Biography

Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui was born in 1976 in Antwerp, Belgium. He is a director and producer, known for Pan (2015), Anna Karenina (2012) and Rebel (2022).

International choreographer.

[on plotting choreography for 'Anna Karenina' with his actors] I talked a lot about how to be on your feet, so that they would generate a certain elegance or energy that would go all the way to the head. I also tried to make them understand that their body language is something we are constantly reading.

The aristocracy would have to be operated by the servants like puppets. We explored this idea that the aristocracy were reliant on the working class - that they couldn't move without them. But we also turned it around and did it the other way, because of course the reverse was equally true.

I love watching one dancer alone onstage, but - for me- solos are always connected to a form of loneliness. When people are together there is a union, and it can be tense, it can be romantic and dramatic and cold, but it's about how we relate and how we look into the mirror, which is another person. There was a mirror between Vronsky and Anna. There was a mirror between Kitty and Levin. There was even a mirror between Anna and Karinen.