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zero degrees (2005)
zero degrees is the reference point where everything
begins…and everything ends" - akram khan
Premiere: 8 July 2005, Sadler's Wells, London An
exciting collaboration between Akram Khan and Sidi
Larbi, this is an opportunity to see these remarkable
artists working with sculptor Antony Gormley and
composer Nitin Sawhney. Khan and Larbi first met i n
2000 when they quickly discovered strong similarities
in their work. Both are sons of Islamic families
brought up in Europe, and both draw upon this meeting
of cultures, combining complex Indian Kathak dance with
the speed and precision of contemporary
movements. zero degrees was borne out of their longing
to create work together, and follows them on a journey
to seek the reference point, the source, the '0' at
life's core. Inspired by their own dual identities, the
two search for this middle point throu gh polar
opposites; becoming/death, light/dark,
chaos/order. Creating the environment for this journey
is artist Antony Gormley, most famous for his 'Angel of
the North' sculpture. Working closely with the two
dancers, his design will reflect the concept of duality
explored in zero degrees. Specially commissioned music
is by composer/producer Nitin Sawnhey. This is a rare
chance to see
four of today's
greatest artists
join forces.
Artistic
Directors,
Choreographers
and Performers Akram Khan, Sidi
Larbi Cherkaoui
Composer Nitin Sawhney
Lighting
Designer Mikki Kunttu Sculptor Anton Gormley
Costume Designer – Kei Ito
Musicians
: Laura Anstee - cello
Coordt Linke percussion Faheem Mazhar - vocals
Alies Sluiter violin
Producers
Farooq Chaudhry (Akram Khan Company)
and
Lieven Thyrion (Les Ballets C. de la
B.)
Dramaturge - Guy Cools
Production Manager Fabiana Piccioli
Sound Engineer - Nicolas Faure
Stage
Manager - Natan Rosseel
Casts - Steve Haynes
Text Akram Khan
Duration: 75 minutes
Akram Khan
Native name
MBE
আআআআআ আআআআআআ আআআ
Born
Akram Hossain Khan
29 July 1974 (age 39)
Wimbledon, Wandsworth, London, England
Residence
Wimbledon, Wandsworth, London, England
Nationality
Ethnicity
Education
British
Bengali
Contemporary Dance,
Performing Arts
De Montfort University
Northern School of Contemporary Dance
Alma mater
Occupation
Dancer, choreographer
Years active
1987–present
Organization
Akram Khan Company
Style
Religion
Contemporary dance, Kathak
Islam
GENERAL
Zero degrees started as a desire of Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui to
dance a duet with British-Bengali choreographer and dancer
Akram Khan. Both are sons of Islamic families brought up in
Europe, and both draw upon this meeting of cultures, combining
complex Indian kathak dance with the speed and precision of
contemporary movements.
Inviting Antony Gormley for the scenography and Nitin
Sawhney for the live performed music; zero degrees became a
place of transformation. Inspired by the place where one thing
morphs into another, the grey zone between one thing and the
next, the degrees where water becomes ice, the line where life
becomes death. Zero degrees follows Cherkaoui and Khan on a
journey to seek the reference point, the source, the '0' at
life's core. Inspired by their own dual identities, the two
search for this middle point through polar opposites;
becoming/death, light/dark, chaos/order. Zero degrees talks
about borders and how blurry they actually are.
With only two lifelike dummies, copies of Cherkaoui and
Khan, the emptiness on stage permits the audience to see many
symbols of division and unity within the choreography. The
dummies are like alter egos, sometimes they are oppressors,
sometimes guards or dead bodies.
Zero degrees is a performance about the fragility of a
human life, about yin and yang. The piece has won a Helpmann
Award in Australia and was nominated for a Laurence Olivier
Award in the U.K.
SIDI LARBI CHERKAOUI
Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s debut as a choreographer was in 1999
with Andrew Wale’s ‘contemporary musical’, Anonymous Society.
Since then he has made more than 20 full-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. In 2008
Sadler’s Wells named him an Associate Artist and in 2009 the
Alfred Toëpfer Stiftung conferred its Kairos prize to him in
recognition of his artistic philosophy and his quest for
cultural dialogue. In 2008 and 2011 he was declared
Choreographer of the Year by the dance magazine Tanz.
While Cherkaoui’s initial pieces were made as a core member
of the Belgian collective, Les Ballets C. de la B. – Rien de
Rien (2000), Foi (2003) and Tempus Fugit (2004) – he also
undertook parallel projects that both expanded and
consolidated his artistic vision. Ook (2000) was born from a
workshop for mentally disabled actors held by Theater Stap in
Turnhout with choreographer Nienke Reehorst; D’avant (2002)
from an encounter with longstanding artistic partner Damien
Jalet, Juan Kruz Diaz de Garaio Esnaola and Luc Dunberry of
Sasha Waltz & Guests company; and zero degrees (2005) with
friend and choreographer Akram Khan. He has worked with a
variety of theatres, opera houses and ballet companies, but
from 2004–2009 Cherkaoui was based in Antwerp where he was
artist in residence at Toneelhuis, the theatre that produced
Myth (2007) and Origine (2008).
In 2008 Cherkaoui premiered Sutra at Sadler’s Wells. This
award-winning collaboration with Antony Gormley and the
Shaolin monks continues to tour the world to great critical
acclaim. After his first commissioned piece in North America,
Orbo Novo (for Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet) and a series of
duets such as Faun (which premiered at Sadler’s Wells as part
of In the Spirit of Diaghilev) and Dunas with flamenco
danseuse María Pagés (both in October 2009), he launched his
new company Eastman in 2010, resident at deSingel
International Arts Campus.
Spring 2010 saw him reunited with co-choreographer Damien
Jalet and Antony Gormley to make Babel(words), the third part of
a triptych that began with Foi and Myth. That same year he
created Rein, a duet
featuring Guro
Nagelhus Schia and
Vebjørn Sundby, as
well as Play, a duet
with kuchipudi
danseuse Shantala
Shivalingappa and
Bound, a duet for
Shanell Winlock and
Gregory Maqoma as part
of Southern Bound
Comfort. Babel(words)
triumphed at the 2011
Laurence Olivier
Awards, winning best
new dance production
and outstanding
achievement in dance
for Antony Gormley.
2011 saw the
creation of TeZukA, a
new piece for 15
performers about the
works of the master of
Japanese manga, Osamu
Tezuka. Cherkaoui also created Labyrinth for Dutch National
Ballet.
In 2012 he created Puz/zle with 11 dancers and the Corsican
men’s choir A Filetta, Lebanese singer Fadia Tomb El-Hage and
Japanese musician Kazunari Abe. He also helmed the
choreography for Anna Karenina, the film by Joe Wright,
featuring ao Keira Knightley and Jude Law.
Akram Khan has attracted some impressive collaborators in the
past - the sculptor Anish Kapoor and the composer Nitin
Sawhney for his dance Kaash, the writer Hanif Kureishi for Ma.
But the line-up for his latest project, Zero Degrees, comes
yet more garlanded with names.
Not only is his co-choreographer and performer, Sidi Larbi
Cherkaoui, (who ranks with Khan as one of Europe's most
charismatic dance talents) but the work has designs by the
sculptor Antony Gormley and yet another score by Sawhney.
It's the creative team of PR fantasy.Yet what happens on stage
during the duet's 75 minutes has nothing to do with selfserving celebrity.
Zero Degrees began life as a private dialogue, just two
dancers swapping ideas in the studio, and what makes it so
riveting in performance is that the intimacy which Khan and
Cherkaoui discovered in rehearsal is etched deep into the
finished product.
The narrative core of the duet is based on a journey Khan made
from Bangladesh to India. He reports that he was harassed by
guards on the border because he found himself sharing his
train carriage with a dead man. Yet as Cherkaoui narrates the
opening chapter of the anecdote with Khan, the unity of their
voices, their shared gestures even their hesitations, makes it
seem as though they lived through the story together.
A similarly profound a connection operates in the dancing that
frames the text.
Not only is the choreography itself is a kind of journey, as
the two men trade moves from their different dance backgrounds
(classical Kathak and European tanztheater respectively) but
along the way the duet also embodies parallel themes of power
and submission, of belonging and not belonging, of knowing
yourself and knowing another person.
The first section is a ritual of communion as the two men
stand head to head, while their arms fold and unfold. The
dance is never far from tension and contrast.
Khan with his sculpted body and classical precision often
forces the pace, carving tracks relentlessly across the stage.
Cherkaoui seems to yield but slips into his own emotional
space. The unfolding drama between them is transfixing not
only because they are superb dancers but because their
performance is given such strange and potent definition by its
staging.
Sawhney's score is a superbly eloquent piece of theatre music,
powerful without being macho, beautiful without a shiver of
mawkishness. Gormley's contribution is much quirkier: a pair
of life-size silicon dummies that function as rough doubles of
the dancers. Inert but curiously emotive, these figures spend
most of the duet just standing witness. But every now and then
they are manhandled into the choreography, adding to a work
whose overall tone is deliberately odd, a mix of stunning
virtuosity and freakish flourishes.
The dance is also full of dangling questions. When Khan gets
round to telling the last chapter of his narrative his voice
trails away unsure of the moral of his story. The choreography
in sympathy also dissipates into a series of false endings.
Finally it ends with Cherkaoui cradling Khan's dummy and
singing a soft Indian vocal line, while Khan dances himself to
a stuttering poignant standstill.
It's a conclusion that feels profound and perfunctory and it
encapsulates the logic of the whole piece. Unfinished, hazy,
occasionally introvert, it has the look of a work in progress.
But somehow these four artists have figured out that it's only
by being provisional and exploratory that Zero Degrees gets as
close as it does to the big themes - of love and loneliness,
life and death.
Zero degrees explores borders - between countries,
cultures and, most importa ntly, between life and death.
It challenges, prompts and inspires, in a seamless
fusion of dance styles, music and contemporary art. It
has nothing to do with self -serving celebrity. Zero
Degrees began life as a private dialouge with only 2
dancer.
Sources:
http://www.akramkhancompany.net/html/akram_production.p
hp?productionid=7
http://en.wikipedia.or g/wiki/Akram_Khan_(dancer )
http://www.east-man.be/en/people/161/Sidi -LarbiCherkaoui
http://www.east-man.be/en/14/44/Zero -Degrees