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Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui writes message for International Dance Day | VTi (Vlaams Theater Instituut)

Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui writes message for International Dance Day

Today, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui will pronounce the International Dance Day Message 2012 during the celebration of the 30th International Dance Day. Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui was asked by the International Theatre Institute and the International Dance Committee to write the 2012 message, which you can read underneath. The celebration will take place at the UNESCO in Paris. After the message, a number of Eastman artists like Daisy Phillips, Damien Fournier and Mohamed Toukabri, will perform fragments from Cherkaoui's work. International Dance Day is celebrated every year on the 29th of April.
For more information on the event: www.international-dance-day.org.

Celebrate the Never-ending Choreography of Life
"Through time, through the ages, what endures is mostly art. Art seems to be everything humankind leaves to its heirs – whether through buildings or books or paintings or music. Or movement, or dance. In that sense, I think of dance as the most current, the most up-to-date history lesson, as it is in a constant relationship with its most recent past and can only happen in the present.
Dance also, somehow, does not acknowledge borders in the same way as many other arts. Even when certain styles try to limit themselves or work within a frame; the movement of life, its choreography and its need for flux: these take over very quickly, allowing certain styles to mingle with other. Everything engages with everything, naturally, and dance settles only in the space it belongs to — that of the everchanging present.
I believe that dance may be one of the most honest forms of expression for us to cherish: because when people dance, whether in a ballet performance, a hip-hop battle, an underground contemporary show or just in a discotheque, cutting loose, there are seldom any lies deployed, any masks worn. People reflect each other constantly, but when they dance, perhaps what they reflect most is that moment of honesty.
By moving like other people, by moving with other people and by watching them move, we can best feel their emotions, think their thoughts and connect to their energy. It is, perhaps, then that we can get to know and understand them clearly.
I like to think of a dance performance as a celebration of co-existence, a way to give and make space and time for each other. We tend to forget this, but the underlying beauty in a performance is that it is primarily the convergence of a mass of people, seated one next to the other, all sharing the same moment. There is nothing private about it; a performance is an extremely social experience. All of us assembled for this ritual, which is our bond with the performance, our bond with the same present.
And so, in 2012, I wish everyone lots of dance. Not to forget all their problems of 2011, but on the contrary, to tackle them creatively, to dance around them, to find a way to engage with each other and the world, to engage with life as part of its neverending choreography. Dance to find honesty and to transmit, to reflect and to celebrate it."
Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui

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