Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, dancer: why I love Kate Bush

http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2014/apr/08/sidi-larbi-cherkaoui-why-i-love-kate-bush

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Wuthering Heights was the first Kate Bush song I ever heard. It was the early 1990s and I was 14, watching her on Dutch TV. I was mesmerised by how she moved – these strange, hypnotic gestures, like she was performing some kind of ritual. And of course there was her voice: perfectly in tune, this incredible sound, hugely expressive. I was hooked. I bought as many of her albums as I could.

You hear most pop musicians sing, and there's a kind of detachment. But with Kate, you feel she's completely present. She's a storyteller: her songs are full of characters, almost like small novels. There's humour in them, too – she's funny as well as sensual. She can sound like a seductress, a mother, a man, or Elvis. Some people laugh at her because it all seems so bizarre, but I always felt she was magical. There's such pressure in pop for people to behave or look a certain way, an endemic sexism; there's not much room for female performers to be who they really are. But with Kate, you feel that's exactly what she is.

I wasn't really into dance when I was younger. It's partly because of her that I began to care about it. I found out she studied with Lindsay Kemp and was influenced by many different kinds of choreography. When I was 17 or 18, I improvised a lot of dance to her work and, in college, set some choreography to a section of Waking the Witch. I realised that the way she moves helps her to be in touch with her voice – she can't stand still when she's singing. Voice is a kind of movement: you're moving the space inside of you, releasing certain things with your breathing. She made me aware of that, and it's something I've used in my own work.

I was broken-hearted when she stopped releasing new albums in the 1990s. The critics were so harsh about The Red Shoes, but I was fascinated by it. It had an obvious connection with dancing – the fairytale of the magical shoes that dance you to death – but there was also so much sadness in the album, more than any other. Then she came back 12 years later with Aerial and 50 Words for Snow, which were perhaps even better than her earlier work, and then she announced these new gigs. It was like something you'd given up on ages ago suddenly coming good. It almost made you believe in God.

I still listen to Kate a lot. For the last couple of years, I've been learning the piano and trying to play her music. After all these years of being a fan, it's an amazing feeling: like stepping inside her songs. I sing along, too, of course. Her music isn't reassuring or comforting, but that's the great thing about Kate: she broadens your horizons.

Kate Bush, born 30 July 1958

Way in Video for Wuthering Heights (1978)

Key work Hounds of Love (1985) album

In three words Ethereal. Sensuous. Jumpsuit

Soundbite "I think quotes are very dangerous things."

• 4D by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui will be at Sadler's Wells, London EC1, in June. Kate Bush plays 22 nights at the Hammersmith Apollo, London in August and September.