Yulia Yurchak | Sidi Larbi "Sutra"

Form is emptiness, emptiness is form,Form is nothing but emptiness,Emptiness is nothing but form.The same is true for feelings,Perceptions, mental activity, and consciousness.Heart Sutra
Choreography and its possibilities have proven inexhaustible. Many contemporary choreographers work at the limits of the human body, and sometimes even beyond. Here, they are forced to turn to the means of not only academic ballet, but also to incorporate techniques from other dance styles, acrobatics, and even martial arts.The performance "Sutra" was created by the Belgian choreographer of Moroccan descent, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, in collaboration with the British sculptor Antony Gormley, a Turner Prize winner, to music by the Polish composer Szymon Brzoska. The production premiered in London in May 2008. It combines kung fu martial arts techniques, contemporary choreography, and dynamic installation. The production is a complete, creatively conceived contemporary dance performance that combines stage innovation, unusual choreography, and a powerful emotional impact on the audience. It combines kung fu martial arts techniques, contemporary choreography, and dynamic installation.
To create this production, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui traveled to Shaolin and brought back real monks. The choreographer admitted that it was memories of Bruce Lee's kung fu films that inspired him to create this production.A sutra, also known as a sutta (Sanskrit for "thread"), is a laconic and fragmentary statement in ancient Indian literature, often referred to as an aphorism or, later, a collection of such statements, characterized by imagery, aphorisms, and parables, which expounded almost all the religious and philosophical teachings of ancient India. It is a collection of intelligent thoughts, structured in the form of a dialogue.The monks brought kung fu techniques to the work—coordinated, precise, and sharp movements, which Cherkaoui transformed into a unique choreography. The language of modern choreography, combined with martial arts techniques, proved to be strikingly and organically compatible.As in many productions by other choreographers, the performers interact with objects on stage, in this case, wooden boxes. These props have a multifaceted semantic load, and their meaning in the performance changes depending on the position of the boxes (standing, lying, or moving). The boxes are sometimes arranged in a checkerboard pattern, sometimes in a row, sometimes diagonally, sometimes stacked like giant bookcases, sometimes like the petals of a giant, slowly blossoming flower, sometimes pushing each other like dominoes.
These boxes, which (depending on their use) can also be beams, beds, or even coffins, feature throughout the performance, becoming full-fledged characters. The performers bring the props to life in their own right. The rectangular wooden objects are so imaginatively transformed that they share a life on stage with the actors. Seemingly ordinary, three-dimensional geometric objects simply move on stage, but when interacting with the performers, they acquire a specific semantic meaning depending on the context of the situation.They become the embodiment of a burden, a person's past, their karma, or, if we turn to Buddhist philosophy, a certain restraining factor, sin, and the life events that a person accumulates over the course of their existence. They are stacked like cabinets and arranged like dominoes; pull-ups and arm twists are performed inside them, with both an adult and a child inside simultaneously; people jump on them, drag them, use them to create a spiral chain of destinies; people sleep in them, stacked one on top of the other, as if in a morgue. The most common and practiced position is to sling this burden on one's back, like ants building a nest, and drag it along, like Jesus carrying his own cross. Here, we see a characteristic blend of European and Eastern cultures, worldviews, and religions, characteristic of Sidi Larbi.Each of the wooden boxes has a small double: in the left corner of the stage, a model of it is constructed, similar to those made by set designers. No matter what intricate geometric patterns emerge from the large pencil cases on stage, the design is invariably repeated—or rather, anticipated, modeled—on a miniature auxiliary "testing ground."
To the accompaniment of melancholic music, seventeen Shaolin monks demonstrate a masterful sense of partnership, soaring in unison to the top of wooden pedestals, masterfully mastering their bodies, arms, legs, somersaults, rises and falls, hangs, balances, and lightning-fast movements.A change of place. They exist as a parable, outside of a specific narrative labyrinth, while visually maintaining a constant conflict between friend and foe, Europe and the East, the physical and the spiritual.
The movements of Shaolin martial arts styles are based on contemplation and observation of the habits of wild animals (the so-called "animal" styles: tiger, snake, crane, praying mantis, and monkey). In the choreography, the monks demonstrate all these movements, but due to the fact that their practical function is eliminated, and pure movement remains in itself, it acquires a new meaning, significance in a different space, time, and context. It can be interpreted as a symbol of the expression of the human body's internal energy, which it strives to convey to the outside world, thus revealing itself within it (this is how the choreographer himself interprets it). Or one can simply admire its beauty. Because, having lost its practical value in this case, it acquires a new value – aesthetic, artistic. A martial gesture becomes a dance gesture.On stage are a seven-year-old boy, a group of twenty-year-old youths, and a forty-year-old mentor. Their performance reveals all the nuances of the relationships between father and son, teacher and students, and students among themselves. Obedience and rebellion, the recognition of oneself as a single entity uniting against an outsider, and the assertion of one's own individuality. Choreographic, or rather, acrobatic miniatures follow one another. Each has its own mini-plot, and together they form a semblance of an inescapable and solemn saga of growing up., The performance portrays the relationships between generations with particular clarity. The moral aspects of the upbringing and maturation of descendants are thought-provoking. In production, as in life, everything goes through thorns, each with its own. In addition to the captivating choreography, the ballet also includes acrobatics. This inexorably keeps the audience in a state of constant emotional tension. A young student at the Shaolin Monastery tries to imitate his elders. Not everything works out, but he tries because he has the reliable support of his senior mentor nearby.Each episode is symbolic and transparent. The master and the 10-year-old student build a model out of wooden pencil cases, as if playing chess, while behind them, monks replicate the same construction at a human scale, stacking plywood boxes, hiding in them, and then reappearing on stage. People and objects are equivalent, and from both, universal formulas of the universe are constructed: large and small, one and many, emptiness and fullness.As the choreographer himself says, the meaning of this production is that everyone must understand themselves in this life: “You must grow from a youth into a man, and how you envision yourself in this role is up to you. You can follow in the footsteps of the Buddha, or you can become a mechanism controlled by others. The choice is yours.”A series of scenes in which people and objects move actively replace one another, yet, as in Eastern practices, the external dynamics do not imply any internal dynamics. This performance can be viewed in two ways: directly contemplating, capturing the action in one moment, as it slips through your fingers like sand (which is preferable), or attempting to disassemble the mechanism, comprehending what you see after each shift in the mise-en-scène-installation.The musical accompaniment for the performance also differs from that of all the productions we've previously reviewed.The author of the musical score is the young Polish composer Szymon Brzoska (1981), a graduate of the I.J. Paderewski Academy of Music and the Royal Flemish Conservatory in Antwerp. The composer is particularly interested in the synergy between music and other arts, actively collaborating with renowned ballet dancers from around the world. Film music is also a focus of Szymon Brzoski's work.
As the composer himself states in an interview, when creating the music for "Sutra," he was guided specifically by the principles of soundtrack composition. The stage action, being extremely dynamic and intense, and also very specific due to the complete absence of classical ballet movements, required a minimalist musical accompaniment that would not steal the show but rather create a certain mood and atmosphere. At the same time, one of the music's goals was to highlight moments of greatest tension and activity. Thus, the movement of the dancers on stage determines the movement in the music. The relationship between music and choreography in this example is interferential; two independent sequences interact by superimposing the properties of one on the other. According to Sidi Larbi, he was attracted to Brzoski's music for its main quality, which, in his opinion, corresponded to the spirit of the production: its meditative nature.
Indeed, the music for this production contains many references to the musical traditions of China and Japan, the main difference between which isthe meditative quality, the absence of any obvious dynamic development of the musical material, which is based on the principle of linearity. The musicians are minimal: two violins, cello, percussion, and piano (the composer himself performed this part in the production).
The melody features a pentatonic scale and a 12-tone scale (as in the Chinese lu-lu system), a transparent texture (the instruments enter alternately, rarely all playing simultaneously), imitation of oriental instruments (koto, shamisen) on the strings, and the active use of percussion and rhythms characteristic of oriental music. Overall, the ensemble's sound is reminiscent of gagaku orchestras (which are directly related to Shinto worship). At the same time, the principle of constructing and developing the material, as with minimalist composers (and Brzoska himself considers himself to belong to this movement), is based on the repetition of pitch and rhythmic patterns and their variation. The ballet's use of background music draws parallels with the film genre, which often employs minimalist composers (M. Nyman, F. Glass) for its soundtracks, as the highly dynamic imagery requires less garish and distracting music.
As in the ballet "In Memoriam," the musicians share the stage with the dancers, only slightly elevated, and are separated from them by a translucent white backdrop (two more such walls form a kind of white booth, where all the onstage action takes place). This restriction, this delineation of space, helps the audience focus on the smallest details occurring onstage.Even separated from the main stage, the musicians are still full participants in the overall action. Music, choreography, and set design all exist in the same time and space (as in Merce Cunningham's early performances), and they actively interact within this same space. Since this production lacks a clear plot, as in classical ballet, and the entire performance is essentially a parable, a free, figurative narrative, even the audience is a participant in this action, forming their impressions solely based on their own perceptions, worldview, and life stereotypes. Each person's conclusion from this parable will be highly personal.
Thus, we can conclude that contemporary ballet is currently moving toward the ultimate blurring (expanding—dispersing, diffusing) of genre boundaries through the fusion, interaction, and even assimilation of other art forms and movements that go beyond the traditional concept of "art." A particularly characteristic feature is the appeal to philosophical and religious teachings and practices associated with them (which dates back to the productions of Cunningham, who was fascinated by Nietzscheanism and Buddhism).Ballet in the modern world is proving to be the most radical and rapidly evolving genre, adapting to a rapidly changing world. This is primarily due to the fact that ballet is a body-oriented art. At its core is a person's desire and ability to do something with the body.
Compared to opera, ballet is a more conservative and traditional genre. This is primarily due to the performers. While contemporary ballet often features dancers without formal training, the main criteria for their selection are physical attributes, unique personalities, and charisma. However, to perform in opera, a singer must have a typical personality and vocal performance qualities, as well as an academic musical education that ensures proper voice placement. Furthermore, ballet dancers, unlike singers, are more physically and, consequently, psychologically liberated, which allows for greater mental flexibility and a willingness to experiment in their work.
In contemporary ballet, the body becomes a material substance that must be imbued with new qualities. And all genre searches in modern choreography come down to the search for and definition of these qualities and attempts to express them through new linguistic movement means.
Watch the excerpt