Interview by François Dufort
from "Pointes à la ligne," Ici Montréal, vol. 6, no. 15, January 16, 2003.

January 2003. After a busy autumn, Édouard Lock and the dancers of La La La are back in Montréal to present their latest work. The Rialto studios are in a feverish state of activity. In a few days the troupe is off to a stage in Cité du Havre for a television adaptation of Amelia. Tonight there is a lull in activities. The dancers have left. With candour, Édouard Lock is talking about his work. So let us meet Amelia.

Points and lines

Is Amelia a logical extension of Salt, the last work you presented to Montreal audiences?

Yes, because it's a work that uses point technique, as well as certain structural elements found in Salt. Having said that, Amelia is more complex. The gestural vocabulary is more detailed, and therefore more difficult for the dancers to perform. Comparatively speaking, I'd say that Amelia represents a progression in terms of complexity.

What do points represent for you?

A technique, nothing more. A technique that is quite neutral, even if it's been widely used in narrative ballets. Above all, it?s a technique involving a series of linear structures, of linear positions set in an idealized context. But if it's used without the narrative structure, as nothing more than a technique, the result can be very interesting.

The move to points, with the lines that result, also represents a major shift in your choreographic language. After horizontal lines, which for years were La La La's trademark, you have opted for vertical lines. Why this change?

Because time moves on [laughter], things evolve. I enjoyed working with horizontal lines. When speaking positively about people, we say they?re straightforward, upright?the opposite of horizontal. On stage, this horizontality used to evoke strange, emotional responses from the audience. Now, with the passage of time, something else has taken over, a new development.
This major change must have surprised some people. Point shoes definitely weren't something people would associate with the company. When Salt was first performed, it created quite a shock in fact?which is what happened back in '82, when audiences discovered the extreme side of La La La. Reactions have been just as strong, for and against. When we went on points, a lot of people I've known for years asked me, "Why did you do that?" I think you have to avoid falling into a situation where you feel forced to live up to the label that people have stuck on you. But if you manage to, there?s a price to pay?the price of criticism. In order to develop, you have to be able to jettison certain elements of previous works. More than anything, you can't become too fond of what you've done. If you want to move on, go somewhere new, you have to be able to come into conflict with what you?ve created in the past.

Themes and projections

Why Amelia?

Its source is personal, anecdotal. Amelia relates to two people I knew more than twenty years ago, who had an effect on me. At that time I was young and naive, not exactly in the thick of things?I was a young man on the outside looking in, and I met these two transvestites. They were in a constant state of theatricality, without being in a theatre. My memory of them has remained with me ever since?and it's one of the first that I?ve used in my work, although it?s theatricalized. I often use the materials of everyday life in my works, and some of the movements I create are quite banal. It was this mixture of the theatrical and the non-theatrical that I experienced for the first time with these two transvestites. Meeting them, in fact, may have had a permanent effect on my work as whole. I always swore to myself that I would do something with those memories. Now I have.

This Amelia is virtual, a projected image. There are also projections of your dancers. Why?

So as to create an echo between events of the past and the dancers appearing on stage, or who will later appear. What makes this interesting, I think, is not so much the film itself as the fact that we live in a world in which film and reality are always separate. When we see a person appearing on stage, as the source image, and then see an echo of that same person at the same time and in the same place, what results are free games of association between the two. The viewer begins to superimpose the characteristics of one onto the other, and that provokes some very interesting emotions.

The soundtrack

You've once again called upon David Lang for the music of Amelia. He has composed original music, but with lyrics by Lou Reed in the era of Velvet Underground. These lyrics obviously go back to the period in which you met the two transvestites who inspired Amelia. Was this your choice?

No, I've never wanted to meddle in the creative process of my composers. They're in their own world, and I?ve worked long enough with David to be able to trust him completely. I just give him a call and say, "I'm doing a piece that will premiere on such and such a date?are you interested?" He said yes, then talked about Lou Reed and later sent me some texts he planned on using; by chance or coincidence, there were connections with the gestural language I was creating at the time.

Are there still those audience members who want to understand at all costs what they're seeing?

Yes, I think everybody attempts to understand. And even those who don't want to understand have to censor themselves beforehand. Instinctively, our initial reaction is to make sense of things, I'm not sure why?it may be the way we've been educated, or it may be something peculiar to human beings. In any case, from my own point of view, there is really nothing to understand.

Interview by François Dufort
from "Pointes à la ligne," Ici Montréal, vol. 6, no. 15, January 16, 2003.