‘The need to dance’ is the portrait of the Flemish-Moroccan choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, one of the most versatile and successful dance artists of our times. The documentary follows him as he travels all over Europe. As the film observes him creating and performing widely different styles of dance, he talks in an interior monologue about what lies behind his irrepressible urge to dance. As the son of a Moroccan father, a Muslim, and a Roman-Catholic Flemish mother it was anything but obvious that he would become an artist.
While imitating, as a child, the choreography in video clips by Madonna and Michael Jackson, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui discovered that dance gave him the opportunity to express himself and to cope with his problems. And he made an unconditional choice for a life in the arts. It gave him happiness, but it did cause the definitive break with his dominant father. Growing up in two cultures is still the rich source of the dance pieces he creates.