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.