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Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui defies easy description: choreographer, opera director, dancer, actor, scenographer, composer. He is the artistic director of the Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève (and former director of the ballet department at Opera Ballet Vlaanderen), as well as of Eastman, his contemporary dance company in Antwerp. He is also an associate artist at Sadler’s Wells Theatre in London and Théâtre National de Bretagne in Rennes.
Cherkaoui may just as easily be found in the Louvre Museum, choreographing a music video for Beyoncé and Jay-Z (Apeshit, 2018 MTV Music Video Awards-nominated), as at the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich, directing a radical version of Jean-Philippe Rameau’s baroque opera Les Indes galantes (2016). He could also be working at the Shaolin Temple in Song Shan, Henan, alongside a battalion of kung fu warrior monks and sculptor Antony Gormley (Sutra, 2008), or creating movement magic at Tokyo’s Bunkamura Theatre, transforming Naoki Urasawa and Takashi Nagasaki’s award-winning manga series into a kinetic, high-octane play (Pluto, 2015).
The thirst to dialogue and collaborate with his counterparts has been another constant in Cherkaoui’s artistic DNA. 生长genesis (2013) with the Chinese dancer Yabin Wang, Dunas (2009) alongside flamenco exponent María Pagès, zero degrees (2005) with contemporary-Kathak wunderkind Akram Khan, and OOK (2002), where Nienke Reehorst and Cherkaoui worked with the actors of Theater Stap, are just a few examples. More recently, he teamed up with Irish traditional dance exponent Colin Dunne to create the duo Session (2019), and directed An Accident / A Life (2024), a solo for Marc Brew that tells the story of his car accident, where he went from ballet dancer to paraplegic in an instant.
The slew of awards Cherkaoui has picked up reflects his genre-transcending prolificity. These include the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award (2022), two Olivier Awards (2011 for Babel(words) with Damien Jalet, and 2014 for Puz/zle), three Tanz Awards for Best Choreographer (2008, 2011, 2017), a Fred & Adele Astaire Award for Joe Wright’s Oscar and BAFTA-nominated Anna Karenina (2012), and the Nijinsky Award for Promising Choreographer (2002) for Rien de Rien, his first full-length production.
Cherkaoui’s acclaim extends far beyond the dance world. In 2009, he was awarded the Kairos Prize by the Alfred Toepfer Stiftung in recognition of his artistic philosophy and quest for cultural dialogue. In 2016, he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Antwerp, followed by the Europe Prize Theatrical Realities (2018) for his “never-ending commitment to new collaborations with artists from all over the world.” In 2019, he was conferred the title of “Commandeur dans l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres” by the French government. In 2020, he was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Choreography for his work on the musical Jagged Little Pill, based on Alanis Morissette’s eponymous album. He received the Ultima for General Cultural Merits from the Flemish government in 2023. This year, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui will be the first Belgian of North-African origin to receive the title of Baron from the Belgian Royal Palace.
In recent years, Cherkaoui has presented several of his works in Austria, including Fractus V, Vlaemsch (chez moi), and Corrupt (part of The Seven Sins by Gauthier Dance). In the upcoming season, Tanz Linz will introduce two more of his works to Austrian audiences, with the restaging of Fall and Orbo Novo.
2025