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La La La Human Steps

Imagine militarily-precise ballet dancers performing at warp speed and you’ve got a pretty good sense of Édouard Locke’s simply titled New Work performed by internationally acclaimed company La La La Human Steps.

The Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra’s New Music Festival featured the Montreal-based troupe as its sixth show in the weeklong new music fête that ran Jan. 28 to Feb. 3. The one-night-only performance held at Concert Hall marke, notably, the company’s first city appearance in five years. Locke has choreographed the 85-minute (no intermission) production to celebrate his company’s 30th anniversary. It will tour worldwide until the end of 2012.

Inspired by two baroque operas: Dido and Aeneas by Henry Purcell and Orfeo and Eurydice by Cristoph Willibald Gluck, Locke has deconstructed the two respective Greek mythologies of love and loss with their music, in turn, re-scored by British composer Gavin Bryars with Canada’s Blake Hargreaves. A stellar onstage band consisting of: music director/pianist Njo Kon Kie, cellist Jean-Christophe Lizotte, violist Jennifer Thiessen, saxophonist Ida Toninato performed live throughout.

The company of five men dressed in black suits and six women in body suits en pointe perform with razor-sharp precision, spinning like tops as their poker straight legs and flailing arms slice patterns through the air. A sense of isolation is created as individual dancers or smaller ensembles perform in pools of pure white light cast on the stage that become sub-worlds of postmodern alienation.

Despite the non-narrative work’s fiercely abstract nature, Locke manages to infuse his own sense of mythology with several sections particularly strong. Two bare-chested men perform a closely connected pas de deux that ends as they wave their arms behind each other like wings, evoking mythological figure Icarus who flew too close to the sun. In other, more combative scenes dancers hurl their bodies against each other before breaking apart that suggests ancient heroic battles.

Black and white video projections created by André Turpin and Jean Ranger also add visual counterpoint as portraits of woman are periodically projected on two large banners hanging over the stage. Not only do these give the hyperkinetic dancers some much needed repose, it also provides relief for the audience.

Despite Locke’s undeniable artistry and breathtaking performances by the dancers themselves, New Work is, in some ways, too much of a good thing. The baroque-style musical texture begins to sound overly homogenous despite several electronic breaks that added sonic dimension. And, at nearly one-and-a-half hours in length, it seems to be a bit long for its audience, resulting in an unusual spotty standing ovation for the non-stop show.

Still, La La La Human Steps has been a significant player in the Canadian dance scene for over 30 years. It’s a major coup for the NMF to have been able to include this innovative troupe as part of an already rich celebration of contemporary culture.