The men tried it again. They were surprised.
After the rehearsal, Cherkaoui said that he is always interested in how to think about movement. “Ballet is often taught as the reproduction of positions,” he said, “but everything is much richer if the body is responding to thought and intention and imagination.”
It was less than a week before the premiere, on Wednesday, of Cherkaoui’s new dance, “Medusa,” for the Royal Ballet. But the choreographer, the picture of serenity itself, was showing no signs of urgency or pressure, even though he had a plane to catch. That’s usual for him — a serious multitasker, he is in perpetual motion between countries and projects. This time he was off to Munich, where he is directing and choreographing the Gluck opera “Alceste.”
Cherkaoui, 43, a Belgian choreographer of Flemish and Morrocan parentage, has been an important presence on the dance scene since the early 2000s, collaborating frequently with A-list artists across disciplines, like Antony Gormley and Marina Abramovic. But Cherkaoui, whose teenage dance ambitions came from watching Prince and Janet Jackson videos, is now sought after by both major pop stars and major ballet companies. Over the last several years he has choreographed for the Cirque du Soleil; directed operas and plays; choreographed films; worked with the Icelandic rock band Sigur Ros and the singer Woodkid; and choreographed the Alanis Morissette musical, “Jagged Little Pill,” which is heading to Broadway in November.
His most high-profile collaboration was probably the Beyoncé-Jay-Z video “Apes**t,” set in the Louvre Museum in Paris, which he choreographed with JaQuel Knight (170 million views, and counting).
And one more small thing — since 2015, he has also been the director of the Royal Ballet of Flanders.
“It takes a village,” Cherkaoui said calmly, gesturing to his ballet master, Jason Kittelberger, who had been running the Royal Ballet rehearsal, issuing a stream of corrections and clarifications. “As artists, we are lucky when we have people who understand our work and support our vision.” And sometimes, he added, “you support other people’s visions,” as he did when collaborating with Beyoncé and her team.
“I understand well what they are going for, and then it’s a matter of making suggestions,” he said. “The hip sequence, the Martha Graham contractions, those come from me. But it’s all about whether Beyoncé connects to the idea, and then it’s up to her and Jay-Z.”
Despite running a ballet company — and his many commissions for ballet companies — Cherkaoui is still largely seen as a contemporary dance-maker. His distinctive physical style melds a silky slipperiness with street and contemporary dance forms, often combined with stylized, repetitive gesture and speech.
“I started ballet classes when I was 17, and I have always watched it because I am influenced by its physical possibilities,” he said, seeming half-amused, half-pained by the idea that he is seen as an outsider in the ballet world. “I always use the bodies in front of me for what they can offer.”
“Medusa,” Cherkaoui’s first work for the Royal Ballet, set to songs by Purcell and an electronic score by the composer Olga Wojciechowska, is nonetheless a departure for him. “I come from a very contemporary point of view,” he said, explaining his more usual narrative strategies: “Multiple points of view, giving the audience space for interpretation, making it layered. When everything is linear, I am afraid it will be too boring or simple or easy. But I felt, ‘Come on, Larbi, you have to try this.’”
He chose the myth of Medusa, he said, because he was looking for a strong character for Natalia Osipova, the Royal Ballet star who has worked with Cherkaoui before. “She is daring and fearless, and you can ask her to do anything,” he said. He wanted to find her a character who would have “a certain history and ambiguity.”
The story, as related by Ovid in “Metamorphoses,” describes Medusa as a beautiful handmaiden in the temple of Athena who is transformed into a snake-headed monster by the goddess after she is raped by the sea god Poseidon.
Cherkaoui said he was well aware that showing a rape onstage could be contentious. “I don’t want to diminish rape — it has happened inside my family,” he said. “I can relate, as an Arab and a gay guy, to issues around sexuality and power, having something happen to you as a stigma.”
What was interesting in the Medusa story, he added, is that the character is galvanized by her punishment. “Athena makes her a monster, but also extremely powerful, able to punish in turn, the men who did nothing to save her from Poseidon.”
Kevin O’Hare, the director of the Royal Ballet, said he had discussed the way the rape would be presented with Cherkaoui. “You can’t pretend it’s not part of the story, but it’s not gratuitous, and with the choreographic language that Larbi uses, it doesn’t have the same connotations it might have in a more contemporary context,” he said, alluding to the controversy around Kenneth MacMillan’s 1992 “The Judas Tree.”
O’Hare said that he was a longtime admirer of Cherkaoui’s work. “I love the fluidity of his style and the intricacies of the arm work,” he said. He noted that Cherkaoui’s use of the upper body “isn’t so far away” from the choreography of Frederick Ashton, which is characterized by (among other things) a pliant, bendy torso. “I think it really suits what we do.”
The movement is nonetheless demanding for ballet dancers in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. “One of the hard things is the partnering, when the body really rests on another body and they fold around each other,” Kittelberger said. “Ballet dancers try instinctively to help one another here, to use their arms to share the weight, instead of really letting the other person take it, which is what Larbi wants.”
Cherkaoui, he said, also asks the dancers to understand which part of the body initiates every movement. “He might want the pinkie finger to turn the arm around, and people are using their shoulders instead. It’s difficult if you are not used to thinking like that.”
In a telephone interview, while walking her dogs on Hampstead Heath, Osipova said that the most difficult aspect of Cherkaoui’s choreography was “to memorize how the muscles must work, where the movement starts.” She added, “I am used to approaching a role in my own way, so I find this very difficult, but I learn a lot.”
Osipova said Cherkaoui hadn’t asked her for any particular interpretation. “He tries to create the steps to say everything,” she said. “He has given me a body language, I am feeling the character and personality together.” The next day, she said, was the dress rehearsal.
“We change the dress, the finale, maybe everything, I don’t know,” she said. “But I am so excited to dance.”
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Additional Information:
‘Medusa’
Through May 21 at the Royal Opera House in London; roh.org.uk.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.