In the company of Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s Eastman Company we have travelled the globe; from Shaolin Monks to Spanish flamenco and dozens in between. A grand guru of multi-culturalism, he now looks to his own rich culture and invites us chez moi to step into a grey Antwerp attic. And what riches we find there.
Flanders, the Low Countries, the site of modern-day Belgium has spawned some of the most inventive and exquisite Western art. The fluid imagination and social awareness in Cherkaoui’s art sees him as the heir to Hieronymus Bosch and René Magritte, translating their visual genius to the dance stage. Vlaemsch is a fusion of old and new and the revitalisation of culture with new blood. The spelling of the title is ancient but the team is contemporary: lute player Floris De Rycker provides the score melding the genius of Flemish polyphony in new crafted melodies – and of course the lute itself is of Arabic heritage. Jan-Jan Van Essche’s costumes seem taken from real life, with the occasional venture into fantasy. Hans Op de Beeck’s visual designs, in his trademark grey, work in three dimensions of an attic stuffed with memories.
Cherkaoui, from Antwerp with a Flemish mother and grandmother and a Moroccan father is joined by performers who also have a rich mix of cultural identities. In this work he focuses on his maternal ancestry but promises to explore his North African heritage in future work. Art, portraits and paintings are the bedrock of Flemish art and each performer carries a picture frame. These provide a neat choreographic tool for displays of great dexterity as they climb over and through before finding personal moment to take their pose and announce their ancestry. The versatile cast are also adept at assembling in an instant into frozen masterpieces of historical grandeur.
The dance is amazing, finding the essence, deeper than carefully trained positions and exploring every nerve and fibre to create moments of magic. Humour creates a necessary balance as bodies are unpacked, repacked and treated with blissful irreverence. The music and dance intertwine, De Rycker’s Ratas Del Viejo Mundo, literally ‘rats of the old world’ bring text and music to enrich and guide the narrative. Like all family histories it is sometimes richly embroidered, sometimes threadbare. An almost Christ-figure moves in and out of vision in homage to Cherkaoui’s Catholic mother.
Beauty comes in many shapes and sizes, a variety of genders and ages. Some sing, some dance, some play an instrument and all collaborate to create the visions of Belgium’s historic past. The colonial horrors are glossed over: ‘I was never in the Congo’. Cultural rivalry against French, Spanish and Dutch surfaces, immigrants enter and assimilate in their own manner. Christine Leboutte drivers her wheelchair/ racing bike with skill before morphing into many other guises and Darryl E. Woods enjoys gender fluidity one can only marvel at ranging from sharp tongued female presenter to tutu-clad dancer at the Opera Ballet Vlaanderen. Patrick Williams Seebacher, a.k.a. TwoFace, a gentle giant of the hip-hop scene entertains with rubber limbed moves. The story advances as the home life and professional life of Cherkaoui overlap and blend.
Moving into contemporary times where extremist views draw the unthinking into their folds leaving a terrifyingly empty middle ground, the tone darkens. The arts prove the value of multiculturalism where difference can be absorbed within the search for artistic expression. The innocent pleasures of celebrating your cultural identity are being surpassed by the need to proclaim nationalism ‘Don’t call me Flemish Nationalist / Being Flemish is already hard enough’ is a repeated line. However, we can still enjoy the pleasures as Cherkaoui opening the flood gates to humanity sharing the joys of moving together in harmony with sounds, ancient and modern, from near and far.
