Coming to a ‘New World’
Jacob’s Pillow hosts choreographer’s first collaboration with US dance company
NEW YORK - Lithe as a panther, choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui curls into a ball on the floor of a studio at Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet’s Manhattan headquarters. He lifts his legs over his head into a shoulder stand, then rushes in circles like a trapped animal, eventually stopping to coach dancer Jason Kittelberger.
“Now let’s play for a couple of minutes and see what makes sense to you,’’ he says. Kittelberger launches into his interpretation of the moves, finishing in a sweat. “Good,’’ says Cherkaoui before starting another sequence in “Orbo Novo’’ (“New World’’), his new full-length work, which makes its world premiere at the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in Becket Wednesday through July 12.
At 32, Cherkaoui is a rising star of European dance, and the fact that he agreed to collaborate with Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet on his first piece for an American company, spending months on the process, is a major artistic coup for the bold young troupe. Add to the occasion a compelling commissioned score for piano and string quartet by Polish composer Szymon Brzoska, which will be played live at performances, and a commanding grid-like set by Elliot Norton Award-winning designer Alexander Dodge (“Brendan,’’ “Present Laughter’’), and you have all the ingredients for a blockbuster dance event.
Benoit-Swan Pouffer, artistic director of Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet, began planting the seeds for the collaboration three years ago after seeing Cherkaoui’s “Myth’’ in Amsterdam. “His work was a revelation,’’ says Pouffer, whose company has won cheers for presenting ground-breaking international choreographers, including Ohad Naharin, Angelin Preljocaj, and Luca Veggetti. “When he visited us, he loved the dancers’ diversity, athleticism, and openness. He immediately accepted the invitation to work with us. It’s been a fantastic experience.’’
The son of a Flemish mother and Moroccan father, the Belgian-born Cherkaoui creates visceral, fluid works with philosophical foundations, influenced in part by the techniques of William Forsythe and Pina Bausch. He has choreographed pieces for such companies as the Royal Danish Ballet and Belgium’s Les Ballets C. de la B. and collaborated with British choreographer Akram Khan on the award-winning “Zero Degrees.’’ For his last piece, “Sutra,’’ commissioned by London’s Sadler’s Wells, he worked with the Buddhist monks of China’s Shaolin Temple.
Cherkaoui titled his new piece “Orbo Novo,’’ after a 15th-century reference to the discovery of the Americas by a contemporary of Christopher Columbus. The name seemed especially fitting, as Cherkaoui had just arrived in bustling, chaotic New York from the tranquility of mountain monasteries in China.
But the new world he refers to in the dance is more internal than external, inspired by reading brain scientist Jill Bolte Taylor’s book “My Stroke of Insight,’’ which describes the insights she gained by surviving a stroke. Within the space of four brief hours, she observed her own mind deteriorate to the point at which she could not walk, talk, read, write, or recall any of her life.
As the damaged left side of her brain - the rational, grounded, detail- and time-oriented side - swung in and out of functioning, she alternated between two distinct and opposite realties: the euphoric nirvana of the intuitive right brain, in which she felt a sense of complete well-being and peace, and the logical, sequential left brain, which recognized she was having a stroke and enabled her to seek help before she was lost completely.
Fascinated with her experience, Cherkaoui began exploring the pervasive dualities found in life - a common thread in his past pieces - setting to work with the dancers to create a complex, emotional, many-layered dance.
“I wanted to convey the continuous struggle that goes on in our minds,’’ he says, “and how we migrate between two poles, creating and then slipping and seeping through borders, as people do going from country to country and from idea to idea, or as disease does when it spreads. It’s amazing how we can choose to blend with the environment and understand our shared flow of energy or choose to separate ourselves from it, choose not to connect.’’
Cherkaoui studied the dancers, trying to figure out what made each of them unique. “It was as if he wanted to find what suited us best,’’ says dancer Harumi Terayama. “He wanted to see what happened naturally. Then we advanced to his incredible acrobatic movement. Almost everything starts in the pelvis, with a powerful flow of energy. It’s as if he doesn’t believe in gravity. We stand on our hands, cartwheel, slither across the floor. We become as much animal as human.’’
Cherkaoui asked Dodge for a set that would represent borders but also be permeable. Dancers climb it, slide through its openings, and move it to create enclosed and open spaces.
But the most difficult aspect of “Orbo Novo’’ for the dancers was speaking lines from the book in the dance’s opening section. To help them, Cherkaoui asked them to watch a video of the author reading from “My Stroke of Insight’’ to see how the stroke had affected her body. “As dancers,’’ Kittelberger says, “we’re not used to talking onstage. But the way he led us into it was very physical. We would try to move as she spoke, embodying her words.’’
A dress rehearsal later in the day begins with dancers Jubal Batisti and Kristen Weiser standing on either side of the cage-like set, reaching through the bars to each other and withdrawing, then cupping each other’s faces and pulling back.
As the sound of a cello soars plaintively through the studio, Weiser slowly pulls herself through an opening and hangs upside down, arms dangling. In minutes, Cherkaoui has established his theme, begun building suspense, and set in motion the whirlwind that is “Orbo Novo.’’ 