La La La Human Steps

That's the name of a dance company that Peggy and I saw on Saturday. The show they are currently doing is called Amjad and is a riff on Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty. Wow, what a performance. We both loved it. The performance consists of 5 female and 4 male dancers plus 4 musicians on stage (3 strings and a piano). There are 3 round screens overhead that occasionally shows videos of various images relating to the two original ballets. The music is variations on the original Tchaikovsky scores for the two ballets and is beautiful. This company has a unique dance style. The movements are extremely quick (beats with the foot are mere flashes of movement). Turns are done at high speed. Arm movements are aggressive and sharp. All the women wear pointe shoes and in some cases they are on pointe through most of the performance. There is one man who dances in pointe shoes and his duet with a female dancer is one of the most beautiful pas de deux I've seen. Despite the stripped down staging and the modern vocabulary, this show captures all of the beauty and tragedy of these classic ballets. (Their website is in French.) They are traveling to Asia next and then will be in New York City in November and back home in Montreal in 2009. Definitely worth seeing.