ABSTRACT
The Belgian-Moroccan choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and the British-Bangladeshi choreographer Akram Khan both made their official choreographic debut around the turn of the millennium. Their work critically questions Western modern and post-modern notions of purity of form or uniqueness of an artistic signature, bridging between cultures and languages, between tradition and the contemporary. This chapter discusses in more detail some episodes of their intertwined journeys in-between dance cultures. It focuses on three creations: zero degrees, Babel and Desh, all of which deal with the polarities of an identity in-between cultures. Both Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Akram Khan allow different verbal languages to coexist on stage without being translated, often showing the limits of what translation can actually achieve. The different dance and music languages do not fuse or blend into something new either, but are juxtaposed.
