Louise Lecavalier is an icon of Canadian dance and contemporary dance the world over. As Édouard Lock’s muse in La La La Human Steps, she danced with the company between 1981 and 1999, becoming arguably as identified with the company’s work as Lock himself.

In this double bill, she revisits some of her most recognised duets from her time with Lock (A Few Minutes of Lock) alongside Children by UK choreographer Nigel Charnock, exploring a relationship at breaking point.

Children
Performed together with Louise Lecavalier and Patrick Lamothe, Children is conceived by International performer, director, and dance veteran Nigel Charnock who has brought more chaos and confusion to the dance world than it can handle, but he still can’t resist making irreverent, funny, emotional and very human dance theatre works which challenge and entertain audiences everywhere.

Nigel says of his duet: “Children are beautiful, ugly, sweet, annoying, hateful, loving, mad, bad, loud and funny―and so is Children, a bittersweet and sweaty duet which exposes the heaven and hell of a relationship at breaking point…Children is a dark, witty, very physical work – like a great big grown-up child – danced to a stunning soundtrack.”

A Few Minutes of Lock
More than ten years after leaving Édouard Lock’s La La La Human Steps, Louise Lecavalier, accompanied by La La’s former dancer Keir Knight, revisits three duets from her final years with this celebrated company. Spurred by the challenge of it and by the desire to find out “what the body remembers”, A Few Minutes of Lock is a veritable conversation between bodies where souls are flushed to the surface – intimate, fraternal, passionate. Forged of shadow and light and set to the incantatory music of Iggy Pop, excerpts from 2 and Salt create a distillation of an exceptional adventure in contemporary dance.

This performance is part of International Dance Festival Birmingham 2012.