Try to Have a Real Passion

Interview: Sidi Larby Cherkaoui

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  On 22^nd of March as the first performance on Belgrade Dance Festival 2019 in Sava Centar the choreography  Factus V was performed by Eastman company from Belgium. That was an opportunity to have an interview with its founder, choreographer and dancer Sidi Larby Cherkaoui. After his debuted as a choreographer in 1999 in the contemporary musical Anonymous Society he gained a broader acknowledgment with his work at Les Ballets C de la B. His collaboration with partner Damien Jalet and Akram Khan were highly prised and he has also collaborated with abundance of theatres, opera houses and ballet companies, like Geneva Ballet, Royal Danish Ballet, Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet in New York. As an resident artist in Toneelhuis Theater he won the Kairos Prize in 2009. After premiering Sutra in 2008 and working around the world collaborating with various artists, he founded his n in own company in 2010 called Eastman. He won his first Laurence Oliver Award for Best New Dance Production for Babel, and a second one for Puzzle. Since 2015, Cherkaoui is the artistic director at the Royal Ballet of Flanders and associate artist at Sadler's Wells, London.
  
  Thank You very much that You agreed to have an interview for Plesna Scena hr. Your performance was really astonishing. Tonight You are performing in Your performance Factus V together with Your Eastman Company. How do You find the time to be engaged in so many projects and to dance in them as well?
  
  Well, I don’t do anything else (laughter), this is the only thing I do. Some projects I have been done four, five years ago, some things I have toured for ten years so they have become a part of my vocabulary. I feel very comfortable performing the shows that I made a long time ago. So, in that sense is always a pleasure to go back to that pieces because they have an opportunity to grow, and always there are surprises. Today the audience was very close, we have some shift in the cast because of some circumstances and it was really interesting to try to find solutions among each other in one day. It was kind of exciting so I try to stay calm and do one thing at the time. It’s a bit like cooking, the water is boiling and, in the meantime, you are chopping the onions. You do many things at some time but actually you have to leave some things to still work for themselves.
  
  Now, when You look back on the enormous opus You made and many prises that You won are there any performances that you can highlight and the reason why is it so?

  I think all of them are kind of special to me, so it is not that I have one or something that I like more. Maybe I enjoy a lot doing a duet with Maria Pagés, Dunas. We have been doing it for ten years now and it is a Flamenco duet. She is really fantastic and I always want to be on the tour with her. She really knows how to carry the performance and I just feel its and honour to dance next to her, it’s a really pleasure.
  
  I like to perform Sutra with Shaolin Monks so it is also very special experience every time. So, yes, there are couple of projects that I enjoy but actually everything has its own little magic in life. I enjoyed collaborating with another choreographer Damien Jalet. We worked together on Babel, Bolero for the Paris Opera. Those shows are also very special because they only half mine and half his and so it’s like You share responsibility. Its always nice when people offer themselves to the work as much as You offer Yourself to the work.
  
  Although Your background is a contemporary dance You are at the moment artistic director of the Royal Ballet of Flanders. It is wonderful how You melt in Your work all possible dance styles in one coherent expression. What can You say, do You have any preferences to one or the other, or is there something You can call Yours personal style?
  
  I think My own style is often very fluid, so I try to create flow and waves inside the body, so in which ever style It would be, weather its hip-hop or even if You think of Swan Lake or places in a classical ballet where is kind of ondulation that happen in the body, those are the things I am really always interested in. I like hoe body can be a part of a flow. Next to that I love techniques like Tango because there is a real understanding of Your partner, and where Your partner is. You don’t have to see the partner to know where he or she is because You can feel the weight and the shift of weights so I think is the best technique to understand another person is Argentinian tango. I had a privilege to work with some performers for a Show called Milonga and I really enjoyed working them very much because I have learned so much. So sometimes are rhythmical things hat I find interesting that’s why I do keep working with people like Colin Dunne, he is an Irish step dancer, because I like how he listens, how his movement is creating sound. It’s the same with Maria Pagés. They are as much musicians as they are dancers. I think deep down I always want to be a musician so I think there is always a desire in me to keep developing as a musician as well.
  
  It is obvious that all Your life is dedicated to the dance. How can You manage to divide Your private life and You work?
  
  I don’t really divide it I mean my partner is also a dance and I think most of the things that I am passionate about I try to bring within into my art field.  When I was interested to directing for instance a play I did it in Japan, the story of manga. Things that I find interesting on a private level I always try to bring them in my professional life because I feel like it is like the painter that goes to paint a valley or something has a pleasure as much to be in this environment as to actually do his work. So, I think if You do work try to have a real passion for the work, but also try to find something to fulfil You on a private level as well. So, every time when it doesn’t fulfil me privately, I question it. That’s why I like touring with Maria or other because we are also friends. There is also a lot of care and love and I think sometimes the best art comes from this very personal engagement. It also makes You fragile, it makes sensitive to the criticism because You take everything very personal, but anyway as artist we all do. It is like the whole work is to find a way handle feedback from people, positive or negative.
  
  At the moment You are a roll model for many Young artists. Did You have any such personalities You related to when You were starting Your career?
  
  Well I was really a big fan of the work of Pina Bausch, I like a lot how Allan plotted worked I liked how Ann Theresa Keersmaeker was very methodical and mathematical about her approach to the score, I like geometry of movement of Forsythe, I liked release technique of Trisha Brown because I find it very logical, and I liked techniques that have to do with contact improvisation so anything where there is touch involved I enjoyed, so there are many things that I find interesting and I am always very intrigued by performers who are able to improvise very well. I am also impressed with a people who are very good in reproducing exactly the same thing, so it’s a quite wider range of things that I find beautiful, and I think the older I get I try to find any things beautiful because when You are a child you are always intrigued by everything but as You grow older You start to close off and I think one of the tasks we have is to try to keep ourselves open to things and not look away from whatever is coming at us. I was also a big fan of Cate Bush in her way of creating music that was coming from different cultures and always was hers, you could hear, her but also You hear the influences and I love that combination. So, there are many big influences kike many honest Canadian son writer. On many different fields I was influenced by the people from the pop culture and other places as well.
  
  You and Damien Jalet were the first persons that was awarded with United Humans Award for Mutual Respect. It says a lot about Your life attitudes. Can You tell us something about Your approach to life and dance in general?
  
  I am like everybody else. First thing is that I always wanted to connect to people, to understand them I always wanted people to understand me. I am always taking a time to make people understand each other, so I studied as a translator before I have studied as a Dancer and I was always interested in misunderstandings. Even from my childhood, you know I am half Moroccan, half Belgian and I noticed to what degree are prejudices everywhere, against everyone, from men to men, from men to women, from Moroccans to Flemish people and vice versa. I felt I belong everywhere and nowhere so I always try to explain the real meaning and find a way that people connect one to another. I think My greatest desire is to make people understand one another. Sometimes I fail but then I try to repair the situation, I am always been very sensitive my mother told me I felt everything and everyone around me, I was always sensitive towards animals and I always felt very fragile as a person. But this fragility eventually became my strength because I accepted it, I let myself to be myself I stopped pretending at some point and then people suddenly related differently to You, they don’t attack You so quickly and if they do there is because there is something still to be attacked and You can address that and discuss because I find it is important to keep an dialog open especially with the people You disagree with, which is difficult but it is the most important.
  
  Are there any possibilities that You might come to Croatia and tour or work there?
  
  It will be great to bring a show or to just perform and share the work. What is difficult with my work is that I often work with a people from Japan, Korea, India and England so they come from all parts of the world, from very far and that’s very expensive. If it is only for me, I would come more often.
  
  © Jasna Čižmek Tarbuk, PLESNA SCENA.hr, April 25, 2019