Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui
Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui defies easy description: choreographer, opera director, dancer, composer, pianist, draftsman… and a maker who works across multiple disciplines and platforms that include cinema, Broadway, music videos, opera, museum installations, and community art. The director of the Ballet of the Grand Théâtre de Genève first appeared on the international scene as a startlingly limber performer, and, immediately after, as a prolific choreographer with a remarkable ability to create worlds entire to themselves, worlds where movement and music and architecture meld seamlessly.
While artistic director of Eastman, his contemporary dance company founded in 2010, and associate artist at London’s Sadler’s Wells and the National Theater of Brittany in Rennes, Cherkaoui also helmed Ballet Vlaanderen (Royal Ballet of Flanders) between 2015 and 2022. His journey as a ballet choreographer, though, began more than 15 years ago. The first invitation to the realm of western classical dance came from Jean-Christophe Maillot and Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo, for whom he made In Memoriam (2004), early in his career: this relationship also produced the unflinching yet beautiful gaze on colonial legacy, Mea Culpa (2006), and 2017’s somber reflection on mortality, Memento Mori.
Memorable work with ballet companies across Europe includes Loin (2005, originally made for the Grand Théâtre du Genève), End (2006, for the Cullberg Ballet), L’Homme de Bois (2006, for the Royal Danish Ballet), Labyrinth (2011, for the Dutch National Ballet), Boléro (2013, for the Paris Opera Ballet with choreographer Damien Jalet and performance artist Marina Abramović), L’Oiseau de Feu (2015, for Stuttgart Ballet), Medusa (2019, for the Royal Ballet in London), and Laid in Earth (2021, for the English National Ballet). Cherkaoui made Fall (2015), Exhibition (2016), and Requiem (2017) with the dancers of the Royal Ballet of Flanders after joining the company as artistic director. He has also created pieces for celebrated principal dancers including Natalia Osipova (the trio Qutb, 2016), Carlos Acosta (the duet Mermaid, 2017), and Marie-Agnès Gillot and Friedemann Vogel (a site-responsive duet from Firebird for the Fondation Louis Vuitton, 2017).
Cherkaoui first experienced the world of opera when he was invited to choreograph Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen (2010–13), directed by Guy Cassiers at Teatro alla Scala in Milan. As an opera director, he debuted at La Monnaie with the creation of Shell Shock, A Requiem of War (2014) by Nicholas Lens and Nick Cave. Since then, Cherkaoui has directed Rameau’s Baroque opus Les Indes galantes (2016), Gluck’s Alceste (2019), and Toshio Hosokawa’s Hanjo (2023) at Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich; Philip Glass’ minimalist Satyagraha (2017) at Theater Basel, Komische Oper Berlin, and Opera Vlaanderen; Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande (2018) with Damien Jalet at Opera Vlaanderen; and Mozart’s Idomeneo (2024) at the Grand Théâtre de Genève.
Cherkaoui’s affinity for ballet and opera has led to some of his most enduring and high-profile works, as well as exciting
cross-arts collaborations with visual artists including Marina Abramović, Amine Amharech, Hans Op de Beeck, and Chiharu Shiota; designers including Hedi Slimane, Karl Lagerfeld, Riccardo Tisci, Jan-Jan Van Essche, Dries Van Noten, and Yuima Nakazato); and musicians such as A Filetta, Woodkid, and Felix Buxton.
Cherkaoui’s contemporary dance productions have been feted across the globe, from the debut of the full-length, Nijinski Award-winning Rien de Rien (2000) and early company works like Foi (2003) and Origine (2008) to the more recent Fractus V (2015), Nomad (2019), and Vlaemsch (chez moi) (2022). Cherkaoui’s insatiable curiosity about other movement languages and artistic legacies has led to multiple virtuosic and moving experiences; along with this production of Sutra, these include zero degrees (2005) alongside Akram Khan; Dunas (2009) with flamenca Maria Pagés; Play (2011) beside kutchipudi danseuse Shantala Shivalingappa; Session (2019) with Irish traditional dance exponent Colin Dunne; and an Accident/a Life (2024), a dance-theater solo directed with and for Marc Brew.
The last decade has seen increased forays into choreography for cinema, theater, and pop music. Collaborations with filmmaker Joe Wright resulted in memorable celluloid ventures including Anna Karenina in 2012 and Cyrano in 2022. Cherkaoui teamed up again with Wright as co-director and choreographer on a searing stage adaptation of Aimé Césaire’s A Season in the Congo (2013). He also choreographed Lyndsey Turner’s 2015 production of Hamlet at the Barbican Centre in London. With Bunkamura in Tokyo, he directed Pluto (2015), based on the award-winning manga series by Naoki Urasawa and Takashi Nagasaki, and Evangelion Beyond (2023), an original play showing an alternative version of Hideaki Anno’s Evangelion franchise.
Since the mid-2010s, Cherkaoui has choreographed several of Beyoncé’s music videos and stage performances, beginning with a medley performance from Lemonade for the 2017 Grammy Awards and continuing right up to the music video for the 2019 song “Spirit,” a single originally composed for the soundtrack of The Lion King. That same year, Cherkaoui made his Broadway debut as choreographer for the Alanis Morissette musical Jagged Little Pill, directed by Diane Paulus and with a book by Diablo Cody, for which he picked up a Tony Award nomination in the Best Choreography for a Musical category, the first Belgian artist to be so honored. Cherkaoui is also the movement director behind the 2022 revival of Michel Berger and Luc Plamondon’s rock-opera Starmania, which received a Q d’Or, two Molières, and two Trophées de la Comédie Musicale. Most recently, he choreographed several songs for Madonna’s CELEBRATION tour, among others “Like a Prayer” and “Holiday.”
Indeed, the awards and nominations are a useful shorthand when considering the wide range of Cherkaoui’s talent. His work has picked up a staggering number of honors, including two Olivier Awards, three Tanz Awards, a Giraldillo Award, the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award, an Ultima from the Flemish government, and the Kairos Prize for his services to art and culture. There are more unusual honors, as well, such as a Fred and Adele Astaire Award—otherwise known as the Oscars of dance in cinema—for his choreography of Joe Wright’s Anna Karenina starring Keira Knightley and Jude Law, and the recognition as “young artist for intercultural dialogue between the Arab World and the West,” conferred by UNESCO in 2011. Among the latest honors are the 2019 Fedora–Van Cleefs Prize for Ballet for Invisible Cities, which he choreographed and co-directed with Leo Warner, as well as an MTV Video Music Awards nomination for Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s “Apeshit,” shot at the Louvre Museum in Paris. In 2023, the King of Belgium announced that Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui will be conferred the title of Baron, the first Belgian Baron of North African descent.
—Karthika Naïr