Arts & Culture
Sadler’s Wells’ bring the award-winning production 'Sutra' to Oxford

One of Sadler’s Wells’ most successful productions, Sutra, comes to the New Theatre Oxford to celebrate its 10th anniversary after touring around the globe to sell-out audiences.

This award-winning collaboration between choreographer and Sadler’s Wells Associate Artist Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, sculptor Antony Gormley and 19 Buddhist monks from the Shaolin Temple in China is one of Sadler’s Wells’ longest running and most exhilarating productions.

The production will be at the New Theatre Oxford on March 23 to 24, the only UK performance date apart from London as Sutra embarks on an international tour from March to May 2018.

Since its first sell-out performances at Sadler’s Wells in London in May 2008, Sutra has toured to 66 cities in 33 countries across the world. The production plays its 200th performance when it returns to the Sadler’s Wells stage.

With Gormley’s striking set of 21 wooden boxes and Polish composer Szymon Brzóska’s specially commissioned score performed live, Sutra is a breath-taking spectacle of athleticism that explores the philosophy and faith behind the Shaolin tradition and its relationship with kung fu within a contemporary context.

Sutra received the Production of the Year Award in the Ballet Tanz magazine 2009 yearbook, voted for by 30 international dance critics.

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 50 fully-fledged choreographic pieces and picked up a slew of prestigious awards.

Cherkaoui is an Associate Artist at Sadler’s Wells and assumed the role of artistic director at the Royal Ballet of Flanders in 2015. Notable works include Sadler’s Wells productions Sutra - a dialogue with the warrior monks of the Shaolin Temple - and m¡longa, alongside further credits zero degrees with Akram Khan, Dunas alongside flamenco bailaora, María Pagés, Play with kuchipudi danseuse Shantala Shivalingappa, 生长genesis with Chinese choreographer Yabin Wang and more recently Mermaid, a duet for Carlos Acosta and Marta Ortega which received its world premiere at Sadler’s Wells in September 2017.

Since founding his company Eastman in Antwerp in 2010, Cherkaoui created the multiple-award-winning Babel (Words) together with choreographer Damien Jalet and Antony Gormley.

He has also received international acclaim for his choreography in the film Anna Karenina and in 2015 was movement director for Lyndsey Turner’s production of Hamlet starring Benedict Cumberbatch. In 2016, he was conferred an honorary doctorate by the University of Antwerp for his outstanding contribution to contemporary dance.

Antony Gormley’s career has spanned almost 40 years; his works include Another Place, Domain Field, Inside Australia, Clearing, Breaking Room and Blind Light. His work has been widely exhibited through the UK and internationally. Increasingly, he has taken his practice beyond the gallery, engaging the public in active participation, as in Clay and the Collection Body and the acclaimed One & Other commission in London’s Trafalgar Square. Last year he worked with choreographer Hofesh Shechter on Survivor at the Barbican. In November 2012 an exhibition of major new works, Model, opened to critical acclaim at White Cube. He was awarded the Turner Prize in 1994, the South Bank Prize for Visual Art in 1999 and the Bernhard Heiliger Award for Sculpture in 2007. In 1997 he was made an Officer of the British Empire (OBE) and was made a knight in the New Year’s Honours list in 2014. He has been a Royal Academician since 2003 and a British Museum Trustee since 2007. Gormley previously collaborated with Cherkaoui on the Sadler’s Wells co-production zero degrees which premiered in 2005.

The monks performing in Sutra are from the original Shaolin Temple, situated near Dengfeng City in the Henan Province of China and established in 495AD by monks originating from India. In 1983, the State Council defined the Shaolin Temple as the key national Buddhist Temple. The monks follow a strict Buddhist doctrine, with kung fu and tai chi martial arts forming an integral part of their daily practice.

There are many martial arts schools that have also been set up in the region under the name of Shaolin, from which performers for many of the more commercial Shaolin Monk shows are drawn. The performers in Sutra however are all Buddhist Monks from the original temple itself.

The title Sutra is derived from the Pali word sutta, whose primary meaning is a collective term for the sermons of Buddha. It is also a generic term for rules and aphorisms, in Hinduism sutras laid down the guidelines for proper conduct in life. The word in Sanskrit also meant string, thread, measure of straightness.

Sutra is accompanied by a live, specially commissioned score for five musicians, including piano, percussion and strings by Szymon Brzóska, who also collaborated with Cherkaoui on Dunas (2009), Orbo Novo (2009) performed by Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet and Labyrinth (2011) - his first full length ballet score commissioned by Dutch National Ballet.

Tickets can be purchased from the New Theatre box office on George Street, by ringing 0844 871 3020 or by visiting the website at www.atgtickets.com/oxford.

  • Sadler‚Äôs Wells‚Äô bring the award-winning production 'Sutra' to Oxford
  • Sadler‚Äôs Wells‚Äô bring the award-winning production 'Sutra' to Oxford
  • Sadler‚Äôs Wells‚Äô bring the award-winning production 'Sutra' to Oxford
  • Sadler‚Äôs Wells‚Äô bring the award-winning production 'Sutra' to Oxford
  • Sadler‚Äôs Wells‚Äô bring the award-winning production 'Sutra' to Oxford
  • Sadler‚Äôs Wells‚Äô bring the award-winning production 'Sutra' to Oxford
  • Sadler‚Äôs Wells‚Äô bring the award-winning production 'Sutra' to Oxford