The Canadian choreographer ?douard Lock has the kind of CV that guarantees attention. He has worked with David Bowie, Frank Zappa and the Paris Opera Ballet, directed an award-winning film and for more than 25 years has directed one of the most stylish and daring dance companies in the world. So when Lock sets out to make a ballet about Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty, we will take note.
This being Lock, of course, nothing is that straightforward. Even the title of his new work, Amjad (an Arabic name for either a man or a woman), is ambiguous. But this febrile, fantastical dream, a fragmentary swirl of iconic sights and sounds from Tchaikovsky’s great ballets, goes way beyond imagining. Performed by Lock’s Montreal-based La La La Human Steps, and now launched on a major UK tour, Amjad is an exhilarating memory trip and a brute assault course all in one. These are the memories we can’t escape. They are beautiful, they are deranged, and Lock overheats them until they possess the ability to haunt.
Much of Amjad’s success is owed to its music, an original score by Gavin Bryars, David Lang and Blake Hargreaves. They have reimagined Tchaikovsky, taking familiar melodies and weaving them into a strident modern commentary, chugging at the rhythms and abstracting the lyricism. The score (for piano, cello and two violas) is played live, another plus. Meanwhile, big circular screens project images of the forest (a favourite 19th-century allegory for the unconscious mind) and huge white pearls (why?).
Lock’s extreme choreography, cut with precision and audacity, is a dazzling riff on 19th-century classicism. All the women are on pointe - the pointework is gruelling - along with one man, a reference that raises elliptical issues of gender stereotyping. The representations of Odette are variously ecstatic or neurotic; the swans are capricious and skittish, their arms constantly flapping like wings in panic. Lock’s language, much of it written in duets, stretches and shapes ballet’s fundamentals and accelerates them on to another plane. For the nine dancers (four men, five women) it’s a stunning tour de force. They deliver at speeds no human being should be capable of; they are fearless and ultra-chic.
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Amjad isn’t perfect, though. Often the choreography feels mechanical and efficient. At one hour and 45 minutes (without interval) it’s a long sit. And the Swan Lake allusions work far better than the Sleeping Beauty ones. Yet despite its overblown ambition and inevitable longueurs, Amjad is one hell of a ride.
Box office: 0844 4124300, to Sat. Then touring until Feb 16. Tour: www.WorldWideDanceUK.com