"Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui is almost offended when I suggest he's a busy man. When people tell me, You do so much,' I cringe, says the artistic director of the Grand Theatre de Geneve the largest stage in Switzerland, with its ballet and opera companies who runs his own company Eastman in his native city of Antwerp. He is also the creator of contemporary dance-theatre productions and a choreographer for film (Joe Wright's Anna Karenina and Cyrano),"
"He squirms when I ask how many nights he spends at home. Umm, does it matter? he says by way of gentle deflection, wary of the modern way of conflating busyness with worth. Everybody is working hard. My mother worked harder than I'm working. I don't have kids, I don't know how to cook. I don't know how to drive. I just work, you know, and this is what I do. My life and work are the same thing. Perhaps sometimes it doesn't feel like work."
"When Cherkaoui first met Madonna and had a long conversation about the choreography for her Celebration tour, it did not cost me any energy, he says. He was already a huge fan. I knew all the songs, I knew the lyrics. It's like my whole life I was studying Madonna. What was she like to work with? Inspiring, he says. She's the most honest artist I've known. She really doesn't give a fuck. We have to face the pain'"
Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui serves as artistic director of the Grand Theatre de Geneve and founded Eastman in Antwerp. He creates contemporary dance-theatre and choreographs for film, musicals and pop artists. Nine of his works are being performed worldwide in a single autumn, including An Accident/A Life, a collaboration with Marc Brew about the car accident that left Brew paralysed from the neck down, and the UK premiere of Vlaemsch (Chez Moi). He resists equating busyness with worth, describes his life and work as the same thing, and values creative collaborations such as his work with Madonna.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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