I have a long-held fascination for the practices and beliefs of Buddhism and so I was hugely excited by the exchange of ideas that we encountered with 

. We wanted to go back to the internal conceits of Chan Buddhism, looking at the philosophy of emptiness, and how energy goes through, but is never contained by, the body and how objects can extend and be the carrier of that energy. We developed this work at Shaolin monastery over three winter months with young monks from 6 to 24 years of age, inspired by an older monk who was able to share animal moves that had been lost to the tradition during the cultural revolution.

I wanted to make a container for the body that was a universal mean against which the individuality of each monk/dancer would resonate. Together, they created spaces through which the performers could travel, building blocks of a range of architectures from pillar to threshold, plinth to colonnade, active elements of the dance – sometimes barriers and sometimes launchpads.

Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui / Antony Gormley / with monks from the Shaolin Temple, Sadlers Wells, London. Photograph by Hugo Glendinning, London