The Arts

Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

New Music Festival steps up dance component

By: Alison Mayes

Posted: 01/5/2012 1:00 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

Edouard Lock photo La La La Human Steps

La La La Human Steps, the internationally acclaimed Montreal dance company famous for risky movement done at breakneck speed, will perform Feb. 2 at the Centennial Concert Hall.

The show is part of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra's 21st annual New Music Festival, running Jan. 28 to Feb. 3.

Enlarge Image

Banff Centre for the Arts Cellist Shauna Rolston, above; La La La Human steps, right.

The 31-year-old troupe led by choreographer Edouard Lock is currently touring an 85-minute, 12-dancer piece called New Work that had its debut last year.

Contemporary composers Gavin Bryars and Blake Hargreaves have reinterpreted Purcell's Dido and Aeneas and Gluck's Orfeo and Eurydice into a score performed onstage by a four-member ensemble.

La La La last performed here in 2007 with Amjad, a reworking of the ballets The Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake.

The troupe is synonymous with reckless-looking warp-speed dance, full of twisting "kamikaze" jumps, gender-bending feats, diving, thrashing, spinning and shoving.

Deafening music and punk attitude characterized early La La La spectacles such as Human Sex. The company, which has collaborated with David Bowie and Frank Zappa, danced to lyrics by Lou Reed in the work Amelia, seen in Winnipeg in 2004.

New Work, which puts both men and women in pointe shoes and incorporates video projections, has earned wildly conflicting reviews. England's The Telegraph condemned its "empty chilliness" and complained that "the company's amped-up signature style now feels tired and affected."

The Montreal Gazette praised it for "choreography of great depth, subtlety, range of movement and emotional resonance," suggesting that it could be Lock's finest creation.

The complete lineup for the seven-concert New Music Festival is now posted at www.newmusicfestival.ca and tickets are on sale.

The Jan. 28 opening gala features the monumental work Graal Theatre by Grammy-winning Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho, a major figure in contemporary orchestral music.

The festival is highlighting Icelandic music. For the Feb. 3 closing night, the WSO has commissioned a world premiere by Iceland's J�hann J�hannsson and will perform the North American premiere of Atli Heimir Sveinsson's Symphony No. 2.

The Feb. 1 concert, titled Icelandia, will feature the Canadian premi®re of a work by Kjartan Sveinsson of the Icelandic post-rock band Sigur R�s.

On Jan. 30, prominent Canadian cellist Shauna Rolston will debut City Suites, a new concerto by the WSO's Vincent Ho, on her carbon-fibre cello. That concert also includes a work by Iceland's Daniel Bjarnason.

Single festival tickets are $25 (students $10), with higher prices for the opening and closing concerts. A festival pass is $99 (seniors $89, students $59) at Ticketmaster or the WSO box office, 949-3999.

alison.mayes@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition January 5, 2012 C7

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