✦ Who He Is ✦
Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui grew up in Antwerp, the son of a Flemish mother and Moroccan father, and came to choreography through hip-hop and street dance before formal training. He founded his own company, Eastman, based in Antwerp, and from 2015 to 2022 served as artistic director of the Royal Ballet of Flanders — bringing a contemporary, internationally collaborative sensibility to a classical institution.
His work is defined by collaboration across disciplines and cultures as a starting principle rather than a novelty: he has built full productions around Shaolin monks, flamenco dancers, Beijing opera performers, and Sufi musicians, treating each tradition's physical vocabulary as source material to be studied and shared rather than simply staged alongside ballet.
Signature Works
Zero Degrees (2005)
A duet created and performed with British-Bangladeshi choreographer Akram Khan, built around a real border-crossing experience, blending Khan's kathak training with Cherkaoui's contemporary vocabulary.
Sutra (2008)
Created with a cast of Shaolin monks and a set of wooden boxes designed by sculptor Antony Gormley, staging the physical discipline of Shaolin kung fu as a form of contemporary dance theatre.
Babel(words) (2010)
Co-created with Damien Jalet and a multinational cast of dancers, exploring language, borders, and belonging on a stage framed by Gormley's suspended aluminum grid structures.
Screen & Popular Culture
Cherkaoui choreographed the 2012 film adaptation of Anna Karenina directed by Joe Wright, and has created movement for Beyoncé and other popular musicians.
Style & Method
Rather than imposing a single house style, Cherkaoui typically builds each work from long research and improvisation periods with collaborators trained outside conventional Western concert dance — martial artists, folk dancers, musicians — then choreographs a shared vocabulary that lets those different physical traditions speak to one another on stage without flattening their distinctness.
A Genuinely International Career
Few contemporary choreographers have worked as widely, or as literally, across cultures as Cherkaoui: alongside his own company, he has made work with National Ballet of Canada, Cullberg, and opera houses across Europe, in addition to his 2015–2022 tenure running a historic Belgian ballet institution. That range reflects his working method as much as ambition — because each Cherkaoui piece typically begins by bringing in collaborators from outside conventional ballet training, every new company he works with effectively expands the pool of physical traditions his choreographic language can draw on.
Legacy
Cherkaoui's tenure at the Royal Ballet of Flanders demonstrated that a classical ballet institution could be led by a choreographer whose own work sits well outside the classical repertoire, widening what audiences expect a ballet company's identity to include.
His long-running creative partnership with Akram Khan, beginning with Zero Degrees, remains one of the clearest examples on this site of two choreographers from different training backgrounds building a genuinely shared vocabulary rather than simply alternating solos.