setting with several hundred people watching a show together. Living the same moment together, talking about it afterwards - it's a communion like going to church and discussing the sermon. It's not the same as watching TV."

Sutra, Wednesday to Saturday, Nov. 8, at 8 p.m. in Théâtre Maisonneuve of Place des Arts. Tickets, $26.58-$54.04 plus tax. Call 514-842-2112.

[GeneChing]

Follow the links for pix

November 5th, 2009
Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui's Sutra (http://www.hour.ca/stage/stage.aspx?iIDArticle=18621)
Awake in the world
Philip Szporer

Inspired by the martial arts of Buddhist monks, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui's Sutra finds a profound cultural connection

Located in the magnificent, sacred Songshan Mountains in China's Henan Province, the thick stoned-walled Shaolin Temple, engraved with ancient inscriptions, has a serenity that seems to reach right to the soul. This austere place and the message of peace imbued by the martially trained Buddhist monks living there inspired Belgian dance sensation Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui's latest creation, Sutra.

While the philosophy and explosiveness of kung fu fuelled Cherkaoui's journey to the East, it also became his portal of discovery and learning. "It was a journey that broadened my conception of the body," says the ingenious 33-year-old dancer-choreographer, on the line from Antwerp, readying himself for a four-night run in Montreal, part of Danse Danse's fall program.

The road to the monks met Cherkaoui's need to continue an imaginative life, at least for a time, beyond the geography, history and high-velocity energies of Europe. "I felt tired and trapped. [There], people in the art and dance world are way too much in their mind, and not enough in the body." At the vanguard of Flemish new dance, the warm and intelligent Cherkaoui is perhaps best known for his creative collaborations with the Ballets C. de la B. and the British contemporary kathak dance artist Akram Khan.

War and peace

As a child, Cherkaoui's hero was Bruce Lee. The martial arts master's very specific understanding of the human dynamics of change and his philosophical worldview to "seek answers and improvement" affected him deeply. "Real combat is not fixed and is very much 'alive'" was Lee's maxim, and he spoke about drawing from nature, from elemental forces. "Through [Lee]," says Cherkaoui, "I delved deeper into kung fu, to the Shaolin school of Chan [or Zen] Buddhism."

For Sutra (the word stands for the sermons or scriptural narratives of Buddha and is the generic term for rules and aphorisms), Cherkaoui's martial arts quest connected with the Shaolin monks' understanding of movement, their complete identification and interconnectedness with various animals, and their remarkable ability to become the essence of a tiger, crane or snake - elements that also resonated with Cherkaoui's increasing inclination to move with more animal-like qualities.

Arriving in a new locale, Cherkaoui admits he's "a bit like a chameleon, trying to get the colours of a place. A part of me transforms and tries to fit in, to be useful. Then I don't feel homesick, I'm there with a purpose."

His journey began in May 2007, as he met the temple's abbot, Master Shi Yongxin, and observed the monks training in kung fu and t'ai chi martial arts doctrine. These spiritually and physically toned men are warrior-fit yet pacifist, and work religiously at the temple, immersed in strict study. (The Shaolin monks sent abroad to commercially showcase their art are not from this original temple.) In this landscape, Cherkaoui relished "how healthy they were in their body, and how they attained strength from this harsh and complex system [of movement]. What they've become is superhuman."

Cherkaoui's ultimate goal was not to turn these "open, respectful and disciplined" monks into dancers, but he did generate a sense of elegance close to dance: "I was privileged to learn about their moves, about their quickness and shifts."

All 17 monks performing in Sutra are at least 10 years younger than Cherkaoui - the diminutive child-monk Shi Yandong, known as Dong Dong, is just 12 - and mesmerize with amazing back flips and gravity-defying jumps. At one point they appear in Western suits: "It helps them incarnate [their roles]. If they stay in monk's garb, they'd remain exotic and distant."

Cultural combination

Cherkaoui, once described as having "the suppleness of a contortionist and the fanaticism of a flagellant," performs a particular role in the piece. "My character is a bit like the Magician's Apprentice in Fantasia, but not so innocent. I'm a bit like a wanderer, manipulating them and vice-versa. There's real interaction."

Cultural exchange is a recurring theme reflected in Cherkaoui's prolific work. As his name implies, his own identity is a mix of cultures - his father Moroccan-born, his mother Belgian. "We're all the product of two people, the [beauty] of a mix," he said in conversation earlier this year at the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival. "This is what I want to talk about - we are all not pure."

Sutra's score, played live, was written for piano, percussion and strings by talented Polish composer Szymon Brzoska. His emotional, melancholic and tonal composition flows, drawing on the sanctity of the temple and exploring its sensual and spiritual dimensions. The music "generates a sense of dance, and helps me create the right atmosphere," says Cherkaoui.

Turner Prize-winning English sculptor Antony Gormley became Cherkaoui's visual counterpart, designing five-sided, human-sized hollow boxes (a concept from his Allotment 11 piece) that mutate as functional set elements: The monks move in, on and under them, the shifting forms suggestive of playful Lego pieces just as they are symbolic of temples, graveyards, pillars and sanctuary.

Cherkaoui came to China with a sense of absence, to reflect on the philosophy of emptiness; he left with a sense of fullness. Surrounded by the monks, he no longer felt marginal, but part of the norm. "It was wonderful not to have to explain anything. We were kindred spirits. I felt I belonged and it gave me hope." Giving audiences access to these monks is a privilege, and while we register their prowess, Cherkaoui also masterfully shifts our gaze to their inherent poetry.

Sutra
At Théâtre Maisonneuve, Place des Arts, to Nov. 7
www.dansedanse.net


November 5th, 2009
Sutra: Kung fu and pop culture (http://www.hour.ca/stage/stage.aspx?iIDArticle=18618)
Way of the dragon
Roseanne Harvey

Bruce Lee brought kung fu to the Western masses, but its sustained appeal transcends the big screen

Almost 40 years after California-born, Hong Kong-raised Bruce Lee became the most famous and ubiquitous representative of kung fu in Western culture, he remains an icon of Chinese martial arts. While kung fu has many forms, the charismatic, movie-star masters capture our collective imagination.

"I think that we're so fascinated with kung fu guys because they seem almost superhuman," says Paul de Tourreil, a Montreal-based Shaolin White Crane kung fu teacher (shaolinwhitecranekungfu.com) who has been studying the martial art with Lorne Bernard for almost 20 years. "It gives us something to aspire to. Kung fu is beautiful and difficult to do."

De Tourreil, who teaches kung fu at the Parc YMCA and UQAM sports centre and choreographs fight scenes for theatre productions, says that, for him, when it comes to big-name inspiration, Jet Li has the moves and chooses movie roles that also embody martial art values. He also cites Yuen Woo-ping, the kung fu choreographer for The Matrix, the Kill Bill movies and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

Martial arts have an artistic and spiritual component, and to practise seriously is to devote oneself to persistent training. The literal meaning of the word "kung fu" is "great skill due to diligent effort."

According to de Tourreil, the appeal of kung fu has three elements: self-defence, health and enlightenment. The Shaolin monks represent the latter two. "They train and exercise, they don't smoke or drink. They are exceptional examples
and role models for holistic health."

As for the enlightenment part of the equation, de Tourreil comments, "These young monks own the tools of violence but choose not to use them." Not only among the monks but among all kung fu practitioners, there is a code of conduct for physical and mental behaviour.

While kung fu is rooted in Chinese culture and spirituality, its international appeal is undeniable. The discipline is almost an art form, with a visual appeal based on the human body's phenomenal abilities, reminding us that no matter how limited we might feel in our day-to-day lives, inside us all is a fighter, ready to be coaxed out through training, diligence and hard work.

[GeneChing]

I'm hoping this show has enough legs to make it to America.

Dance Review: Sutra (http://www.ottawacitizen.com/entertainment/Dance+Review+Sutra/2214199/story.html)
By Natasha Gauthier, The Ottawa Citizen November 12, 2009

What: Flemish-Moroccan choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui performs Sutra, with warrior monks from China's Shaolin Temple.

When and Where: November 12 at Southam Hall.

Tickets: At the NAC Box Office or through Ticketmaster, 755-1111.

Choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui can always be relied upon to think outside the box. With Sutra, he also thinks inside, over, beneath and around the box.

Man-sized rectangular boxes, open on one side, are Sutra's only prop and set. There are about 20 of them, all made of unadorned pine except for one of galvanized metal. Conceived by Turner-prize winning artist Anthony Gormley, the boxes are so simple that they become whatever Larbi want them to be: coffin, parapet, boat, bookshelf, temple doorway, guard booth--and sometimes even just a box.

Popping in and out of the boxes are 17 monks from the celebrated Shaolin Temple in China's Henan province. Their mythical kung-fu skills have become famous in the West through martial arts movies, and many of the people packing Southam Hall at Wednesday's premiere seemed to be more interested in flying fists than dancing feet.

The monks did not disappoint. Like the song saysóthose cats really are fast as lightening. Heads shorn, dressed identically in loose grey clothing or modern dark suits, they move with a disciplined unison that would be the envy of any corps de ballet. The audience oohed and aahed as they demonstrated kicks, punches, tumbling, wushu weapon mastery and amazing feats of balance.

But without Larbi's probing imagination, it would all be just so much Bruce Lee bravura. Sutra has no narrative, but Larbi creates arresting tableaux, manipulating the space so skilfully that it makes a storyline unnecessary. Szymon Brzoska's exquisite score for piano quartet and percussion, performed live, adds rich layers of colour to the otherwise monochrome work.

Like Zero degrees, Larbi's collaboration with Akram Khan, Sutra is a fascinating meeting of minds, styles and cultures. There is a subtly shimmering play between contrasting concepts: freedom/constraint, group/individual, outsider/community member. There is also contrast between the taut, aggressive, coil-and-release movement of the monks, and Larbi's own uniquely fluid style. When a stern, grunting monk lifts his foot above his head, it's clearly a case of mind and training over matter. When Larbi silently executes the same move, it's more like a cat twisting itself into a pretzel: some creatures are just born that way.

The star of the show is undoubtedly the "baby brother" monk, who looks about 10 years old. With a child's natural openness and dignity, he serves as translator and emissary between East and West.

[GeneChing]

I'm glad it's traveling.

New Dance Programme Defies Borders (http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/CU0911/S00273.htm)
Tuesday, 17 November 2009, 3:50 pm
Press Release: New Zealand International Arts Festival

Dance Programme Defies Borders At The New Zealand International Arts Festival In 2010

Dancers from China, the UK, France, Sweden, New Zealand and Australia push the edges of dance and the limits of the human body at the next 2010 New Zealand International Arts Festival.

Shaolin Kung fu warrior monks, hip hoppers, tap, ballet, contemporary dancers and acrobatic circus artists present a dazzling array of the latest dance that has been touring in Europe, the US, UK and Australia as well as the restaging of an acclaimed New Zealand work by New Zealand’s Footnote Dance company.

....

Direct from London’s acclaimed Sadler’s Wells Dance House, award-winning choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui brings his latest work Sutra that has sold out two seasons in London since it opened in May 2008. Sutra has wowed audiences and critics alike wherever it has toured. Twenty Shaolin monks will fly directly from China for the performances in Wellington. Sutra is inspired by the unwavering skill, strength and spirituality of the Buddhist Shaolin monks with whom Cherkaoui lived for several months when making this breathtaking production.

[GeneChing]

Just in Canada!

Sutra is choreography that thinks inside the box (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/sutra-is-choreography-that-thinks-inside-the-box/article1354117/)
Belgian choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui creates a profoundly spiritual work involving 17 monks and 21 coffin-like boxes,
Paula Citron

From Saturday's Globe and Mail Published on Friday, Nov. 06, 2009 3:50PM EST Last updated on Saturday, Nov. 14, 2009 3:16AM EST

Anyone who buys a ticket for Sutra expecting a razzle-dazzle kung-fu show is in for a surprise. Working with 17 Shaolin monks, revered Belgian choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui has created a production of such immense depth and profound spirituality that even sitting in the theatre becomes part of a ritual.

Founded in 495 AD, the Shaolin Temple in the mountains of China's Henan province is both the cradle of Chan (Zen) Buddhism and the martial art kung fu. Sutra is the sacred book that contains the sermons of Buddha. In Hinduism, the word denotes “right conduct,” while in Sanskrit it means “thread.” All these concepts play a role in Cherkaoui's astonishing dance piece, set to Polish composer Szymon Brzoska's moody and melancholy cinematic score, which is played live off stage.

In a grey, walled landscape, acclaimed British sculptor Antony Gormley has placed 21 coffin-sized boxes, each with one side open. If the mind is the building that holds thought, and the body is the building containing the mind, then these boxes are the buildings that embrace humanity.

The piece begins with Cherkaoui as a grand master magician. Between him and the 12-year-old monk Shi Yandong is a miniature version of the giant boxes.

As Cherkaoui, with his beautiful hands, changes the configurations of these little boxes – upending them, moving them into squares, making them fall like dominoes, so the big boxes are manipulated by the monks in a mirror image. Implanted in this box choreography are kung-fu demonstrations, but they rise organically out of the movement itself. Little Yandong is Cherkaoui's petit agent provocateur and fellow orchestrator.

En route, the monks progress from eastern tunics, to western suits, and finally, to bare chests. They also create with these boxes a flow of stunning images that speak to human history. For example, the boxes unfold as a lotus blossom, revealing Yandong as the baby Buddha. They become the heavy burdens that generations of peasants and refugees have carried on their backs. They are office towers that enfold a harried population.

When Cherkaoui joins the monks in a collective kung-fu display, the true place of the martial arts is made known. Training the body is a road to enlightenment.

Sutra continues at Montreal's Place des Arts through tomorrow, followed by performances at Ottawa's National Arts Centre (Nov. 11 and 12) and Quebec City's Grand Théâtre (Nov. 16).

[GeneChing]

There are more there, but I've only watched this one so far.
Sibi Larbi Cherkaoui: Sutra (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvO5D0Kk5mE)

[GeneChing]

There's another 1 minute vid embedded in the article below - follow the link.

Acrobatic kung-fu monks (http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/entertainment/nz-international-arts-festival-2010/3376588/Acrobatic-kung-fu-monks/)
By STACEY WOOD - The Dominion Post
Last updated 08:36 26/02/2010

From the programme: Since its first sell-out London performance in May 2008, Sutra has been celebrated by audiences and critics around the world.
Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Fang Ya Xi

Sutra choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui says living with the Shaolin monks made him finally feel normal.

Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui felt more at home living in a monastery in the middle of China's eastern Henan province than in his native Belgium.

In 2008, he spent several months living in the Shaolin monastery, the most famous Buddhist temple in the world.

Now, he is taking the monks to the world with his breathtaking acrobatic show, Sutra.

The temple's kung-fu academy had been looking for an artist to collaborate with, to display the monks' incredible martial arts talent.

Cherkaoui was looking for inner peace.

"It was a way of getting away from Europe. I was fed up with a certain way of being, and I needed to feel normal.

"Even though it was very alien to me and I did not speak Chinese, that is where I felt more normal."

Cherkaoui was offered his choice of the monks to cast in his performances, but he preferred to let the disciples approach him unsolicited.

He felt at home in the monastery in a way he never had in Europe. As a vegan who never drinks alcohol, he is at odds with the majority of Western culture.

"It's part of my makeup, but as a part-Belgian, part-Moroccan, it is very unusual. It's is very tiring to be the exception all the time, the weird one."

His father was a Moroccan Muslim and his mother a Belgian Catholic. "They were incompatible, but they loved each other."

The idea of being caught in the middle of miscommunication is a major theme in Sutra.

Turner Prize-winning artist Antony Gormley designed and made 21 wooden boxes for the show, each big enough for the monks to fit inside. Amid the acrobatics, the boxes variously form a wall, a boat, a graveyard and more.

The score, written by Polish composer Szymon Brzska is "extremely melancholic".

During the play, a child monk bridges the gap between individuals and the community. "I'm extremely interested in communication and the ways people understand people.

"Because I've always been in the middle of misunderstandings, and once I understood the power of the voice through dance, it made me be able to speak better.

"But part of me gets very fed up with life and wants to go and do yoga under a tree and not talk to anyone."

Cherkaoui is neither Muslim nor Catholic, although he identifies with aspects of both faiths. He also relates to many of the monks' Buddhist ideals, but says his faith is one of his own making. "As a child I just wanted to do what was right . . . the problem is you don't always know what is right and what is wrong."

He is intrigued by the contrast between Shaolin's ancient history and buildings that "feel as if they've been there forever", and young monks in their 20s who use mobile phones just as enthusiastically as any other Generation Yers.

"They are born in the here and now, so there is this interesting mix of the very ancestral, and having to deal with the world the way it is."
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There's also a conflict between the monastery as a place of peace and meditation, and its status as a tourist destination.

"It's a magnet for many curious people who come for personal reasons, including my own. So I think, 'I'm here, but am I disturbing them? What can I bring in, as well as take away?' "

The difference between them - apart from the obvious ethnic and cultural divide - is that while Cherkaoui is an artist first and foremost, the monks are not. "They didn't choose the performing arts, but they still do it with a lot of love and excitement and energy."

Cherkaoui has tremendous respect for their discipline and considers them his friends after working so closely for so long.

"I would trust my life in their hands."

Sutra opens tonight at the St James Theatre as part of the New Zealand International Arts Festival.

WIN TICKETS

Here is your chance to win tickets to New Zealand International Arts Festival shows. To enter, simply email artsfest@dompost.co.nz by noon today (Friday 26 February) with the name of the show in the subject line and your name and a daytime contact phone number in the body of the email.

The winners will be contacted and can pick up their tickets from The Dominion Post.

Today's tickets are: Sutra, St James Theatre, 8pm, tonight (two double passes); Sound of Silence, tonight, 7pm (two double passes); Apollo 13: Mission Control, Downstage Theatre, tomorrow, 2pm (one double pass); Dancing on Your Grave, Pacific Blue Festival Club, tomorrow, 7.30pm.

[GeneChing]

Another rave review

Monks and Emptylanders dance at festival (http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/monks-and-emptylanders-dance-festival-119348)
John Daly-Peoples | Monday March 1, 2010 - 09:58am

New Zealand International Arts Festival
Sutra, A Journey Through Faith & Imagination
Sadlers Wells and the Shaolin Monks
St James Theatre
Until March 6

Most dancers, whether they are classical or contemporary have a certain repertoire of steps, poses and movements. These are what they use in their creative roles and are distinct from their everyday way of moving and engaging.

The Shaolin monks in “Sutra” however make use of the moves of everyday life. Their performances are an extension of their calling as traditional warrior monks with an emphasise on the learning and perfection of martial arts.

While they no longer use their martial arts skills for combat the moves they have perfected become ideal source material for contemporary dance.

The Flemish / Moroccan dancer and choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui has seen the possibilities of turning the martial arts skills of the monks into a dramatic piece of contemporary dance which allows him to illuminate the life of the monks and provide a metaphor for the spread of cultural ideas.

The group of dancers have performed at over eighty venues in the past three years spending four five weeks on the road at any one time before returning to their monastery in China.

The work combines seventeen dancers with seventeen large wooden plinths which are an integral part of the dance drama. They stand for various stages of our lives; coffins, storage units, a maze, a set of skyscrapers, a Stonehenge as well as providing a sense of the unknown like the basalt totem from "2001 A Space Odyssey”.

The dancers perform a variety of precisely timed routines some of which have all the brilliance and bravura of a Broadway musical or one of the Cirque style acts. They cavort between, on, over and with the wooden plinths which take on a life of their own.

This minimalist and clever interplay between dancers and their props provides a sense of ritual with repeated routines and carefully arranged and rearranged plinths.

At times they are carefully measured, delicate and slow while at other timers they are frenetic and dramatic. As the sequences develop, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui is seen to be something of a pupil trying to learn and understand the monk’s practice. He is Everyman or Mr. European attempting to understand the skills of the monks and their approach to life.

The way they perform with references to their past ands present culture has similarities to the way that Maori have created contemporary haka routines such as “Ihi Frenzy”

For much of the first part of the work Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui sits to one side with a small model of the plinths which he rearranges as the dancers rearrange the full size ones. In this, he seems to acting not just as the director but as some omnipotent presence, directing their lives.

The music by Szymon Brzoska is played on Western style instruments and while essentially contemporary European in style it is flecked through with hints of medieval, gypsy, and Asian themes.

Another of the dance / theatre works being performed is the New Zealand piece “Mtyland” (Empty Land / Mighty Land) which has some similarities to “Sutra” with various acts taking there names from the Tao of War. It is also a work which seeks to understand the nature of the world.

The performers in “Mtyland” speak occasionally but whether they are making sense is another matter. As a young woman sitting close by remarked “They look like a bunch of mental health patients.”

Many of the sequences could be straight out of Becket and one of the opening sequences is reminiscent of a Vladimir and Estragon interchange. The work is littered with sayings and aphorisms, their meaningless slowly building into a controlled Chaos of ideas just as the random dances begins to take on a sense of order.

The dancers are all incredibly athletic, many of their amazing leaps seem to be frozen in time and their poses are eloquent expressions of emotions. There is a great deal of dancing focussed around action and reaction, movement and rest, silence and cacophony.

[GeneChing]

Still hoping for some U.S. dates...

Preview: Sutra at Sadler's Wells (http://www.spoonfed.co.uk/spooners/benjamin-goode-7687/preview-sutra-at-sadler-s-wells-2323/)
03 March, 2010
by: Benjamin Goode

Inspirational choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaouie brings Shaolin monks to Sadler's Wells. Ben Goode briefs us on what to expect.

Sidi Larbi Cherkaouie, a Belgian choreographer with Moroccan and Flemish heritage, is nothing if not the sum of his parts. His work often marries diverse ideas, theatrical strains, distinct media platforms and eclectic styles all in a high wire balancing act of a multicultural, innovative, far-ranging exploration of the human form. But above all, his work is a voyage of personal, cultural and spiritual discovery.

Sutra, his 2008 masterpiece, is no exception. Returning to Sadler's Wells for ten performances this March with Ali Thabet in the role that Sidi himself originally occupied, Sutra is a subtle, masterful and artistic exploration of the philosophy and faith behind the Shaolin tradition. It explores Shaolin's alignment with the inherent physicality of the Kung Fu discipline and its position within the contemporary national and foreign context. What it amounts to is an irresistible show of astounding physical accomplishment and touching sensibility.

After opening to critical acclaim last year, Sutra makes its triumphant return to London town this month. If you didn't see it first time round (or even if you did), I implore you to take advantage of one of the many cultural delights this city has to offer, and see Antony Gormley, Sidi Larbi Cherkaouie and the monks of the Shaolin temple present Sutra.

Sutra runs at Sadler's Wells from 13th March to 26th March 2010


NZ festival puttin' on the risk (http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/arts/nz-festival-puttin-on-the-risk/story-e6frg8n6-1225836679553)
* Rosemary Sorensen
* From: The Australian
* March 04, 2010 12:00AM

A TRUISM of arts festivals is that they enable artistic directors to think outside the box.

In big cities, which already receive a steady flow of new work, a festival can seem like the finals of a home and away season (more of the same, only up a notch), but in small cities it is a crucial opportunity to show productions that otherwise might never come to town. In those places, therefore, it is even more vital that outside-the-box thinking is encouraged.

For Lissa Twomey, artistic director of the New Zealand International Arts Festival in Wellington, thinking outside the box was not just a guiding principle but a leitmotif for her opening last weekend. Guided by her long experience with the Sydney Festival and her now shrewd understanding of the NZ audience, Twomey put together a triumphant program of calculated risk-taking.

Sutra, for example, could be subtitled Thinking Outside the Box. This production, created for Sadler's Wells in London, has a set designed by visual artist Antony Gormley that features 21 lidless, coffin-sized boxes. Shaolin monks and a Western dancer (a role shared by director Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and assistant choreographer Ali Ben Lotfi Thabet) move in and out of these boxes, and move the boxes themselves, creating shapes that evoke images, that evoke ideas, that dissolve and reshape into some other image.

Cherkaoui, a Moroccan Belgian, was invited to spend several months at the Shaolin Temple in Henan Province in China, to create a dance work that uses in new ways the now well-known kung-fu martial arts movements that are part of the monks' training. The result is a revelation, renovating what has become almost conventional to Western eyes, and therefore probably misunderstood, with stylish theatricality. At one point, the out-of-the-box metaphor is actually literalised and made visible: The Western dancer, whose box is made from a heavier, more durable but less adaptable material, finds himself stuck half in and half out of his box, trying to drag it around with the same dashing energy as the monks. You have to be outside the box, sometimes, to see how things can be changed.

While the monks were moving boxes, in Wellington's main auditorium nearby at the Michael Fowler Centre, in the heart of the cultural hub around the harbour, a very different kind of risk was being taken.

Twomey received some criticism following her first festival two years ago for not providing enough classical music. Programming a famous European orchestra to give a festival cachet used to be a standard in Australia, but as the festival concept developed, along with the desire to bring in more diverse audiences, this became less of an imperative.

Twomey put hybrid and non-conformist theatre high on her priority list for this year, but she has also programmed a Wagner concert (with NZ tenor Simon O'Neill) and two concerts by the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, in Wellington Town Hall in the third week of this 24-day festival, an Australasian debut for the ensemble. As well, she made sure her opening night provided a big blast of classical music. Inviting Vladimir Ashkenazy across from Sydney to conduct, the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra played Mahler's Symphony No. 8, with as many children, choirs, extra brass and whatever else they could fit on to the stage.

Then they took the performance out of the box of the auditorium and into the neighbouring Civic Square. Festival organisers admitted they had no idea if five, 50 or 500 people would turn up. This being Wellington, if it was a windy night, the experience would not be very attractive.

But the gods smiled on the festival and Friday night was perfect, with the live feed playing to a packed square, upwards of 1000 people sitting and standing rapt by the performance. For a city of 180,000, to have something like 3000 people at a Mahler Symphony created a brilliant start to the arts festival. The screen was too small, a forgiveable mistake given how uncertain the outcome, but Wellington responded with such gusto, you may imagine the concert and live-feed to Civic Square will happen again.

Wellington is possibly the perfect city -- size-wise, and given its physical attributes -- for an arts festival. The venues are not great, but every space is within walking distance, and each one has a personality that feeds into the festival atmosphere. On the opening weekend you could see the path-finding audience-interactive Apollo 13 production at a little, intimate, unglamorous theatre at one end of the city, followed by the New Riga Theatre from Latvia performing its wordless homage to Simon and Garfunkel and the 1970s, Sound of Silence, in a concert venue along the quay, down near the centre of town.

The magnificent Te Papa Museum anchors everything in Wellington and even the small, well-appointed black-box theatre inside that building is used during the festival. Footnote Dance, based in Wellington, performed its high-energy Mtyland in Te Papa's Soundings Theatre across the opening weekend, and a French company, Arcosm, then moved into the space to perform a production called Echoa across the second weekend.

Tickets to many events are in the $NZ50 to $NZ100 range, but audiences are keen, as every venue was packed.

Twomey has increased the number of free events for this year's festival, conscious of extending her reach to more of the Wellington population.

A clever programming choice, Compagnie Beau Geste's Transports Exceptionnels (another of the large French contingent at Twomey's festival) provided another out-of-the-box performance in the parkland alongside Te Papa. We have had dancing earth-moving machines here in performances for many years, but in this 20-minute piece a dancer performs a duet with a digger to the sound of Maria Callas singing. This is a strong idea, nicely executed, and the work is rumoured to be heading to Sydney soon.

Also coming to Sydney soon is the brilliant Apollo 13, and also rumoured is a visit this year of the Shaolin monks production, Sutra, to several Australian cities.

If you have the chance, don't miss any of them.

The New Zealand International Arts Festival runs until March 21.

Rosemary Sorensen travelled to Wellington as a guest of the NZ International Arts Festival and Tourism New Zealand.

[GeneChing]

somefink? Is that an NZ term for something?

Sutra at Sadler's Wells (http://www.spoonfed.co.uk/spooners/benjamin-goode-7687/sutra-at-sadler-s-wells-2416/)
16 March, 2010
by: Benjamin Goode

Ben Goode samples Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui's Shaolin inspired masterpiece at Sadler's Wells

The inherent physicality of the Shaolin tradition lends itself incredibly well to the theatre of dramatic spectacle that is performance art, the operative word here being 'art'. This is no Cottles circus on Brighton's pebble beach. From the very title, Sutra (Sanskrit for somefink – in this case referring to the Buddhist canonical scriptures) we should know that this is high brow stuff.

A sparse set consisting of 17 wooden caskets (designed by celebrated British sculptor Antony Gormley) are used by the Shaolin monks with no small amount of ingenuity to unravel the enigma of the Shaolin Monastery. As the bodies flow between the solid wooden caskets the synthesis of distinct art forms is always empathetic and never incongruous. It's an affecting combination.

Sutra has a narrative of sorts, a physical narrative devoid of words, which only serves to make the connection between performers and audience a more intuitive and emotional one. The protagonist (Ali Ben Lofti Thabet) is led on a physical and spiritual journey of self discovery by a young Shaolin boy (for the exemplary Shi Yanzhi) who helps him circumnavigate the pitfalls of a hitherto unknown mystical quantity.

On his voyage he is frustrated, intimidated and humorously shown up. He comes face to face with a variety of Shaolin styles, each an arresting display of centuries old physical tradition merged with contemporary dance. It's sometimes aggressive, sometimes playful, but always jaw-dropping in texture, form and suspension.

As with so much of Sidi Larbi's work, Sutra emphatically succeeds in borrowing from disparate forms of physical theatre, in this case contemporary dance and the Shaolin discipline. It also manages to retain the aspects so eminently transferable to the stage and the rationale of a western theatre going audience. The entire production is shrouded with just enough mystery to engage our desire to be a part of something greater than ourselves.


The culmination of Sutra is as powerful an ending as I have seen. As they triple back flip, somersault and cartwheel with fancy free abandon, one gets the impression, amid all the applause, that it has been as enjoyable a journey for them as for us.

[GeneChing]

Cheryl Cole enjoys kung-fu in Islington (http://islingtonnow.co.uk/?p=3599)
Posted on 22 March 2010 by Sarah Rainey

Cheryl Cole was spotted at Sadler’s Wells this weekend enjoying a performance by kung-fu monks.

The Girls Aloud star was reportedly at the performance by 17 monks from the Shaolin Temple in China on the lookout for dancers for her next video.

Cole, who broke up with Chelsea footballer husband Ashley earlier this month, has been dancing since she was at school. She has demonstrated impressive flair for complex dance routines in her two singles Fight for this Love and Parachute.

Comedian Rufus Hound won BBC 1’s Let’s Dance for Sport Relief with a parody of Cole’s number one hit, Fight for this Love.

Cole’s appearance at Sadler’s Wells suggests that she is looking for yet another different dance style for her next single.

Sutra, choreographed by iconic dancer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, runs at Sadler’s Wells until Saturday 27 March.

Shaolin monks as backup dancers for Cheryl Cole (http://www.cherylcole.com/). :rolleyes:

[uki]

Shaolin monks as backup dancers for Cheryl Cole (http://www.cherylcole.com/).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. :p

[GeneChing]

You've never heard of Girls Aloud (http://www.girlsaloud.co.uk/)? Here's a pic. http://www.funny-football.co.uk/news/wp-content/uploads/girls_aloud.jpg
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.
http://sportige.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/cheryl-cole.jpg


DANCE THEATRE REVIEW: Sutra at Sadler's Wells, London ***** (http://www.newsshopper.co.uk/leisure/5078034.DANCE_THEATRE_REVIEW__Sutra_at_Sadler_s_We lls__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 (http://www.islingtontribune.com/reviews/theatre/2010/mar/theatre-review-sutra-sadlers-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 (http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/30/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 (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/magazine/article.php?article=89) - 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 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/birmingham/hi/people_and_places/arts_and_culture/newsid_8572000/8572167.stm)

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 :cool:

[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 (http://intransit.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/03/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 (http://new.lincolncenter.org/live/index.php/wl-2010-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/T_newS_list/index.aspx?nodeid=24&page=ContentPage&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]

:psome clips and more vids links:
http://www.shaolin.org.cn/templates/T_video_list/index.aspx?nodeid=275

[GeneChing]

Martial monks dance down genre barriers (http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/arts/martial-monks-dance-down-genre-barriers/story-e6frg8n6-1225889563208)
* 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.
http://resources0.news.com.au/images/2010/07/08/1225889/562460-sidi-larbi-cherkaoui.jpg

[GeneChing]

Warrior Shaolin monks will wow Sydney (http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw-act/warrior-shaolin-monks-will-wow-sydney/story-e6freuzi-1225924416497)
* 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.
http://resources3.news.com.au/images/2010/09/16/1225924/415047-shaolin-monks.jpg
Has anyone here seen this show yet?

[GeneChing]

A thoughtful review...
http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2010-09-22-images1.jpeg

Posted: September 28, 2010 02:40 PM
Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui's Sutra (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jillian-burt/sidi-larbi-cherkaouis-sut_b_734307.html)

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 (http://www.nypress.com/article-21804-bring-in-the-monk.html)
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
http://www.nypress.com/imgs/hed/art21804nar.jpg
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 (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/04/arts/dance/04shaolin.html?src=twrhp)
Ruby Washington/The New York Times
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/11/04/arts/SHAOLIN/SHAOLIN-articleLarge.jpg
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 (http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainment/theater/gimmicky_dance_not_that_kind_of_jNAjTeaJDrdrCFMFG1 Bv2N)
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.

http://www.nypost.com/rw/nypost/2010/11/04/entertainment/photos_stories/sutra--300x150.jpg
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?

[GeneChing]

That's it? NYC & NC for their 2010 US tour? :rolleyes:

Current Date: Wed, 10 Nov 2010 12:33:41 -0500
‘Sutra’ features Buddhist monks and western flair (http://www.dailytarheel.com/index.php/article/2010/11/sutra_features_buddhist_monks_and_western_air)
By ATAR STAV | The Daily Tar Heel
Updated: 1:03 AM

http://www.dailytarheel.com/media/00/00/00/32/3263_sutracontrib_small.jpg
Junior Patrick Spaugh poses with the Shaolin Monks of “Sutra” as they tour UNC, one of two spots in which “Sutra” will perform in the U.S.
SEE “SUTRA”

Time: 7:30 p.m. Wed. and Thurs.
Location: Memorial Hall
Tickets: $10 students, $30-$85 public
Info: www.carolinaperformingarts.org

For Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, martial arts and Buddhist traditions are more than just lifelong interests — he blends them with his own unique background to form a spectacle of modern dance.

This spectacle, called “Sutra,” will only be performed at two venues in the United States on this world tour.

One of these venues is UNC’s Memorial Hall, as a part of the University’s Carolina Performing Arts series.

“In a lot of ways, ‘Sutra’ is one of, if not the performance to see in 2010,” said Sean McKeithan, marketing and communications coordinator for Carolina Performing Arts.

“Sutra” will showcase Eastern traditions through Western dance. Buddhist monks from China’s Shaolin Temple will perform a dance Cherkaoui created after spending months in their monastery.

Cherkaoui is a Flemish-Moroccan choreographer who specializes in contemporary dance.

In order to learn about the traditions of Buddhism, Cherkaoui traveled to the Shaolin Temple, one of the most renowned Buddhist monasteries in the world.

While at the monastery, Cherkaoui worked alongside Shaolin monks to choreograph the dance for his performance piece, as his Western heritage blended contemporary dance with Eastern teachings and performance art.

“He has had a lifelong interest in Buddhism and disciplines of martial arts in general,” said Harry Kaplowitz, marketing manager for Carolina Performing Arts.

“He wanted to create a piece, a performance that centers around these traditions.”

Seventeen Shaolin monks perform in the piece alongside Cherkaoui himself, who adds a “Western presence” to the performance, Kaplowitz said.

Cherkaoui collaborated with British sculpture artist Antony Gormley to create the set for “Sutra,” creating 21 large wooden boxes with which the dancers perform.

The score was written by Polish composer Szymon Brzoska. Brzoska’s music is played live during the performance.

“This is the work of many creative minds coming together,” Kaplowitz said.

Since its debut in 2008, “Sutra” has been presented worldwide, gaining a favorable reputation.

The performances in Memorial Hall are one of two U.S. appearances for the ensemble. The other is at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City.

“It’s a big accomplishment for us to bring [Sutra],” said McKeithan. “It’s a huge, exciting thing to offer to our patrons.”

Contact the Arts Editor at artsdesk@unc.edu.

[GeneChing]

Tanec Praha
Festival presents premiere international dance troupes (http://www.praguepost.com/night-and-day/stage/8944-tanec-praha.html)
Posted: June 8, 2011
By Johana Mücková - For the Post

The 23rd edition of Tanec Praha, the country's biggest international dance festival, is now under way, bringing top-quality dance shows and stars from around the world with projects that Prague audiences have never had the chance to see.

The main attraction of this year's program is a performance titled Sutra (Music Theater Karlín, June 25-27). Created by Flemish choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and premiered at London Sadler's Wells Theater three years ago, Sutra is a real treat for lovers of acrobatics and Chinese martial arts, as well as for demanding audiences of contemporary dance. This unusual project features 17 young monks from 12 to 26 years old from the original Shaolin temple in the Chinese province of Henan. The monks follow a strict Buddhist doctrine, in which kung fu and tai chi are an integral part of their daily regimes.

Sutra is a product of long-term research: Cherkaoui has a longstanding interest in Shaolin tradition and, while preparing the piece, spent several months at the Shaolin temple working with the monks and exploring their philosophy and faith. The result is a five-star performance that combines dance, music and design. Authentic motion is accompanied by live acoustic music, and together it makes for an incredible 70-minute show.

"No fan of theater or dance should miss it," Yvona Kreuzmannová, director of Tanec Praha, tells The Prague Post. "Cherkaoui will come to Prague in person, which makes this event even more unique, and Prague is one of the last cities to host this extremely successful project on its world tour."
Tanec Praha

When: June 6-29
Where: Ponec Theater, Music Theater Karlín, The New Stage of the National Theater
Tickets: 100-1090 Kč, available through Ticketpro, Ticketportal, Ticket-art, Ticketstream and at the venues
For more information, see Tanecpraha.cz

Another top event of the 2011 Czech dance season will be Vertical Road, a brand-new piece by British artist Akram Khan (Music Theater Karlín, June 29). Working with a group of extraordinary dancers from Asia, Europe and the Middle East, Khan has created a fascinating performance inspired by the mystic Sufi tradition and the works of Persian poet and philosopher Rumi.

"Vertical Road is not a torrent of attractive effects, but a concentrated, darkened, gradually unfolding performance that slowly pulls the audience in with a perfect interplay of choreography, artistically designed sets, costumes, lighting and original music," Kreuzmannová says.

Local performers at Tanec Praha include 420People (New Stage, June 28). This contemporary dance unit, formed by Nederlands Dans Theater (NDT) alumni Václav Kuneš and Nataša Novotná, invited the Canadian choreographer Crystal Pite and her company Kidd Pivot Frankfurt RM to cooperate with them. The night will feature Pite's duet The Other You performed by Canadian dancer Eric Beauchesne and excellent Czech dancer Jiří Pokorný, who is also a former dancer from NDT. Pite is a renowned choreographer who has collaborated with celebrated dance artists around the world, and this will be her first stop in Czech Republic. In her work, Pite uses specific choreographic language, fusing classical movement elements and structured improvisation. 420People will once again feature two of their great shows, Reen and Sacrebleu. Both choreographies premiered in November 2010 and have since been very successful with audiences.

Other appealing ensembles include RootlessRoot Company (Ponec Theater, June 8 and 9), Compagnia Zappala Danza (The New Stage, June 15) or Louise Lecavalier (Ponec Theater, June 19 and 20).

Tanec Praha is again expanding its reach in the Czech Republic this year, staging performances in Brno, České Budějovice, Český Krumlov, Choceň, Pardubice, Plzeň, Olomouc, Ostrava and Valašské Meziříčí. The festival also has a rich program for children aged 5 to 15. Ponec Theater will host dance-theater projects by the groups Stage Code (June 10), Kyklos Galaktikos (June 17) and VerTeDance (June 24), as well as the creative tandem of Jana Látalová (Hudečková) and Marta Trpišovská (June 23).

Like every year, Tanec Praha will provide spectators with an opportunity to experience new artistic visions and enjoy the best of what is being created on the contemporary dance stage. Whatever your tastes in dance, the festival is well worth a visit.Technically speaking, you can't have a monk that is 12. That would be a shami. Monks have to be 18, or thereabout.

[GeneChing]

Sutra marries martial mysticism to physicality of dance (http://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/on-stage/sutra-marries-martial-mysticism-to-physicality-of-dance)
Feargus O'Sullivan
Mar 25, 2012

http://www.thenational.ae/deployedfiles/Assets/Richmedia/Image/SaxoPress/AD20120325217537-Sidi_Larbi_Cher.jpg

The dancers are Chinese, the choreographer is Flemish Moroccan, the set designer is British and the composer is Polish - dance, martial arts and music performance; Sutra could hardly be more international if it tried.

This stunning piece, appearing as part of the Abu Dhabi Festival tomorrow, is a remarkable blend of kung fu and contemporary dance created by the monks of the Shaolin Temple in Henan province, China, and the edgy Belgian choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. But while it has been very successful internationally, Cherkaoui says the collaboration happened almost by chance.

"I first visited the Shaolin Temple in 2007," he explains. "I had the feeling that something in Shaolin martial arts was similar to contemporary dance, but mainly I was just desperate to get away from Europe, to be around people who thought in a completely different way. There I met the head of the temple's warrior monks - who is also an accomplished artist in calligraphy and music himself - and we began a discussion about choreography. He was interested, and willing to see me try something with the younger monks, so we started working together."

While Cherkaoui shared some common ground with the monks - he's a teetotal, yoga-practising vegetarian - finding a way to share ideas proved difficult at first.

"The monks are used to presenting their work as demonstrations of, say, three minutes' length, but to make a performance about their whole philosophy took a lot of work to find the right forms. The monks, luckily, are very culturally open and are completely connected with the reality of the 21st century. Some of them were familiar with hip-hop dancing, which after all is similar to kung fu movement. I started by bringing some of my dancers who did hip-hop to work with them. Slowly, they would realise there are many ways of moving, and that style might define people but it doesn't have to limit them."

This cross-cultural fusion deepened further with the arrival of the British sculptor Antony Gormley, best known for the vast Angel of the North sculpture outside Gateshead, England. After discussions with Cherkaoui, Gormley created 21 human-sized wooden boxes that the performers would rock, shift, climb on and enter to suggest tombs, skyscrapers, trees, plinths and even dominoes. A sculptural statement that is also mobile, Gormley's boxes help to shape the Shaolin monks' incredible physical prowess and discipline into an exploration of their beliefs.

"Whenever we were using the boxes," says Cherkaoui, "we were showing that a material never really disappears, but just transforms instead. If you chop down a tree and make a house out of it, you have killed a tree but also made a house."

This also affected a key area of the piece, he said - "the tension between being individual and being part of a community".

A chance meeting between Cherkaoui and the Polish composer Szymon Brzóska, whose music (performed live) became an integral part of Sutra, added another layer of meanings to the piece.

"This young composer came to me after a show and wanted me to listen to his music. It was so melancholic, had such emotional power, that it really suited the monks and helped make the piece more lyrical. Their movements can be very martial and harsh sometimes, with an elegance not always visible on the surface. This sad, lyrical music helped emphasise the fluidity rather than the percussion of their movement."

So what sort of impression might Sutra make in an extremely international city such as Abu Dhabi? In some ways, the piece provides a model for creative, respectful intercultural dialogue that is sure to have resonance in the Emirates. Cherkaoui believes that sitting between many cultures encourages people to question and reshape their values in a healthy way, something he himself experienced.

"Because I came from two cultures, I was working with value systems from an early age," he says. "I knew my Moroccan father's values were different from my European mother's, but that neither was wrong. I realised back then that while people value purity, it doesn't exist."

Stepping over the boundaries between traditions imagined to be pure and exclusive can be extremely productive, as Cherkaoui learnt in China.

"In many parts of the world, especially in Europe, we usually feel we have to choose between spirit and body," he says. "In the Shaolin Temple, both of these come together without contradiction. I found this incredibly powerful. The reason why I do dance is to connect the two, to engage people's minds in a physical way." Well said.

[GeneChing]

Dance the body music (http://www.khaleejtimes.com/Displayarticle08.asp?section=expressions&xfile=data/expressions/2012/March/expressions_March44.xml)
Silvia Radan
31 March 2012
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/images/ex_300312.jpg
It took 800 years and 30 generations of monks for the Shaolin Temple to receive and accept a dancing proposal.

It all started in 2007, when one of the world’s most daring choreographers, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, left the comforts of his Flemish home and travelled to the Shaolin Temple in China to fulfil a childhood dream: encountering the extraordinary people who have the ability and power to make the body and the mind work as one. And this is how Sutra was born.

Something on the lines of a surreal poem or a Cubist painting, Sutra is a dance that challenges the very concept of dancing, using a lot of martial arts, abstract movement and physical effort. From its premiere in London in 2008 to its world tour shows, Sutra enchanted audiences and critics alike. Its last performance was here, at the Emirates Palace last week, part of the ongoing Abu Dhabi Festival (ADF).

Choreographed by Cherkaoui for the renown Sadler’s Wells dance company of London, it is performed by 17 Shaolin monks on Szymon Brzoska’s beautiful East meets West contemporary music, using Antony Gormley’s clever stage design — 21 wooden boxes moved about as in a jigsaw puzzle to represent anything from a coffin to a city.

Cherkaoui himself is in the performance, as the only non-Shaolin Temple dancer, representing the “outsider”, the parallel world, the spectator.

“Sutra is a reflection on the temple and meeting the temple. My character on stage represents the audience going inside of the performance, finding also the relation between the community and the individual and how they influence each other,” explained Cherkaoui.

“There are a lot of poetic images created by the boxes, with which we make different universes, different sets where the story unfolds, which is in between abstract and concrete. It speaks about tradition and about the future, how in the present we are in a constant struggle about keeping our tradition and thinking about where it’s gonna go”.

Born in Belgium in 1976 to a Flemish mother and a Moroccan father, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui began dancing professionally at 16 years old. He worked with a contemporary dance company, but in parallel he also joined hip-hop and modern jazz dance groups. Later he joined Les Ballets C de la B company, where he debuted as a choreographer in 1999 with Anonymous Society, for which he received three international awards. From here on his career just kept on growing, along with his creativity and ingenuity as a choreographer.

In 2007 he felt the need to get away from Europe and renew his sources of inspiration. Thus, he arrived at the Shaolin Temple, built in the 5th century on the peak of Mount Song, one of the Sacred Mountains of China. For centuries, the temple has been equally famous for Chinese martial arts, in particular Kung Fu and Thai Chi, and the teachings of Zen Buddhism.

Having the privilege to spend time and learn from the Shaolin monks, Cherkaoui wanted to repay them in a more meaningful way than cash.

“From the beginning they were very opened to the idea, being fascinated by the concept of choreography,” said Cherkaoui.

“Let’s not forget that they are very used to present formal martial arts in the form of demonstrations. In many ways, they also have to choreograph, so they are used to having movements set in a certain way. When I went there and saw them train I saw choreography.”

Nonetheless, the Shaolin “dancers”, who were selected among the warrior monks of the temple, were intrigued by the western concept of choreography. Occasionally, a dance move shown to them by Cherkaoui would remind them of their martial arts. Perhaps that is why Cherkaoui no longer makes a difference between choreographing Kung Fu and western dance.

“It’s about the body,” he stressed.

“I’m working with martial arts and I’m choreographing martial arts, but the moment an arm goes up, who says it’s martial arts or it’s dance? It depends on your own references, but if you have no references – and that is kind of what I’m hoping the audience will open up to – is to stop having references and just experience the motion. I think in this time we live in we should learn see things again with less prejudice and references are a form of prejudice.”

Working with the monks was a “great” experience for Cherkaoui. “We laughed a lot,” he said. From the moment he arrived, Cherkaoui was quite surprised by life at the temple. The monks we allowed to use mobile phones and listen to pop music. On the other hand, in deep freezing temperatures they didn’t feel the need to use heating radiators. While the monks were learning about various dance styles and moves from Cherkaoui and several other western dancers that he brought with him, the choreographer too learnt about martial arts moves, some of them so beautiful and graceful up in the air, but with the power to kill.

A great help for him at the temple was Shi Yan Zhuang, the temple leader of the warrior monks.

“I love street dance,” admitted Shi Yan.

“The choreographer brought some of his friends dancers from a hip-hop company to the temple and we loved watching them dance.”

Fun aside, for him, as for the other monks, there is no difference between Kung Fu, Tai-chi — which the Shaolin created — and dance, other than styles.

“They are all like a doctor. Doctor can heal people; doctor can cure people; doctor can make you look more beautiful. These are all different treatments, but it is all done by the doctor. No matter what it is, Kung Fu, Tai-chi or dance, it is just a way of showing people a message,” explained Shi Yan.

A universal message is indeed what Cherkaoui created with Sutra.

In Buddhism, the term sutra (Sanskrit for “thread”) refers mostly to the sermons recited by Buddha, teachings that praised the harmony and acceptance of life and of all leaving creatures. Using the specially composed music of Szymon Brzoska, which, unusual for a dance performance, was played live on stage, without distracting from the dance, though, and the one-side opened body-size wooden boxes designed by Turner Prize winning artist Antony Gormley, Cherkaoui translated the Shaolin Zen philosophy into dance.

Here was a monk embodying a frog or a scorpion through very difficult, yet graceful, martial arts moves. In another sequence, the monks, now dressed in black suites, built a city out of their boxes and were acting like busy businessmen, only to crumble down, along with their “tower blocks”, which could not last an eternity. Dragged, kicked, stacked, the boxes, created different stories or different symbols, from a bookshelf to a graveyard and even a lotus flower and the thread between these stories was a 12-year-old monk, who kept suggesting what is there to come. Thai Chi. That's taiji with lemongrass and peanut sauce.

[GeneChing]

Sutra is the only performance tour that the Abbot acknowledged in my most recent interview with him in our Shaolin Special 2013 (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/magazine/article.php?article=1088).

Shaolin Monks Storm The Stage In Sutra At Sadler’s Wells (http://londonist.com/2013/04/shaolin-monks-storm-the-stage-in-sutra-at-sadlers-wells.php)
By Tamara Vos · April 4, 2013 at 14:00 pm

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Before you go further, kind reader be warned: the following review is filled with exclamations and clichéd phrases that we’d have previously been ashamed to use, but Sutra demands it.

This piece is extraordinary.

There’s nothing to explain and there’s no need for background: it’s 20 Shaolin monks with 20 man-sized boxes on an empty stage. They toy with space, with shape, with unison and symmetry, and the visual impact of all this is truly astounding.

There’s no story, just an affinity between a Western man and a tiny, 10-year-old monk who together face the other monks in frame after frame of movement and sculpture. The ‘dance’ here is kung-fu and tai-chi, performed with a grace and fluidity that is almost balletic. The identical wooden boxes (designed by sculptor Antony Gormley) are shuffled, stacked, lined up and dropped with the monks disappearing and reappearing between them; the minimalism and simplicity of all this is raw and beautiful.

And the music. Composed by Szymon Brzoska and performed by violin, cello, piano and percussion, it’s a triumphant feat of composition. Whilst dance and music are time-old partners, Sutra is one of those incredibly rare instances where the two are interchangeable, where music, prop and movement are in perfect balance with one another.

The only thing is that there was something close to An Idiot Abroad in watching a Western man play dumb in the face of Shaolin warrior monks. But this really is the faintest of quibbles; it works, it’s pleasing and it received laughs. The piece ends with a climactic surge of energy that was truly breath-taking, and left the audience roaring.

Sutra is incredibly beautiful. An ethereal piece that gives insight into an alien world of discipline and spirituality, it leaves the grime of London squawking at the theatre door. It’s only running for another three nights so for God’s sake, if you have the means to a ticket, go.

That’s really all there is to say.

Sutra is running now until 6 April at Sadler’s Wells, Angel. For more information visit the Sadler’s Wells website. Londonist saw this show on a complimentary review ticket.

[GeneChing]

22nd March
Why 19 kung-fu kicking Shaolin monks are coming to Oxford (http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/yourtown/oxford/16105222.Why_19_kung_fu_kicking_Shaolin_monks_are_ coming_to_Oxford/)

http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/resources/images/7562659/http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/resources/images/7562661/?type=responsive-gallery-fullscreenhttp://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/resources/images/7562662/?type=responsive-gallery-fullscreen


You couldn’t make it up if you tried. Take 19 Buddhist monks from the Shaolin Temple in China who specialise in kung fu, combine them with world famous sculptor Antony Gormley and leading choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and produce an epic dance piece worthy of Sadler’s Wells.

The result - Sutra - has now been seen by over 160,000 people worldwide and has been a phenomenal global success. Now on its 10th anniversary tour Sutra is coming to Oxford for the first time, something Suzanne Walker, Executive Producer is very excited about.

“It is just a very special project, and while we produce a lot of work here at Sadlers Wells this was totally unique. We wanted to think outside the box so while kung fu is the main language and you are watching the masters at work, it is an incredible spectacle and very exciting to watch.

"The Shaolin monks are the best ambassadors of their craft, because they demonstrate the movements in a positive way. They know this will be many people's first experience of Chinese culture and use it as an opportunity to bridge any cultural divides, combining our two cultures through kung fu.

"So we wanted to lock into that wonderful energy and its Buddhist philosophy by underpinning it, which results in a really beautiful and incredibly moving piece."

So how did it evolve? "Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui went to the temple and lived there while researching the piece because it was all new to him.

"He didn't want to impose a style or aesthetic on them, but to learn from them, and then knit that into a new shape and direction of work to bring a fresh perspective."

The result? An energetic, dynamic, intense dance form rarely seen before, a trailblazer that Sadlers Wells then ran with, going on to develop pieces such as Butoh with Japan and Tanguera via Argentina.

"And yet the audience doesn't know what to expect and we are proud of that," Suzanne adds, "regardless of how successful Sutra has been."

And what of the realities, practicalities, training and touring of an elite core of young Shaolin monks?

"It was a steep learning curve for them as well and took time for them to understand what we were asking.

"But once they understood the aesthetic and vibe of the piece, it all fitted into place, bringing everything together, joining the two worlds in a continual dance with some exquisite examples of martial arts."

Of course the initial team of monks have slowly been replaced with new ones over the years, but the temple is happy with the continual transferral of its finest proteges, knowing that it promotes the right ethics and spreads the word:

“We wanted everyone to experience the joys of this show, so Sutra has travelled to the far-flung corners of the globe from Japan to new York and Chile," Suzanne confirms.

"Few productions have made an impact like this, changing the art form of dance as we know it, so it has been a challenging but wonderful collaboration that we are still extremely proud of."

Sutra, New Theatre, March 23-24. atgtickets.com. 0844 8713020

I still haven't seen this show and would love to. Anyone here see it yet?

[GeneChing]

Shaolin Monks Kick, Flip, and Dance in the Martial Arts Ballet Sutra (https://tricycle.org/trikedaily/shaolin-monks-dance/)
Kung fu acrobatics serve as more than just cheap tricks in a skillful and evocative performance.
By Emma Varvaloucas OCT 22, 2018

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Photo by Hugo Glendinning

What would it look like if New York City Ballet’s corps of ballerinas were replaced by 20 kung fu Buddhist monks? Sutra, from Belgian-Moroccan choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, is as close of an answer as you’re likely to get. The hourlong performance, which melds contemporary dance with the fighting techniques of China’s famous Shaolin martial arts, is an impressive display of acrobatics. It is also touching, and often surprisingly humorous.

Onstage, Cherkaoui, 42, joins the Chan Buddhist monks—one of whom can’t be more than seven years old—as well as 20 human-sized boxes, all wooden except for Cherkaoui’s, which is silver. It’s a marker of his outsider status. While Cherkaoui engages with the monks throughout, until the show’s crescendo, he’s set apart from them. You get the sense that the monks are aspirational, always just a bit out of reach or a beat ahead (although Cherkaoui is a gifted dancer as well, and shows us his own skills). It’s a genuine, sweet exploration that will resonate with any spiritual seeker.

The boxes, conceptualized by British sculptor Antony Gormley, are as much a part of the choreography as the dancers themselves. Dragged around, stacked, put together like a puzzle and broken apart again—these simple props create complex worlds. Sometimes they are a lifeboat or a coffin. Sometimes they are ramparts or doorways. Frequently they’re used as a technique to add levity by hiding the performers before they fly out of their boxes with flips, kicks, and spins.

https://cdn.tricycle.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Sutra_ali_0063_credit-Andree-Lanthier.jpg
Photo by Andree Lanthier

Sutra premiered a decade ago but remains fresh. In 2007, Cherkaoui began the process of working with the monks, who hail from the original Shaolin Monastery in eastern China. Developed during the Sui and Tang dynasties (581–618 CE and 618–907 CE) to protect the monastery from attack, the unique style of martial arts is now considered a tool for physical and mental cultivation.

At the time of their first meeting with Cherkaoui, the temple’s leaders had been looking for a way to modernize the tradition in a way that honored its spiritual roots. Sutra does this well, ensuring the audience understands that the acrobatics are more than cheap tricks, and by allowing the dancers to embody traditional symbols—a snake, a scorpion, a monkey—while situating them in a context you’d never find in ancient China.

Sutra is part of Lincoln Center’s White Light Festival, a multi-disciplinary festival highlighting “individual contemplation and communal artistic experiences.” October 16–November 18, 2018. Schedule and tickets available here (http://www.lincolncenter.org/white-light-festival).


Emma Varvaloucas is Tricycle’s executive editor.

Still eager to see this.

[GeneChing]

I remember seeing the boxes for this at Shaolin when it was under development almost a decade and a half ago. It kills me that I still have yet to see this show.


OCTOBER 12, 2018 CULTURE
COMING SOON
Sutra: 18 Shaolin monks and one of Beyoncé’s choreographers (https://citymag.indaily.com.au/culture/coming-soon/sutra-18-shaolin-monks-and-one-of-beyonces-choreographers/)
A dance work enabling deep cross-cultural connection that was created by someone who went on to collaborate with Beyoncé – Sutra is relevant, insightful, and emblematic of all the things OzAsia Festival should be.

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Words: Farrin Foster
Pictures: Supplied
Sutra was first performed in 2008 – an early foray into international collaboration from the then-fledgling but now-immensely respected Sadler’s Wells venue in London.

Since then, it has toured to more than 33 countries and been performed more than 200 times. Its creator and choreographer – Belgium’s Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui – who was already a well-respected name, has followed a similar stratospheric trajectory, all the way up to working on Beyoncé and JAY-Z’s APE**** video this year.


REMARKS
Sutra
November 2nd, 2018 at 8:00PM
Dunstan Playhouse

Enter promotion code CityMag in the promo code box before selecting seats to see Sutra with us for $59.00.
Buy tickets here (https://www.ozasiafestival.com.au/events/sutra/).

CityMag ticket holders meet at Lucky Dumpling Market Parasol Lounge at 7pm for pre-show drinks (cash bar) for a quick Q&A with Assistant Choreographer Ali Thabet at 7:15pm-7:30pm

Show commences in Dunstan Playhouse at 8pm

In celebration of its 10th anniversary, Sutra is on the road again – with this current international tour demonstrating once more how the piece’s resonance refuses to fade.

On the surface, the work seems almost simple in form.

It features a group of 18 Shaolin Monks performing the explosive and acrobatic martial arts manoeuvres they practice as part of their daily rituals. Dancing alongside, opposite, and sometimes with them is a contemporary dancer – a role inhabited sometimes by Ali Thabet and sometimes by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui himself. The final person on stage is a young monk of about 10-years-old who acts as a guide of sorts for the dancer.

The structure brings to mind a conversation between a group and an outsider, but Ali says Sutra’s exploration of the interaction between a collective of familiars and a singular stranger runs far deeper than a mere exchange of words ever could.

“It is based on the experience that we had during the creation process – three months in the Shaolin temple with Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui the choreographer,” he says.

“Sometimes we try to lead them [the monks] for a scene or an image that we find interesting, but most of the time we had to understand their life to make things happen on stage.”

The process of coming to fully embrace the formerly foreign world of the monks plays out in the episodic nature of the piece, which uses different scenery to explore various facets of their traditions, beliefs, and philosophies.

The set by Antony Gormley is key in the graceful facilitation of this flexibility.

https://citymag.indaily.com.au/wp-content/uploads/Sutra-OzAsia-8.jpg

Consisting solely of coffin-sized wooden boxes – one for each monk – the set transforms as readily as the bodies of the performers, morphing from a lotus flower to a city skyline with ease. In these transitions, says Ali, the audience’s imagination is captured and enlivened.

“It is the most simple and clever set that I have experimented with on stage,” he says.

“Antony brings this idea, and the possibilities in terms of image, metaphor, and representation were plenty. We proposed a set that changes constantly, that could make the audiences dream about what they see.”

The intense and often emotional score by polish composer Szymon Brzóska underwrites this dream, as does the almost super-human athleticism of the monks and dancer on stage.

While the monks’ movements are not rooted in the training and language of contemporary dance, Ali says they possess a different kind of poetry – one drawn from the way “they are connected with their body and spirit”.

Pushing into this liminal mental space – the one that bridges the mind, the flesh, and the less conscious parts of self – is how Sutra finds its power.


REMARKS
Sutra’s Adelaide Premiere season takes place as part of OzAsia Festival on November 2&3 at the Dunstan Playhouse.

The relationships between the monks and the stranger might be the tool used for exploring this concept, but ultimately, says Ali, the work is not focussed on the boundaries that separate the performers. It – like any true cross-cultural connection – is about the commonalities that bring everyone together.

“It speaks about the link that we have with a different culture more than the differences,” says Ali. “It speaks of the will to understand a different culture.

“Emotion is the thing that we all share in common.”

[GeneChing]

I still haven't seen this show. :o


https://tricycle.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/sutra-kung-fu-dance-1-1600x635.jpg

A Martial Arts Ballet (https://tricycle.org/magazine/sutra-kung-fu-dance/)
Shaolin monks kick, flip, and dance in a performance both timeless and contemporary.
Choreographed by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui SPRING 2019

What would it look like if the New York City ballet’s corps of ballerinas were replaced by 20 kung fu Buddhist monks? Sutra, choreographed by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and with music by Szymon Brzóska, is as close an answer as you’re likely to get. The hourlong performance melds contemporary dance with the fighting techniques of China’s famous Shaolin martial arts.

Onstage, Cherkaoui, 42, joins the Chan Buddhist monks as well as 21 human-size boxes. These boxes, conceptualized by the British sculptor Antony Gormley, are as much a part of the choreography as the dancers themselves. Dragged around, stacked, put together like a puzzle and broken apart again—these simple props create complex worlds. Frequently the performers hide within them before flying out with flips, kicks, and spins.

Sutra premiered a decade ago but remains fresh. In 2007, Cherkaoui began the process of working with the monks, who hail from the original Shaolin Monastery in eastern China. Developed during the Sui and Tang dynasties (581– 618 CE and 618–907 CE) to protect the monastery from attack, the unique style of martial arts is now considered a tool for physical and mental cultivation.

At the time of their first meeting with Cherkaoui, the temple’s leaders had been looking for a way to modernize the tradition while still honoring its spiritual roots. Sutra was their answer.

–Emma Varvaloucas, Executive Editor

https://tricycle.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Sutra-1-1600x1071.jpg
Choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and the Shaolin monks onstage at Sadler’s Wells Theatre, London. Photograph by Andree Lanthier

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Photograph by Andree Lanthier

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Photograph by Andree Lanthier

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Leo Mason Sports Photos / Alamy Stock Photo

The temple leaders had been looking for a way to modernize the tradition while still honoring its spiritual roots. Sutra was their answer.

https://tricycle.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Sutra-2.jpg
A still from Sutra performed at Sadler’s Wells Theatre, London. The show premiered in 2008 and recently celebrated its 10th anniversary.

Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui is a dancer and choreographer.

[GeneChing]

I still haven't seen this show. Someday hopefully.


Preview: Shaolin Monks take on modern dance in Sutra (http://www.timeoutshanghai.com/features/Stage-Dance/70537/Preview-Shaolin-Monks-take-on-modern-dance-in-Sutra.html)
Belgian choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s work features Shaolin Monks, a brilliant set and infectious energy
By Nancy Pellegrini
Posted: Monday October 14 2019

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Photograph: Hugo Glendinning

Perhaps the idea of watching the Shaolin Monks’ divine athleticism doesn’t thrill in China the way it does in New York, London or any of the many cities Sutra has graced since its 2008 premiere. But Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s masterwork is more than impressive stunts and spear-work; it is a mesmerising piece where the simple becomes complex and tradition morphs into modernity, as Sutra, or the thread, connects us all.

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Photograph: Andree Lanthier

Sutra opens with a lone Western figure (Ali Thabet, Cherkaoui’s original role) and a ten-year-old monk hunched over a scale model of the stage, moving wooden pieces and teaching in broad hand gestures – a god overlooking his creation. But those pieces come to life in a brilliant set by premier British sculptor Antony Gormley. A series of man-sized wooden boxes, they are deceptively simple and shockingly flexible, forming a platform for cascading martial arts exercises, or urban skyscrapers for monks who have shed their robes and donned dark suits. At other times the boxes are a border wall, a set of giant bookshelves and coffins in a morgue. And in a startlingly beautiful moment, they form a bud that blossoms slowly, gracefully, into a lotus.

Born in Belgium to a Moroccan father and Flemish mother, Cherkaoui started dancing to music videos in his childhood, and by his teens was performing on television. At 23, he joined the prestigious Les Ballets C de la B, but eventually left and toured with fellow wunderkind Akram Khan performing their acclaimed duet, Zero Degrees. Seeking a new creative direction and to enrich his own movement vocabulary, Cherkaoui revisited another childhood fascination – kung fu. He spent months in the mountains of Henan Province living and training with the Shaolin Monks, sharing their early hours and austere lifestyles – although he does admit to breaking down and heading to a warm hotel for a few nights. But he found the monks eager collaborators who particularly enjoyed working with the unusual and flexible set.

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Photograph: Andree Lanthier

Sutra has been touring semi-regularly since 2008 and shows no signs of popular or critical fatigue, although some of the monks have moved on (the original child is now one of the adults). Set to a haunting score by Szymon Brzóska, Sutra’s energy and elegance still have the power to amaze – and connect.

Book here (http://www.timeoutshanghai.com/event/Stage-Dance/69556/Sidi-Larbi-Cherkaouis-Sutra.html)

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Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui's Sutra
Critics' pick
Belgian choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s work Sutra features Shaolin Monks, a brilliant set and infectious energy
Shanghai International Dance Center Grand Theatre , 1650 Hongqiao Lu Changning Shanghai Shanghai