A tragic vision at its core

It helps to think like a photographer when watching “Amelia,” Edouard Lock’s latest, furiously intense showcase for his contemporary Canadian dance company, La La La Human Steps.

So much of it seems created to be viewed through a lens, with a photographer’s cool detachment and meticulous selectivity: exactly this instant, this angle. Life rushes by in the plotless 80-minute work, but Lock deliberately leaves us with no overview, only bold afterimages.

Its U.S. premiere, Wednesday in Royce Hall as part of the UCLA Live series, renewed Lock’s obsession with mysterious, larger-than-life female icons and his more recent fascination with ballet technique -- especially propulsive pointedancing.

However, his new film projections of three La La La women look digitized or virtual, further from physical reality than ever. And instead of illuminating a flow of motion, John Munro’s endless lighting shifts create unexpected momentary emphases and dislocations: divisions in time.

Altering brightness and which parts of the dancers can be seen, these continual lighting changes soon become as unsettling as the restless repositioning of Stephane Roy’s scenic units: web-like open-work panels swirling with the same untamed energy as the dancing but never fully revealed, merely seen in half-light.

Structurally, Lock establishes a key visual motif -- dancers lounging on the floor with legs extended -- and later returns to it, just as he offers an initial premonition of a pointeduet between Zofia Tujaka and a male listed only as Billy but delivers the actual choreography only near the end. Though he’s no more phenomenal than his seven colleagues, Billy represents an anomaly for Lock: a man just as powerful and prominent as any La La La woman.

Indeed, his duet with Tujaka (with both in toe shoes and men’s suits) isn’t remotely gender-specific but rather an attempt to take dancers into a realm of pure disembodied energy, the way the latest motion-capture film technology records only movement, not the people moving.

But don’t expect an energy circus: For all its exciting heat and virtuosity, there’s a tragic vision at the core of “Amelia,” one reinforced by David Lang’s somber music (mostly played live). The fabulous showpiece dancing represents only part of the picture, and there seems to be a whole other story going on in the movement of the scenery and musicians on the dark fringes of the stage and in the overpowering but unreadable gesture-dialogues among the eight dancers.

Of the four men, Bernard Martin seems especially desperate to be understood, but all his compulsive flailing leaves him still painfully isolated.

And even when Andrea Boardman’s fierce attempts at communication set her throwing herself at her partners and climbing over them, no breakthrough takes place.

Occasional, unexpected moments of tenderness do occur, but mostly we see bodies hurtling forward, side by side, sharing a rhythm, a trajectory, a location, but fundamentally alone.

*

La La La Human Steps

Where: Royce Hall, UCLA

When: Tonight-Sat., 8 p.m.

Price: $25-$45

Contact: (310) 825-2101