A Challenge Issued or Line Being Toed?

Onstage at the Irvine Barclay Theatre on Wednesday, an assaultive, rough-and-tumble mating dance erupts between Stephanie Slater and Jason Shipley-Holmes of La La La Human Steps, with Slater flailing wildly on the tips of her pointe shoes and Shipley-Holmes constantly yanking her back into his arms.

When she slumps, face downward, he rolls on the floor underneath her to kiss her from below, and later on she cuddles against him briefly. But otherwise, their duet proves less notable for its flashes of tenderness than his coldly violent partnering and her improbable balances on toe--the technical conventions of the ballet adagio appropriated for hot, anarchic, rock-tinged modern dance.

Welcome to the world of “Salt,” Canadian choreographer Edouard Lock’s plotless, powerhouse, 95-minute exploration of supported, anti-classical pointe-work as a metaphor for men who oppress and women teetering on the edge.

Lock knows as well as anyone that the satin toe shoe has become so entrenched as an emblem of the technique and repertory of classical ballet that borrowing it for a deconstruction of the sexist assumptions traditionally underpinning its use might seem either an extraordinary innovation or an outrageous act of vandalism.

However, “Salt” is arguably neither. For starters, the spectacle of a ballerina desperately trying to escape her partner’s arms is nothing new. Remember the first pas de deux in Fokine’s classic “Firebird” from 1910? The action’s the same here, even if the feathers are gone. Moreover, by giving pointe choreography to his five women--and only his women--while keeping his four men holding them up from behind, Lock ends up reinforcing rather than overthrowing the balletic status quo.

Finally, for all its mesmerizing intensity, this first La La La excursion into sustained pointe expression often finds Lock reinventing structural ploys, step-combinations and partnering relationships developed by such exponents of so-called drastic classicism as William Forsythe and Alonzo King: specialists in what for him is uncharted territory.

But “Salt” definitely marks a new direction for Lock: vertical rather than horizontal, women as victims rather than feminist icons. In the past, his dancers vaulted over one another gymnastically, with the women lifting as often as the men. Thus the choreography took them across the stage, while “Salt” assigns them up-and-down trajectories: not merely getting on and off their toes but lifting one another and jumping in place as well.

They may periodically walk from one area to another, but the dancing itself remains spatially concentrated in the extreme, highlighting the intricacy of high-velocity hand motions and the unusual placement of the free foot in the experimental balances on toe.

For example, in the brilliant final duet, Naomi Stikeman demonstrates the Lock pointe syllabus with spectacular sharpness, pulling her free foot up from the floor, over and over, and knotting it around whichever leg she’s balancing on in one brief, startling contortion after another.

Reinforcing the relentless up-and-down rhythm of the dances: Stephane Roy’s ascending/descending scenic webs and two circular projection screens on which we see films of a baby’s eyes, a women’s face and a fusillade of approaching cannon balls.

Played live by Kong Kie Njo, Anne-Marie Cassidy and Jean-Claude Patry, the score by David Lang and Kevin Shields sometimes soothes with lyricism for piano and cello but just as often turns abrasive with the use of an electric guitar and explosive percussion.

The stark lighting by John Munro enhances the claustrophobic spatial field of the work, while the black costumes (Vandal for the women, Gerard Mayeu for the men) leave the women’s bare legs gleaming in the darkness, emphasizing the long, long line from their hips to the tips of their toes.

By obsessively toeing that line, Lock buys into 180 years of ballet evolution but at the cost of sacrificing the unique vocabulary and vision of indomitable female self-sufficiency that made his company so special. Giving us trapped women instead of superwomen may be truer to contemporary reality, but as a sustaining artistic vision it just might not have legs.

Besides the dancers previously mentioned, the millennial, toe-dancing La La La enlists Amy Brogan, Yvonne Cutaran, Mirko Hecktor, Lawrence Rabson, Rick Gavin Tjia and Zofia Tujaka.

* La La La Human Steps dances “Salt” tonight and Saturday at 8 p.m. in the Wiltern Theatre, 3790 Wilshire Blvd. (at Western), Los Angeles. $27.50-$42.50. (310) 825-2101.