Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui

Born in Antwerp in 1976 and trained at the P.A.R.T.S. dance training centre in Brussels, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui was part of the world premiere cast of Alain Platel‘s Iets op Bach (1998) and made his choreographic debut in 1999 in Ostend with the piece Anonymous Society, staged by Andrew Wale. He then created the pieces Rien de Rien (2000), Foi (2003) and Tempus Fugit (2004) for the Ballets C de la B. In 2002, he created the piece d‘avant with Damien Jalet, Luc Dunberry and Juan Kruz Diaz de Garaio Esnaola, which was produced by Sasha Waltz and guests. This was followed in 2005 by the duo zero degrees, co-created with Akram Khan.
In 2008, Cherkaoui brought out the piece Sutra, in which he danced to music by Szymon Brzóska and in a room by Antony Gormley together with eighteen monks from the Shaolin monastery on Mount Songshan in China. In 2010, he founded his own company Eastman, which is based at deSingel cultural centre in Antwerp.
In 2014, he staged an opera fort he first time, Shell Shock, at Théâtre La Monnaie/De Muntschouwburg in Brussels, to music by Nicholas Lens with a libretto by Nick Cave. In 2015, he took over the direction of the Royal Ballet of Flanders, a position he held until 2022. With the start of season 2022/23, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui became Artistic Director of the ballet at Grand Théâtre de Genève.
In 2016, he made his debut with Les Indes galantes at Bayerische Staatsoper, followed by Alceste in 2019 and Hanjo in 2023 (at Haus der Kunst, Western Gallery). Other opera productions include Satyagraha at Theater Basel (2017) and Pelléas et Mélisande at the Vlaamse Opera (2018, together with Damien Jalet and Marina Abramović). In 2019, Cherkaoui made his Broadway debut as choreographer for the musical Jagged Little Pill.
Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui has also choreographed for Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo (In Memoriam, 2004 and Memento Mori, 2017), the Ballet de l'Opéra national de Paris (Boléro, 2013 and Casse-noisette in co-creation with Edouard Lock, Arthur Pita and Dmitri Tcherniakov, 2019), GöteborgsOperansDanskompani (Noetic, 2014 and Icon, 2016), Stuttgart Ballet (Der Feuervogel, 2015), the Martha Graham Dance Company (Mosaic, 2017) and the Royal Ballet (Medusa, 2019).
In 2011, Sidi Larbi received the Prix Benois de la Danse in the ‘Best Choreography’ category for Babel (words), which he created together with Damien Jalet. In 2009, he had already been awarded the KAIROS Prize of the Alfred Toepfer Foundation F.v.S. In 2023, he was made a baron by King Philippe of Belgium.


Information as of 2024