No one genre can box him in

Sidi LARBI CHERKAOUI grew up in Antwerp, Belgium, with a Muslim father, a Catholic mother and an inexhaustible need to express himself. Since childhood, he has “been trying to understand how it all connects.”

“I was a very brainy child and it was schizophrenic stuff, going to Koran classes in the afternoons after secular Belgian school,” the choreographer said recently. “I was learning all kinds of information at once, so I had all these ideas coexisting in my mind.”

Today Cherkaoui, 32, is considered one of the bright young stars of contemporary European dance. He has created 15 works since 1999 that have consistently blurred the boundaries between dance, theater and music; juxtaposed movement styles; and tackled political, spiritual and existential themes with an eye toward multicultural understanding. Although the focus of his choreographic ambitions has been more global than autobiographical, a lifelong quest to come to terms with his identity as a gay, vegetarian man of Moroccan and Flemish descent lies beneath his entire output and remains vital to his creative process.

“In my work, I try to take everything I know and put in bits and pieces that make sense to me,” he said. “This is not just patchwork. I’m really trying to interconnect these different things, the way I have with my identity.”

Though internationally known for dances such as his 2005 “Zero Degrees,” a collaboration with the British choreographer Akram Khan, and this year’s “Sutra,” which featured Shaolin monks from China, Cherkaoui hasn’t attracted much attention in the U.S. But in early 2009, he will take up temporary residence in New York to choreograph a work for the Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet, scheduled to premiere in June. And this month L.A. audiences have the opportunity to see the first U.S. performances of his 2007 “Myth,” which UCLA Live will present next weekend at Royce Hall as part of its Seventh International Theatre Festival.

Produced in collaboration with the Antwerp theater collective Toneelhuis, “Myth” features 21 performers, medieval Italian and Spanish music performed live by the Italian ensemble Micrologus and more than two hours of rigorous choreography infused with a dizzying multiplicity of influences. They include: acrobatics, ballet, hip-hop, martial arts, the animalistic movement style associated with fellow Belgian choreographer Wim Vandekeybus, the theatricality of German choreographer Pina Bausch, tarot cards and the visual aesthetic of Japanese manga comics.

Designed to evoke a kinesthetic storybook, the production revolves around archetypal characters trapped with their problems in a purgatory that resembles a library. Dressed in white, they wrestle with black-clad dancers who function as their shadows and behave according to the Jungian principle of opposites -- that every human thought or feeling has a contradictory one.

A dance of psychology and an examination of cause and effect as opposed to right and wrong, “Myth” is essentially the choreographer’s response to growing up “with too much morality and not enough mythology. I had also gotten to a point in my life where I wanted to heal from certain childhood things,” he said, speaking by cellphone from an Antwerp restaurant where he had repaired for a late dinner after a long rehearsal. “I began to see that myths can be the best healers. They help you see you are not alone.”

A complex ‘Myth’-ology

Since ITS premiere at the Toneelhuis theater, “Myth” has received mostly positive reviews. Some European critics, however, have found it too long and/or repetitive and guilty of an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach to choreography. Still, a critic from London’s Telegraph newspaper wrote, “If ‘Myth’s’ fault is excess ambition, well, that’s a noble fault indeed.”

Nienke Reehorst -- “Myth’s” assistant choreographer and a former dancer in Vandekeybus’ company, Ultima Vez -- recommends that audiences not “try to follow everything that’s going on. This piece has many layers, stories and details that appear at the same time. Anyone who sees this piece more than once will discover new things about it.”

Cherkaoui’s zest for, in Reehorst’s words, “contrasting worlds, styles, beliefs, music, stories and personalities” is precisely why she says she has collaborated with him since 2001. “He has a special and persevering eye for details and connections, and it is also very inspiring to experience his love for dance, which can be exceptionally beautiful and poetic while never losing its sense of humbleness.”

In conversation, Cherkaoui proved to be the type of choreographer who enjoys talking about his work and can do so with notable articulateness. Most of his dances, he observed, have “related to death and how things get remembered.” He called “Myth” a “wannabe encyclopedia, heavy with ideas and maybe too much -- but that’s why I like it.”

“I loved going through encyclopedias as a kid, to go from one thing to the next,” he said. “I’ve always been more of an associative thinker.”

Before he started dancing, at 15, Cherkaoui had channeled his artistic impulses into drawing. “But I got impatient with drawing. Dance for me was a three-dimensional way to draw. In dance, you are both the pencil and the eraser.”

Although he described his Islamic and “partly Catholic” upbringing as fairly religious, he also had access to MTV, and watching the dance routines of Janet Jackson and other ‘80s pop-culture icons definitely factored into his adolescent “need to move. I started dancing late, so I tried to learn everything at once,” he said of his training in multiple styles, including jazz, ballet, hip-hop and flamenco. “This feeling that I had to make up for not dancing earlier has never left me.”

A world of influences

Cherkaoui soon discovered modern dance and departed for a Brussels-based school established by choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. His talent as a dancer, characterized by versatility and a hyperelastic body, attracted the attention of other prominent Belgian choreographers, such as Vandekeybus and Alain Platel, founder of the dance-theater collective Les Ballets C de la B, which encourages collaborative work from its members. Cherkaoui went on to dance a solo in a Vandekeybus production and joined Platel’s company, where he found his voice as a choreographer. His first piece for the company, the 2000 “Rien de Rien,” won several awards and established his reputation for virtuosic eclecticism.

“I can’t say that one influence is more important than the other,” he said of his various mentors, idols and sources of inspiration, including Bausch, contemporary ballet choreographer William Forsythe and Flemish Renaissance painting. “They have all mattered, and I think in Belgium, where there’s no established dance tradition like in Paris or Russia, there’s a lot of room for choreographers to develop their own voice.”

In 2006, Cherkaoui left Les Ballets C de la B, intent on creating his own company, and accepted an invitation to become a resident artist with Toneelhuis, one of the largest municipal theaters in Belgium. Guy Cassiers, its artistic director, had invited five other artists representing different disciplines, aesthetics and viewpoints to take up long-term residence, and he wanted Cherkaoui “for his specific difference. He has a Belgian-Moroccan background, but his choreography is nourished by traditions from all over the world.”

“Myth,” in Cassiers’ estimation, is “an important step” in Cherkaoui’s artistic evolution. “He has brought together elements from previous works and develops them further in an intelligent way.”

Regarding his future, Cherkaoui seems to have every reason for optimism. He’s at a point in life where he feels professionally and personally “quite happy. There was a time when I believed that because I was gay, I couldn’t be saved. I had developed all these constructions for trying to survive the system I was in. But then I understood it was the wrong system for me. Today, I’m OK with all the different elements of myself.”

Through building his company, he has fulfilled a desire “to generate a family of my own. We’re all ‘half-halves’ and in between two worlds,” he said, referring to the mixed nationalities and ethnicities of the company members. “They are kindred spirits, and I love to learn from all of them.”

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Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui / Toneelhuis, Royce Hall, UCLA, 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday. $28-$48. (310) 825-2101 or www.uclalive.org.