The circle is complete - Dance Magazine

Double interview

April 13, 2026
by: Jacq. Algra

In the programme LARBI by Introdans we see three creations by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. Alongside the new, inclusive duet Residence, there are Cherkaoui’s poetic odes to the deceased and to falling autumn leaves: In Memoriam and Fall. Dancers Nienke Wind and Giuseppe Calabrese will be bidding farewell with these works. “There is no better way to end my dance career than with these pieces.”

“I have learned a lot from Cherkaoui,” says Nienke Wind, who has now been dancing with Introdans for fifteen seasons. “What I love is that you really expand your movement language and can take that experience with you. His creations include a lot of floor work, for example. That is not something that comes naturally to me, so I really had to work hard on that. His hand movements are of course very famous, but even those don’t come easily. It’s not the first time I dance in In Memoriam, and now it turns out it can always get better. As a dancer you never stop learning, but with this piece especially.”

Ode to the deceased
Seventeen years ago, Introdans dancers first experienced Cherkaoui’s style. Since then, the Arnhem-based company has built up no fewer than ten of his creations in its repertoire, making it an important guardian of his oeuvre in the Netherlands. “It is a privilege,” says artistic director Roel Voorintholt, “to have been working with him for so many years and to share our passion for dance.” The Flemish-Moroccan choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui made his debut in 1999 with choreography for the musical Anonymous Society by Andrew Wale, followed a year later by the dance production Rien de Rien at Les Ballets C de la B by Alain Platel. By 2010 he had created a series of successful productions and founded his own contemporary dance company Eastman in Antwerp. Over the years, Cherkaoui has created duets with exceptional dancers from around the world, been invited by numerous ballet companies, and contributed choreography to the film Anna Karenina, a Beyoncé music video, and a Madonna tour. He also went on to lead Ballet Vlaanderen and Ballet de Genève. In Memoriam, Cherkaoui’s ode to the deceased set to the spiritual polyphonic music of the Corsican ensemble A Filetta, was created in 2004 for Les Ballets de Monte Carlo. Five years later, Introdans dancers learned an initial fragment, and seven years after that they performed the full piece. Now Wind dances the heartfelt duet in In Memoriam, and with her hand movement the captivating group section begins, following a beautiful male solo. The dancers themselves call it “the arm section,” but many audience members experience it as a shared “prayer.”

Falling in love
“It is complicated, specific and detailed, and also quite fast,” says Wind when I speak to her a month before the premiere. “We stand in the studio together in front of the mirror and first go through it at a slow pace. Then we gradually try to speed it up. Your head also has to move in the right way, you have to turn around your axis, and the formations change from time to time. It looks very simple because it is repetitive. If it creates a meditative atmosphere later on, then we are doing it right. But first we still have to work extremely hard. And I’m also dancing en pointe the entire time. I really had to train for that again, as I only recently returned from maternity leave. I now wrap my toes tightly every day and then it’s: rehearse, repeat, repeat, repeat.”

Wind is fully committed. She also dances in Fall to music by Arvo Pärt, and after that she will only appear again in End of Season 2026. After performances in Germany and South Africa, she will say goodbye; in her own words, a beautiful conclusion to her career. She does not yet know what she will do next, but she does know she will miss dancing. “That feeling of being in love when you are on stage is something indescribable. You feel it throughout your whole body, it lifts you to a higher level. It is truly wonderful, especially when you can share it with a dance partner.”

Constant changes
Wind’s partner in the duet in In Memoriam is Giuseppe Calabrese, who will also retire from dancing after this season. For his career, Cherkaoui has been a highly defining choreographer, and he considers this duet truly special. Calabrese: “It really shows the shifts in energy that Cherkaoui often talks about. Those constant changes, the mutual attraction, how one body responds to another. You can clearly see that here. Since I first worked on it, now ten years ago, I’ve felt a deep connection to the piece.”

What is most difficult when dancing Cherkaoui’s works? “I think it is the idea that you can let go while still maintaining control over what you are doing. As a dancer, you actually want to keep everything under control at all times. The beauty of his work is that you experience how letting go actually takes you a step further. That has always been the challenge, and now at this stage of my career I can really enjoy it.”

That also applies to the solo Calabrese dances after the duet with Wind and the arm section. “That is a wonderful solo, and then comes that extraordinary moment. That formation of body after body rising and joining the others, it really becomes a kind of ritual. Together you build up enormous energy, it is amazing to experience that on stage. I hear from people in the audience that they feel it too, it embraces everyone.”

With heart and soul
Calabrese also dances in Fall, travels to South Africa in September, and will then remain connected to the company as a rehearsal director. In addition, he teaches at dance academies in Arnhem, Rotterdam, and Hong Kong. The key words for his dancing and coaching are: seeking a synthesis of body, mind, and soul. “I truly believe these three elements are what you need. We must not forget that we are dancers but also human beings, and that the two cannot be separated; they need to come together. So push yourself physically, but also stay smart in how you do it, and always put your feeling, something of yourself, into it. I think that is the only way to grow as a dance artist. These are also exactly the principles of Cherkaoui. For him, a technically skilled and flexible body is important, but also that you know why you are doing things and who you are.”

The dancer who once started in Rome, briefly considered becoming a lawyer, but eventually ended up in the studio in Arnhem, is greatly looking forward to returning to the stage with these two works by Cherkaoui. “It brings the circle full. There is no better way to end my dance career than with these pieces. But in the coming weeks we still have a few final details to refine.”

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Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui: Resilience, adaptation and reciprocity

“Choreographing performances has always been my way of giving form to the world, the challenges, and the emotions I experience. Dance gives me the opportunity to make the invisible visible, to hold up a mirror, and to draw everything within a fluid framework.

What the audience will see in this programme is a journey through two decades, an eternity in the world of dance: from my first choreography for a classical ballet company to an intimate, brand new duet. It is a wonderful gift, thanks to the selection by artistic director Roel Voorintholt, to bring certain layers of my oeuvre to the foreground. This is a programme that revolves around resilience, adaptation, and reciprocity.

In Memoriam is about dealing with the people you have lost in your life. Movement becomes a language of mourning, and dance an incantation to bring a loved one back to life and carry them with you forever. Fall, which I created ten years later, explores how we relate to the elements around us: how the body yields to water, air, fire, and earth. How dancers constantly try to defy gravity through movement. Classical lines are transformed into contemporary hybrid dance steps, inspired by the movements of dolphins, salamanders, and lizards.

Residence, the new duet placed between these two group works, focuses on the relationship to another person. How are you there for someone who has lost everything? How do you share space? How do you find each other and build a safe place together, a home?”