During one of my last Shaolin trips in the mid-2000s, I spied a pile of coffin-like boxes in one of the side training rooms. My reporter radar was piqued, and upon inquiring, I was told that it was part of some new show being developed by some European artists which would fuse Shaolin Kung Fu with modern dance. I never would’ve imagined that it would take me nearly two decades to see that show, and that it would have outlived all the others.

Back in the mid-2000s, there were dozens of Shaolin shows touring the world. They ranged from theatrical wushu demonstrations to artsy performances with elements of storytelling and dance. Some were even from fake monks, martial artists not from Shaolin Temple who donned robes and tried to capitalize on the wave of popularity these shows were surfing. But eventually, that Shaolin show wave subsided. Since then, most Shaolin monk demonstrations reverted to standard shows of Kung Fu and Wushu forms, coupled with hard Qigong stunts. In 2023, KungFuMagazine.com hosted one – Legend of Shaolin Warriors. 

However, those boxes lived on. They are an integral part of Sutra, the longest running Shaolin show of all. Sutra has been on tour since 2008. It has been performed all around the globe, witnessed by over 250,000 people. Sutra is an award-winning collaboration between Belgian choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, sculptor Antony Gormley, composer Szymon Brzóska, and 20 Shaolin monks straight out of Shaolin Temple itself. Presented by Sadler’s Wells and Shaolin Temple, this current tour is 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. 

I have seen almost every tour that has come out of Shaolin, including some of the fake ones, as well as a few that were only staged in China. All this time, I’ve been waiting to see Sutra. This tour includes two shows with Cal Performances, located on the UC Berkeley campus, the first time Sutra has played in the San Francisco Bay Area near me. 

Consequently, I jumped at the opportunity to interview Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui about Sutra, a singular masterpiece amongst the deep forest of Shaolin global tours. 

GC: First, I got to share with you that I was in Shaolin Temple about 20 years ago and I remember seeing the boxes in a training hall. I asked, ‘What are those?’ and the monks said, ‘Oh some European show.’ It was something they couldn't really explain. So I've been tracking your show since it's very inception and am so excited to finally see it.

SLC:  I'm surprised! So happy! And as you know, so many things happened at the temple this year so it was a journey - so much stuff, you know.  So much thanks but we are here and it's beautiful.

GC:  So the scandal with the previous Abbot hasn’t affected your show at all?

SLC: No. We were very lucky that didn't move anything. The new abbot was very open to the project and still very keen on seeing this continue. But it’s always, you know, change. Shifting is scary. And it’s been such a special project. It was born in 2008. When it was made, this was in a time that I wanted to sort of step away from the art world because I was kind of put in a space of wanting to take distance from artists and wanting to look for people who were more concerned with the body and with the spirit – with a send of community. 

GC: What inspired you to go to Shaolin Temple?

SLC: A Japanese producer friend who knew me quite well was like ‘Maybe you should come to Shaolin Temple’ because I was telling him I’m very interest in yoga and the martial arts. He said ‘Well, the temple is in a space of exploration, of exchanging with different artists.’ So they were interested in working with or inviting writers and photographers, opening their doors to their knowledge and their home. So me as a choreographer, I was welcome. They asked ‘What do you do? What is choreography?’ And I’m like – that’s such a brilliant question to ask – what it is that we fundamentally do because I made my career as a choreographer. I was like ‘Yeah. What is choreography?’ I said, ‘Well, I’ll bring people together to watch other people that I’ve organized movements and space with, where they stand and what they represent in that moment.’ So they said ‘How would you do that with our young monks?’ I said ‘Well, first of all, I’d learn their movement material’ because I clearly wouldn’t want them to have to go from whatever my movements were. That doesn’t make sense to me. 

Back in the day, I was already coming from a dance logic of exploring with your performers, learning from your performers, having their movements be the basis of what you were doing to be developing with them. So it was really that sort of logic. I’d have to understand what they do. And they were very generous. They gave me time to see what the movement was. Of course, I didn’t perceive the movement as martial. I saw it as a graphic and as physical and as explosive. So I went in for my own angle for my own discipline into their discipline which was interesting, also I think for them because I saw connections in certain phrases – I mean I called them dance phrases. I’m like ‘You know, this sequencing actually has these movements that also appear in other sequencing that you’ve taught me before.’ And they’re like ‘Oh yeah. That’s true.’ So I saw connections which is, as an artist, what we have to do every day – see connections. And so slowly, I started to puzzle with the material and be like maybe we can go from this material to that material and from this to there. They were very open to explore, really redesigning phrases. It was like I’m doing and rebuilding. 

GC: Where did the boxes come from?

SLC: The boxes came through Antony Gormley, who is a dear friend of mine and an amazing artist who I had worked with before, back in the day. In the meantime, I’ve already worked 6 times with him, but back in the day, it was my second time. I said ‘I’m here in the temple. It reminds me a lot of you and of your way of looking at the world and I think you should come over.’ He was very, very into Buddhism and he had already travelled a lot, so a bit older than me. But he’d been through things and explored places and explored himself also. So he said, ‘I’ll gladly join you!’ And he just came over and then in the temple, was very inspired by the space and how it could connect with his own discipline, which is visual arts. 

Through that, the box is born, as a space of the body to, in some way, develop an element that this is the room we get as a human being in our world. You know, we go home with nothing else. Or we come in the world with our body, and we go out of the world, away from that body. But it’s also got something a bit like a coffin. In my imagination, and also with the monks sharing, the boxes could be many more things. They could be put together as if they were stairs or put behind each other like a wall. Or we could make a pagoda or temple or a forest, even a lotus flower. Working with Antony Gormley always inspires me to make his visual arts move because I feel like he develops things that, even though they are still, they are, in my eyes, in movement. There’s a potential energy of movement. 

So with the monks, we were exploring, playing together. Theater is really that in some strange way. The monks rekindled my passion for theater and my passion for sharing a stage and developing stories together. That was really exciting. 

GC: How was it to work with the monks?

SLC: The temple also had many generations. The Shaolin monks are a specific generation but there’s a lot of warrior monks. They’re usually people between 20 and 30, sometimes 17, and then they also have kids, very small kids, like 9 years old, 10 years old, which is very unique and useful. I mean in some weird way, we have them in commercial places. There are, of course, kid actors and kid everything. But there’s something particular about this kind of disciplined kid and the incredible aptitudes one would need. They find these young talented beings and they invited me to the temple to develop them to become a monk. I mean, you’ve been there, so I’m probably telling you things you would know better than me. 

GC: Kids cannot be monks, but young initiates can start on the path to become a monk very early. They’re called Shami.

SLC: Yes. Sometimes it’s their life and sometimes they do it for 5 or 10 years. It depends on the journey because China is a very, very big country and people are coming from very, very far away sometimes to go there. Sometimes you don’t even speak the same exact language because it’s just all so big. I think in the West, we’re not very conscious and used to have this image of a place. But it’s very much a contemporary space even if it’s so old. I mean the monks had phones. There was a whole technology that was present and the temple was always quite on top of technology. In some ways, everything was always a step ahead of the rest of society in these temples because there were people that understood the body, understood the mind, understood humanity, and had organized themselves according to their understanding of it. Our image in the West is very much of a recluse, walking away from life, whilst their exchange with the community around – even today, still there is this back and forth with people from the village coming to or from the city, coming to pray, but also offering good and vegetables. 

GC: I’ve seen nearly every demonstration that’s come out of Shaolin, even some of the ones that never made it out of China, and there have been a few that have integrated dance before. But they all ended. Why do you think Sutra is so successful?

SLC: That is incredible, yes. It’s been 17 years and I don’t know. It’s so hard to put a finger on it. I try to put a story around it. When I talk to friends who come and see it, they feel the work. There is this strange world. There’s this person that I used to play – now it’s been played by other people – a sort of foreign element in the temple that enters. And there’s this sense of being welcomed but at the same time, being out, and then finding ways to communicate. It’s without any words so there’s no need for explanation. There’s just this discovery and exploration fo movement and of sharing space. We found with the monks a lot of images that spoke about the human, how a human being meets other human beings that are like him, but also that are from elsewhere even though they’re like him. So there’s this sort of kid that for me is a bit like a guide because he knows how to be in and out and he can bring you in. But the kid can also hide. 

It’s like a dream escape. It’s not a true story. It’s not like this is what happens. It’s more like what you can project on it. For me, when I look at it, it’s about the individual trying to meet the collective. It’s about the collective having to handle a foreign intruder. It’s about the complexity of sharing space, of feeling. There was a moment where Andrea [Andrea Bou Othmane now dances the role that Cherkaoui played originally] is boxed into a lotus flower. It opens and he gets boxed in because he’s doing something that’s not right in the space. Whether or not he’s doing this on purpose or not, there’s this kind of provocation that it creates and then he has to get out. And then he’s pushed off of it again and he’s trying to take it apart. So it’s just this idea of like between spiritual guidelines becoming dogmas and how we can be caught up and not understanding the fragility of nature, and so maybe destroying it by analyzing it or over analyzing it. 

I think Sutra has got a lot of different layers where people can read it on different spaces. You can read it very spiritually. You can read it also simply as an active exercise. There’s contemplation where you’re just sort of enjoying the graphic element to it. It’s got a visual arts side to it. It’s very slick and neat. The monks are incredible. They are so capable in the air. But they’re also being super still. 

GC:  What about the music?

SLC: The music of the Polish composer [Szymon Brzóska] I worked with – also a dear friend that is an amazing artist who still performs the piano sequence – the music’s got this melancholy which is not usually the sort of music one would use for martial arts. It softens up some of the movements and it becomes more cinematographic. I think the success of it is really the way that the monks have embraced these foreign elements and visual arts of my conceptual ideas, the music of Szymon, and they exist within it. They exist with it and the carry it and they defend it. It just suddenly becomes very universal. It’s not just simply of this geography. I feel like they’ve made a show with us that transcends any form of geography. And I think that’s part of the success – that it’s been possible to make a very contemporary idea of Shaolin monks rather than just the historic idea of Shaolin monks. 

GC: Sutra is so different from any other Shaolin show.

SLC: I love those other shows, like I’ve seen all of them myself. I grew up with it and I was a huge Bruce Lee fan, always been. In Belgium, we had all these movies that were coming out that we were watching. And I’m half Arab. You have to know my father’s Moroccan, my mother’s Belgian, so I was always a bit of an outsider. I know I’m just a basic white guy but when I was at school, I was really outcasted because of my father and because of my heritage. It was a very interesting time because I learned to think independently. I learned to distance myself from any sort of common ideas because I was basically an outsider. I thank the universe for this because it taught me to stand on my own. And Bruce Lee was that type of person. When I was looking up to Bruce Lee, I was seeing a man standing on his own and I was like that’s the sort of person I want to become. I want to breathe that in. 

GC: Have you ever practiced martial arts?

SLC: I never did martial arts. I went to dancing but a lot of my movements were informed by martial arts because I saw the elegance of it. I really believed in that. I was much more of a soft nature, a very feminine nature, and so I just went to dancing because there was more space for that aspect of me. I could go to Qigong or Tai Chi maybe. There’s certain forms that now would fit me very well. But back then, I didn’t know about all these things. I’ve always been about transformation and about integrating something but applying it to myself with my own nature, with my own sense of value systems. 

But I always kept connection. And so when I had this sort of existential crisis in 2007 where I was like just so tired of the arts world and it’s approach to our expressions, you know, the criticism and belittling the whole time, the difficulty to just simply have people truly be curious about what you’re about and not just telling you what you are and what you represent. There never was a space for that. Now, of course, it’s almost the other way around. The temple gave me a space where I could feel welcome even thought I understood nothing of Chinese. 

GC: Without the language, how did you connect?

SLC: I have people who were vegetarian like me back in the day – now I’m vegan – but I was vegetarian. I never drank alcohol in my whole life. I grew up as a Muslim so I never drank alcohol. So there was this connection with the temple where I never drank alcohol and they don’t drink, and I don’t eat meat and they never eat meat. I felt that even though I was in a space that I didn’t understand, there were a lot of value systems that were completely what I was experiencing. Even the young monks would say, ‘You choose not to eat meat?’ because they missed it. They were just human beings and they were like ‘Oh my God, we used to eat this and now I can’t eat this in the temple’. And I’m saying I chose this when I was 8 so it was nice to find my nature and elements of my nature. Not everything. I mean I’m definitely not a monk. But for sure there was a lot that I felt connected to. I felt safe. 

I think that’s an important one. I felt safe in the temple. In the rest of the world, I did not feel safe. I felt safer surrounded by very strong people because they really knew how to defend themselves. And at the same time, they also knew how to do that with the most gentle hearts and generous spirits, which is kind of a sort of a dream. Often in the West, when you have places where there’s a sort of physical discipline, there’s also some sort of extreme aggressiveness, even a mentality like soldiers. It can be the police or something. It’s all very, very controlling. What I like with the Shaolin monks is that there’s all this strength but it’s all about release deep down. It’s about releasing attachment, releasing from attachment, being able to be fully still. And for that you need an extremely developed body. You need to train your body and to become so strong that you can sit down for four hours without a problem because the compensation of all that hard work makes the body extremely resilient to really finding peace. Those were really big lessons for me as a choreographer, as a dancer, as an artist. It’s beautiful. 

GC: It’s just so fun to talk to artists like yourself because you’re so engaged. You have an incredible ability to explain your work.

SLC:  Well, you know, we have to because the thing is we care so much. And then, the older you get, the more you realize that there are people out there people who don’t care. And then you’re like ‘Oh God.’ You have to fight for this. I have to say how important this is, so we learn it with time. I didn’t when I was younger. I couldn’t talk. I had nothing. It was through making art that I found my voice. Now I dare to talk about the things that mattered to me. They mattered when I was 8 years old. I really feel like all this – 41 years have passed – but in some ways, in my heart, a lot of things are still the same things that matter. Some days I forget them because there’s so many conditionings we’re getting from the outside to sort of become heartless. But then, when the right person asked the right questions, or you get into this mode where I can reconnect to this part, without being afraid of it. 

This interview has been edited for conciseness and clarity.