Sutra (Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, 2008): an optional set work within the independent contemporary dance scene in Britain, its intention, collaboration, structure, movement, physical setting and aural setting.

What this dot point is asking

Sutra (Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, 2008) is one of the four optional set works for AQA A-Level Dance, studied within the area of study the independent contemporary dance scene in Britain 2000 to current. If your centre chooses it, you answer the Component 2 Section B essays on this work. You need secure knowledge of its choreographic intention, the collaboration that produced it, its structure and movement, the physical and aural settings, and why it represents the British independent scene, and the skill to analyse and evaluate how meaning is made.

Context and choreographic intention

Cherkaoui (Belgian-Moroccan) travelled to the Shaolin Temple in China to live and work with the monks, learning their martial and spiritual practice; Sutra is the staged result of that exchange. The intentions are layered: an exploration of Buddhism and spirituality (martial arts inseparable from meditation); the encounter of an outsider with a closed community (Cherkaoui among the monks, marked out as different); transformation and a journey, often told through a boy monk moving from naivety to experience; and the negotiation of the individual within the group. The work also reflects globalisation and cultural exchange in contemporary dance, an East-West dialogue staged for a Western producing house.

Structure

Sutra is a non-linear, episodic journey rather than a plotted narrative. Three threads bind it together:

• The boy monk is the narrative thread, his journey of self-discovery and enlightenment running through the work; he is both student and guide.
• Cherkaoui's presence as the outsider gives solo and duet-like passages where his contemporary movement contrasts with the monks' formal kung fu, moments of introspection and negotiation.
• The boxes mark the episodes: as they are reconfigured (graveyard, maze, boat, city or temple, lotus), the space transforms and the journey moves through its "stations".

There is a developmental arc, from curious exploration to deeper integration and then separation, but no conventional plot resolution, which suits the meditative, journey-based intention.

Movement, physical and aural setting

The physical setting is Antony Gormley's 21 wooden boxes, each based on human proportions and weighing around 32 kg. They are not passive scenery: dancers climb, balance, push, tilt, carry, enter, hide inside and emerge from them, so the boxes act as partners, obstacles, platforms and containers. The performers rearrange them into dominoes (cause and effect, fragility), towers and a temple-like cityscape, a boat (travel and crossing), a lotus (a Buddhist symbol of enlightenment), beds, coffins and a graveyard (mortality and rebirth), and a maze (trial and choice). Costume marks identity: the monks in plain grey or neutral robes, Cherkaoui in civilian clothes (a suit) to mark his outsider status, and the boy in a scaled-down monk's costume.

The aural setting is Szymon Brzoska's commissioned score for piano and strings, often performed live. It merges Western and Eastern qualities, with pulsing rhythmic sections under the martial drills and melancholic, lyrical passages for introspective, slower moments, shaping atmosphere, mood and pacing and marking the structural shifts between box configurations.