Review: Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui: VLAESMCH (CHEZ MOI), Sadler’s Wells
Photo credit: Filip Van Roe
Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s Vlaemsch (chez moi) embarks on an ambitious journey into his Flemish heritage. The son of a Flemish mother and a Moroccan father, Cherkaoui has built his career on choreographies that navigate questions of identity and cultural overlap. Here, he turns inward, examining the traditions and contradictions of Flanders while keeping them in dialogue with his wider, multicultural outlook. Its confrontational and critical but also too didactic which, in this case, dilutes the work due to the treatment of this element.
Working with visual artist Hans Op de Beeck, musician Floris De Rycker and costume designer Jan-Jan Van Essche, Cherkaoui constructs a stage world dense with grey-toned objects, live music and movement, a forgotten home turned landscape where fragments of memory surface and layers of time talk. Op de Beeck’s vast, monochrome environment looms large. Lamps and chairs are unearthed, reconfigured and inhabited by the dancers, at times with wit. Yet the direction to interact with these objects often lacks sensitivity, interfering with the movement itself. Many sequences feel exploratory rather than fully realised. In its busiest passages, dance, text and prop work jostle for attention, diluting the impact of ideas that might otherwise have been striking.
What resonates most is the music. Floris De Rycker and his ensemble Ratas del Viejo Mundo perform with luminous clarity, threading early polyphony together with echoes of Arabic melody and contemporary textures. Their sound world, both intricate and haunting, provides a consistent anchor even when the stage action feels diffuse.
There are flashes of cleverness like a wry guided tour of Flanders, or dancers contorting themselves into too-small boxes but the integration of text and movement remains uneven. Spoken passages, shifting between Flemish and subtitled English, often jar with the choreography and its difficult to know where to look. At times, they undercut the movement, leaving the tone suspended awkwardly between earnestness and irony.
The performers of Eastman, Cherkaoui’s Antwerp-based company, are undeniably accomplished and courageous, and a mix of heritage from around the world in the cast influences the choreography. Yet their remarkable skill is frequently constrained by the sheer density of the material. The work seems to cry out for greater sensitivity and space.
What is declared is bold, a celebration of Flemish identity that refuses to sit neatly within borders but its delivery remains broad, more suggestive than incisive. For all its ambition, Vlaemsch (chez moi) never quite resolves into the resonant statement it reaches for. Still, moments of beauty flicker through the greyness, and the music lingers long after the stage has cleared.
*** Three stars
Reviewed by: Stephanie Osztriecher
Vlaemsch (chez moi) plays at Sadler’s Wells until 20 September, with further info here.
