Dance Analysis on Human Sex Duo
La La La Human Sex Duo no 1 is piece choreographed by Édouard Lock is a short black and white film which is directed by Bernar Hébert, starring Louise Lecavalier and Marc Beland. The film has received six international prizes and is a very highly acclaimed film. This piece has also been performed on stage internationally.
La La La Human Sex Duo no 1 opened with images of waves on a sea shore before dissolving to the dancers in a building. Similarly, the piece finished with the room filling up with water and the images dissolving back into the sea. The film, visually and technically shows its surrealistic influences in an imaginary journey through the ruins of a castle lost under water, in order to explore a couple's violent, passionate and sensual relationship. Bernar Hebert is a film and video maker who conveys the intimacy of the dance performance, with a perspective on the body which makes it impossible for the audience to experience the sensuous, passionate act.
In late 80's, Lock's work in pointe ballet joined his armoury of effects, which was often performed at an extreme velocity. The movements were highly energetic which represented the passion in the act. Initially, the choreographer's work looked cartoon-like. I felt as if the dancers were restricted by space in the act as there were a lot of the stop-start movements. This dance piece was a high energy performance with precise gestures, which amalgamated dance, sports, music and cinema. The female dancer in this particular act, Louise Lecavalier had quite an aggressive style of dance and she performed extremely fast paced pirouettes and turns. Lock's work features modified ballet with music and film. The choreography is unremarkable and because its performed at such a manic speed, it is highly repetitive. The female dancer had great core strength as she could make horizontal air-turns and in this piece of dance, the choreographer reversed the expected roles, as the female dancer raised the male dancer as water began to fill up the room. We could clearly see in this film that the female dancer was quite strong, however, was never an autonomous being, but was always manipulated, shaped and turned by the male dancer. Also the fast paced movements, eliminated the facial expressions and their faces completely from the film.
Original music David Van Tiegham, punctuates the breath-taking movement of the dancers as they draw us into the dance. The dance was very well accompanied by a repetitious, percussive, electric sound track which also included the dancer's breathing out loud and whispering. After listening to the music piece, I felt as if it was the perfect sound track for this particular dance due to its intimacy as I have heard this sort of music in a lot of Latin American forms of dance, such as, rumba, samba, bachata, which in turn are sensuous and intimate dance forms.
