Eastman wins Best New Dance Production Award for Puz/zle at the Olivier Awards 2014

 

We are immeasurably delighted and honoured to share with you the news that Eastman / Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui has been conferred Best New Dance Production for Puz/zle at this year's Olivier Awards. "Sadler’s Wells' Associate Artist Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui caught the attention with this new work, first staged in a quarry, that used slabs of polystyrene to create a constantly changing set for his dancers as they strove to explore chaos and order," the organizers say.

 

Founded in 1976, the Olivier Awards are considered the greatest benchmark of theatrical excellence - actually, performing art encompassing opera, musicals, theatre and dance - in the UK. A glimpse at the list of the winners across the years immediately reveals the levels of greatness and artistic enterprise it celebrates: among others, John Gielguid, Harold Pinter, Judi Dench, Maggi Smith -- and in dance, Pina Bausch, Sylvie Guillem, Carlos Acosta, Akram Khan and the Ballet van Vlaanderen. More info on www.olivierawards.com.

 

Puz/zle, a site-responsive work, was created specifically for the Carrière de Boulbon in Avignon, a site that also hosted Peter Brook's path-breaking Mahabharata back in the day. Puz/zle, that embodies Sidi Larbi's philosophy of an inclusive, non-hierarchical and heterogenous cultural universe, features artists from countries as diverse as Korea and Corsica, from Japan and Lebanon, Canada and Poland, Belgium and Great Britain. It highlights an exciting world where hip-hoppers and medieval vocalists, Kodo drummers and electronic composers, acrobats and self-trained dancers thrive in a dynamic tension and vitality that enhance our understanding and appreciation of the immense possibilities of mankind without ever letting us forget our just-as-immense potential for violence and destruction.

 

Second Olivier Award for Eastman in four years

 

This is the second time in four years that Eastman / Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui has won this particular Olivier Award, the first time being in 2011 for Cherkaoui and Damien Jalet's Babel(Words), which had also bagged the award in the Outstanding Contribution to Dance category for sculptor Antony Gormley who designed its sets. Puz/zle - like Babel(Words) in 2011, again - was also nominated for the prestigious Critics' Circle National Dance Awards this year.