Following 'Mix tape' in 2010, the Australian choreographer Stephanie Lake is back with another piece exploring themes of relation and ‘otherness’. On now at the Théâtre de Chaillot, ‘Dual’ at once reinforces and subverts the tension created by two simultaneous ‘solo’ performances.
At first the two dancers, Alisdair Macindoe and Sara Black, perform separately with seemingly no connection existing between their competing solos. And then, prompted by Robin Fox’s pulsing score, their isolated dances seem to fuse in a sudden burst of light: the choreography slows and the performers’ once sharp and expressive gestures fade into stillness. The music brings them back to life as a single dancing entity, a duo, and their dance is all the more beautiful for it.
The piece seems to speak to the fear wrapped up in attraction, expanding on themes of ‘duality’, wholeness and separation.