Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui in Geneva: “The Shaolin monks changed my art, I had never felt so close to myself”

Without them, maybe he wouldn’t be doing any more shows, he breathes. The choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui finds these days 21 Shaolin monks, 21 winged swordsmen, 21 cheetahs who, in 2008, offered through Sutra, a galvanic epic. The quest of a young foreigner who seeks his face and his soul in a tribe of initiates. This is how the London audience at Sadler’s Wells experienced this calligraphic upheaval – except for the dragon’s tail – that the audience at the Festival d’Avignon then gave this Chinese mare a standing ovation.