”… I think of dance as the most current, the most up-to-date history lesson,
as it is in a constant relationship with its most recent past and can only happen in the present…”
Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui
Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s debut as a choreographer was in 1999 with Andrew Wales’ ‘contemporary musical’, Anonymous Society. Since then he has made more than 15 fully-fledged choreographic pieces and picked up a slew of awards, including the Fringe First award in Edinburgh, the Special Prize at the BITEF Festival in Belgrade, the Promising Choreographer prize at the Nijinsky Awards in Monte Carlo, the Movimentos award in Germany, and the Helpmann award from Australia in 2007. Cherkaoui fuses techniques – including hip hop, modern, jazz, ballet, Irish, African and Kathak – into his own choreographic style. His works are theatrical, dynamic, music-driven productions which also led him to choreograph movements for the recent film Anna Karenina.
Eastman, founded in January 2010, was set up to produce and spread the work of its artistic director/choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. His work provides the audience with a vast array of projects and collaborations; ranging from contemporary dance, theatre, ballet, opera, musical and other forms of performance. His non-hierarchical thinking on movement, body language and culture is the basis of his artistic approach. Based in his native harbor city of Antwerp (Belgium), Eastman forms the central point for all of Cherkaoui’s work, and is resident at deSingel International Art Campus (Antwerp). Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui is also an associate artist at Sadler’s Wells (London, UK).
During the workshop you will be confronted with Eastman’s dance vocabulary and have the chance to explore a variety of different styles and techniques, that influence Cherkaoui’s dance language. The starting points of this workshop are the ideas,
which were researched when creating Puz/zle in 2012.
Our aim on this workshop is to bring the performers/dancers in touch with some of the tasks from which Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui had made his latest company piece “PUZ/ZLE”.
The workshop will be focusing on the bodies individually in order to produce a very specific fashion of movement where principle elements of the body are in major priority such as gravity fluency flexibility extension folding unfolding and most of all the transfer of body in space and its levels.
Following that as you have prepared the bodies with several tasks over some of the principle qualities, we will attempt to conjoin the bodies in groups where personal material are evolving with external influences as they co-exist in space, a very important task is to learn how you can match/connect our body with its movement identity with other people’s energy and flow and finally create an image that contains everyone’s presence in a complimentary state like in puz/zle.
The works
hop will be lead by Elias Lazaridis. Elias was born in Kavala, Greece in 1981 and began his training at the age of eight in classical ballet. Later on he became an athlete and participated in international competitions (including winning 400m hurdle events) while he was studying architecture. But his zeal for dance was undiminished and he completed his dance formation at the State School of dance in Athens while he was working part-time for the Greek National Opera and adLibdances / Kat Válastur. Later on he moved to Brussels for further studies at P.A.R.T.S. (Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker) where he came in touch with various contemporary techniques.
Elias Lazaridis has danced for Hofesh Shechter (Uprising/In your rooms) and Akram Khan (Vertical Road, Confluence, London 2012 Olympic Ceremony). While on tour, he provided workshops on the repertoire of both companies. Lazaridis started working with Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui in 2009. He performed in Das Rheingold, Babel(words)and Puz/zle. He also participated on the opening act for the movie Anna Karenina, directed by Joe Wright for which Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui helmed the choreography.
Information
This two day workshop is open to Intermediate, advanced and professional dancers as well as dance students from full-time vocational courses, who are looking to enrich their practice and to those who have particular interest in the style of Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s work. Please make sure you have appropriate technical training in order to get the most out of the experience.
Participants must be 16 years of age or over / Early Bird Offer £120 before 8th Apr, £140 thereafter / Limited availability, booked on a first come first served basis
We regret that Danceworks cannot make any refunds. Please make sure you can make the date before committing to this workshop.
(all information correct at the time of print)
THIS WORKSHOP IS NOW SOLD OUT