If it's true that opposites attract, and equally true that like seeks out like, then it was only a matter of time before Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Akram Khan danced together.
Since 2005, Khan and Cherkaoui have been touring the world with Zero degrees, their first collaboration, in which they share equal billing as creators and performers.
The duet, which has its Canadian premiere Friday at the NAC, seeks out the elusive "point zero" that marks the point of transition between life and death, chaos and order, the seen and the unseen.
The London critics hailed its July 2005 premiere with words like "transfixing," "visionary" and "hugely moving."
As Cherkaoui tells it, the project has a small but significant Canadian connection. "Akram and I were both in Montreal at the same time in 2003, and we got together in a studio, just to sit down and talk," Cherkaoui says over the phone from Antwerp, his home base with the cutting-edge Ballets C.
de la B.
"We're from the same generation of dancers and we'd known each other for years. Both of us were at a point where we were ready to try new things.
I had been touring with 20 dancers and I was just tired, it was such a big group for me. So Akram and I said, 'Why not work together on a duet, something with just the two of us?'"
Khan and Cherkaoui corresponded over ideas for their collaboration.
"At one point, Akram told me about a train trip he took to Bangladesh and India," recalls Cherkaoui. "He was accosted by corrupt border guards, lost his passport and had to share his carriage with a dead man. The story really resonated with me, because the way he told it, it had a mythical quality to it.
So that's where we started."
The two men share many similarities that made the partnership a natural fit. Both are among the most sought-after dancer-choreographers in Europe.
Both are known for their exploratory, cutting-edge work with musicians, visual artists, filmmakers and other creative minds. Both grew up in observant Muslim households -- Cherkaoui is Moroccan-Flemish, Khan Anglo-Bangladeshi -- and feel at home with a plurality of identities, criss-crossing the cultural divides between North and South, East and West, secular and sacred, native and foreigner.
However, Cherkaoui and Khan also come from radically different dance backgrounds.
Khan, dark and powerfully muscled, is a master of Kathak, the classical Indian dance known for its lightning-fast footwork and spiraling spins. The pale, slight, rubbery Cherkaoui is a product of modern European dance theatre, by way of hip-hop.
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