Stephanie Lake’s latest work, Replica, may be the product of the choreographer’s eponymous company, but it very much presents itself as a collaborative dialogue between the movers and the maker. It is a work for two talented dancers – Frenchman Aymeric Bichon and Singaporean Christina Chan – who are refreshingly unfamiliar to Melbourne audiences. The pair have a longstanding studio relationship and, after seeing it in action, Lake decided to create the entire work around their co-dependency. By exploiting both the commonalities and differences of the two dancers, we are offered a highly physical exploration of the symbiotic potential of all human relationships.

Stephanie Lake, ReplicaAymeric Bichon and  Christina Chan in Stephanie Lake’s Replica. Photo © Pippa Samaya

In many ways, Replica is like a strangely voyeuristic science experiment. It begins with a man and a woman dressed in matching beige outfits stepping cautiously into a large square marked out by fluorescent tubes of light. In this petri dish of blinding whiteness, the bodies begin to explore the space in a relatively pedestrian manner: they walk, they pause, they gesture. Then, in a fleeting pass, the man and woman...