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Steps and strides

As his company La La La Human Steps celebrates its 25th anniversary, choreographer Édouard Lock keeps his momentum

by MARITES CARINO

After greeting a handful of staff and flâneurs at the Café Méliès, choreographer Édouard Lock settles in across from me and freezes momentarily. “Are you one of those people who’s adverse to smoke?” I suspect my hesitation gives it away. “I’m trying to quit,” he says almost apologetically as he lights up. “It’s bad for you.”

This won’t be the first time Lock has made his habit-kicking intentions clear to the Mirror. That, rather, happened in a 1995 cover story by Linde Howe-Beck on his long-running company La La La Human Steps’ Giant Step piece. And ’95 wasn’t his first cover connection either. 1986 saw Lock profiled by Walter Krajewski as one of five hot choreographers in the city, and 1990 had him again on the front page in a story by Andrew Jones for his collaboration with David Bowie on the Sound + Vision Tour.

Since 2002, La La La has repeatedly topped the Best Dance Group category in our Best of Montreal Readers Poll. Not bad for a guy who stumbled upon the art form during a university theatre class.

At 51, this year is a special milestone year for Lock because he’s celebrating his company’s 25th birthday. Although his choreographies, which once starred the horizontally whirling, bleached dreadhead Louise Lecavalier, now leave an indelible mark on the international dance scene, his troupe didn’t always have the same turn-your-head reputation.

“When I was doing my first European tour in 1982, people would ask where I come from.” he explains. “I would say, ‘Quebec,’ and people would have a blank look. Now people have a very clear association to Quebec and its exports—in terms of dance and other things. It’s changed quite a lot.”

Lock’s most recent export, Amelia, is both a stage production and a re-jigged cut, directed and edited by Lock, that was specifically conceived for the screen. The two versions offer up Lock’s signature razor-sharp, but blindingly blurry moves en pointe that come off as if in double fast-forward—so speedy that one viewer approached him after a screening and accused him of accelerating the film in post-production.

Speed and risk are themes Lock enjoys exploring, on and off stage. Take his initial desire to create the film version of Amelia. Even though it was a tough sell because the piece had zilch for a narrative, Lock decided to shop it around anyway and encountered Ex-Centris’s prez. “I’m glad Daniel Langlois went for it. Without his backing, it couldn’t have happened,” says Lock. Since its release in 2003, the visually arresting film, which is a movement showcase for bodies and camera, has had a healthy festival run and tiptoed away with two Genies last year.

As for current projects, Lock is working on getting the DVD out and reveals that come January, he’ll be shifting into creation mode and will most likely continue his exploration of the pointe technique because of his attraction to its precarious, teetering nature. “Obviously the intent is to balance on pointe. So if you’re not going to manage it, people are going to know you have failed.”

Lock says he also thrives on going head-to-head with the potential of failure. “You’re risking things on a daily level, and you’re being vulnerable on a daily level. And it’s important to highlight this part of our humanity,” he explains. “As people, we tend to succeed and fail a thousand times a day. It’s just a part of the natural process, so it shouldn’t necessarily be avoided on stage.”