Sutra

It was in China, in the shadows of the celestial mountains, that Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui created the imaginary landscapes of Sutra, a unique show for nineteen Buddhist monks, including three children – all experts in martial arts – and himself.

Fascinated as a youth by the agility and bodily mastery of Bruce Lee, the choreographer decided to approach the Shaolin monks and put them on stage in a show where dance and martial arts are combined and complete each other, eventually becoming inseparable. On stage, 17 Buddhist monks from the Shaolin temple brilliantly showcase elements of t’ai chi, kung fu and contemporary dance. Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui is exploring new ground. He designed this piece as the dream of a child fascinated by martial arts. He has joined forces with the sculptor Antony Gormley, who has designed an astonishing set decoration for the occasion. This dance piece, which is at once profoundly hypnotic, entertaining and athletic, presents a stunning confrontation of East and West and questions both the conflict of generations and cultures and our view of the world and 

of others.

‘Sutra’ is a form of travel journal which led Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui to one of the sources of his inspiration: the Shaolin temple in China, the birthplace of kung fu. In this mythical place, we come across the ghost of Bruce Lee and one of the most elaborate forms of bodily thought in the world, monastic spirituality and the practice of martial arts.

Working on-site at the Henan monastery, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui sought a dual initiation: he learnt the movements, rituals, rhythms and intuitions of the monks of the Shaolin temple, while offering them a contemporary choreographic framework made up of other capacities of the body, other speeds and musicalities. This exchange, made into a show on stage, resembles the learning process of a new language, written between East and West, that respects the tradition of kung fu and gives it an original point of view. It is as though we are being taken to the very origins of an art form that is also a lifestyle. The body and its energy – mastered, liberated, vital, animal – bring the stage alive in ‘Sutra’, where seventeen Shaolin monks surround Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui in a choreography that avoids folkloric reconstitution in order to better reinvent a philosophy of life through its paces and pauses, its bursts and withdrawals, its apparent vivacity and its internal relaxation, its animal inspiration and its spiritual desires. British artist Antony Gormley has composed the visual and scenographic aspect of this world, while the Polish musician Szymon Brzóska has created his most intimate, revelatory piece, between impulsive rhythm and melancholic wisdom. In this strange area, where bodies draw on all available means while conserving the soothing powers of meditation, a physical language is written, made up of tradition and modernity, substance and the imaginary, that aims to build a bridge between a civilisation and the eyes discovering it; a maiden voyage that leads to the beauty of movement.