Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui

Flemish-Moroccan. Choreographer. Draughtsman. Vegan. Homosexual. A child of the suburbs. Artistic Director of Royal Ballet Flanders and his own company, Eastman. Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui never fails to remind us that our identities are fluid and multiple, never monolithic nor static. His thirst to dialogue and join hands with his counterparts has been a constant in Cherkaoui’s artistic DNA, and resulted over the past 18 years in pieces like 生长genesis with the Chinese dancer Yabin Wang, Dunas alongside flamenco exponent María Pagès and OOK, made with Nienke Reehorst and the mentally disabled actors of Theater Stap. But Cherkaoui’s collaborations cut across all artistic disciplines: cinema, with Joe Wright’s Anna Karenina; theatre, with Pluto, for the Bunkamura Theatre in Tokyo; the opera Shell Shock for La Monnaie in Brussels; and sequences of Cirque du Soleil shows Michael Jackson ONE and Kurios.

The slew of awards he has picked up reflects this genre-transcending prolificity. They include two Olivier Awards (in 2011 for Babel (words) with Damien Jalet, and in 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, back in 2002 for Rien de Rien, his first full-length production. Acclaim has come from far beyond the field of dance too: in 2009, Cherkaoui was awarded the Kairos Prize by Alfred Toëpfer Stiftung in recognition of his artistic philosophy and his quest for cultural dialogue. In 2016, he received an honorary doctorate by the University of Antwerp, then the Europe Prize Theatrical Realities (2018) for “his never-ending commitment in new collaborations with artists from all over the world”, and was conferred the title of "Commandeur dans l'ordre des Arts et des Lettres" by the French Government in 2019