Sutra

‘Sutra’ in Sanskrit means ‘string’ or ‘thread’. In the extraordinarily dynamic OzAsia Festival production of Sutra, Belgian choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui certainly connects with his audience, masterfully threading together dance, martial arts, music and sculpture. This piece is celebrating its tenth anniversary since first being performed at Sadler’s Wells. It has toured the world and it is not difficult to see its appeal.

We are taken on a journey, where the idea of transformation is explored. Nothing on earth is permanent – there is destruction but there is also creation - the endless Buddhist cycle of ‘samsara’. This production is a remarkable fusion of Kung Fu and contemporary dance, featuring Cherkaoui himself, with the most energetic boy monk I have ever seen and nineteen Buddhist monks of the Shaolin Temple in Henan province, China.

The stage is bare apart from approximately 20 wooden coffin-like boxes. At curtain rise, we see Cherkaoui playing a game with a boy monk that soon appears to dictate what happens on stage on a much larger scale.He is a curious Westerner seeking to find a way into the monks' culture. The young boy leads him on this quest, scurrying about the stage, interacting gleefully with the other monks and showing immense physical strength and agility.

The Shaolin monks appear, rising out of the coffin-like boxes to interact with the Westerner. We are then treated to an ever changing series of pictures – these two metre tall boxes almost become performers in their own right, transforming at times in total silence and at other times with bone jarring thuds to create different vignettes. Individually they can become stands, coffins, burdens to be carried and cupboards, yet together they can be used to build a wall, skyscrapers, cemetery, a Stonehenge-like temple, dominoes or the petals of a lotus flower on which the young boy meditates, Buddha-like.

Cherkaoui has a wonderful, rubbery fluidity in his movements, which also serves to contrast with the sharp Kung Fu movements of the monks. His box is grey, a contrast to the natural timbers of the other boxes. There are some wonderful moments where he steps in and disappears as though descending a staircase. Another time he walks round the edge of the box with one leg inside which gets him absolutely nowhere; in contrast to the monks, who have direction and create order. This is perhaps some form of social comment about our Western lack of orientation and efforts to stop the transformative process.

Throughout the piece, Buddhist monks from the Shaolin Monastery in China show their amazing athleticism in their flying kicks, backflips and shadow-boxing. Swords and fighting sticks are also wielded with skill and might.

This is a thrilling and dynamic sixty minutes. The choreography is spectacular, the set by Anthony Gormley is astoundingly effective and the music, composed by Szymon Brzoska and performed beautifully on stage behind a scrim, is complementary and integral to the storytelling.

Sutra is a must-see performance.

Shelley Hampton

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