Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui

Choreographer

Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, born in Antwerp, has been Artistic Director of the Royal Ballet of Flanders since 2015 and will move to the helm of the ballet company at the Grand Théâtre de Genève in 2022. In 2010, he founded his Antwerp-based company Eastman, which he continues to lead. After training at the Performing Arts Research and Training Studios in Brussels, he created his first choreographies as a member of Alain Platel's dance collective Les Ballets C de la B. His choreographies for Eastman, such as Babel(words), Puz/zle, 4D, TeZukA and Fractus V, have been honoured with numerous awards. He has worked as a choreographer with dance companies such as the Dutch National Ballet, the Ballet of the Opéra national de Paris, the GöteborgsOperans Danskompani, the Stuttgart Ballet and the Los Angeles Dance Project. He created the choreography for Joe Wright's 2012 film adaptation of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina and for the Ring des Nibelungen at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden. As an opera director, he staged Nicholas Lens' opera Shell Shock, Philipp Glass' opera Satyagraha and Pelléas et Mélisande. He has already directed Les Indes galantes (2016) and Alceste (2019) at the Bayerische Staatsoper. In 2022/23, he staged Hanjo by Toshio Hosokawa in Munich. His 2009 choreography Faun, set to music by Claude Debussy, is the first time a choreography by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui is entering the repertoire of the Bayerisches Staatsballett.

Information as of 2024