In-between Dance Cultures
On the Migratory Artistic Identity of Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Akram Khan
- Offers insights into the artistic universes of two leading choreographers
- Situates their work within the larger critical debate on the (post)modern and (post-)migrant identity
- Antennae series: Award Dutch Best Book Designs 2015 by the student panel of judges
Author: Guy Cools
Design: Metahaven
Series: Antennae/Arts in Society
2015, Valiz with Fontys School of Fine and Performing Arts, Tilburg | supported by Interweaving Performance Cultures and University of Groningen | paperback | 160 pp | 21 x 13,5 cm (h x w) | English | ISBN 978-94-92095-11-4
Belgian-Moroccan Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and British-Bengali Akram Khan are two of today's most prolific choreographers. Given their respective backgrounds and the practices they pursue, their artistic universes are largely built around their identity in-between dance cultures. Dramaturg Guy Cools, who accompanied both, situates their work within the larger critical debate on the (post)modern and (post-)migrant identity. With a uniquely privileged insight into their creative practices, Cools details some of their iconic pieces. He also shows how they invent a new and much-needed social imagery ̶ which is both dialogical and embedded in a lived, migratory experience ̶ for present-day living in a globalized environment. As such, In-between Dance Cultures offers a complementary view on questions of cultural identity taking the contemporary dancer’s somatic awareness and knowledge of the body as its starting point.