Showing @ Festival Theatre, Edinburgh until Sat 18 May
A devised movement piece performed by seventeen practicing Shaolin monks and resulting from a collaboration between the monks themselves, two Belgian choreographers, a Polish composer and a leading British visual artist, hardly sounds likely to result in a light evening at the theatre. So it is a refreshing surprise to find the contemplative nature of Sutra is leavened with plenty of playfulness.
Sutra has been inspired by the experiences of choreographers Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Ali Thabet at the Shaolin monastery, but there is no discernible story here. Rather, it is an ever-changing mandala of scenarios in which Antony Gormley’s wooden boxes become beds, ships, a maze where a child monk plays hide and seek with his older brethren or an opening lotus flower with the Buddha-like child at its centre. It is a performance that turns on the energy and charisma of the monks and the mesmerising moves of Thabet, the only trained dancer in the performance. It is however, ten-year-old monk Dong Dong who provides the heart of the show, connecting monks, audience and European cast with his irresistible innocence.
The sensory experience is completed by composer Szymon Brzóska’s atmospheric soundtrack. Performed by shadowy musicians half-concealed behind a filmy curtain, there is a perfect synergy between movement and sound, musicians and performers. It provides the kind of magic that can only be created through the medium of live theatre, by people who understand that there is no real distinction between art and spirituality.
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