Dance

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You can't help but wonder – not only the usual "how do they do that?" musings on the whirling, mid-air gymnastics of the Shaolin monks on-stage, but also "how heavy are the boxes?" The boxes being lid-less wooden coffin-sized oblongs the monks – even the youngest of them, a 10-year-old – continually push, pull and stack into a sub-text of visually striking patterns devised by choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and sculptor Antony Gormley.

At times it even seems as if the boxes have a life of their own, swarming over the stage like huge beetles with their occupants hidden from view. At one point, however, as the monks are dragging their boxes behind them, the empty "coffins" hint at the unseen baggage that dogs their heels as they strive – through the physical and philosophical regimen of their martial arts training – to reach enlightenment.

In Sutra, a Westerner – danced by Ali Thabet – enters into that journey, perhaps without realising how intense the processes are, even though some episodes feel like a merrily mischievous game. Perched on top of his own gleamingly metal box, he and the Little Monk initially arrange little model blocks... in a trice, the full-size blocks echo the shapes. A thread of action and reaction emerges, with the monks' agile, springing bodies in a perpetual dance with and against the forces of gravity. There are flashes of the scything bladework we associate with kung fu, but as the music for piano, strings and percussion (composed by Szymon Brzoska and played live) weaves in its own taut, muscular beauty, it is the risk-defying grace in precision that brings cheers to the throat.