Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui

Dance auteur and radical idealist. One of the big names in contemporary dance, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui is a Belgian-Moroccan choreographer whose work is characterised by a deep and resonant belief in the beauty of human collaboration and society – felt in the work as an almost spiritual intensity. His background is dance, though his style of choreography is influenced by his practice of contortion (he performs himself in many of his shows), and he's worked with various circus artists and acrobats in the past, notably with seventeen monks from the original Shaolin Temple in his piece Sutra.