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By Catherine Tharin
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Published on May 19, 2025
Daniel Léveillé Danse. Photo: Julie Artacho
Daniel Léveillé Danse in Amour, acide et noix, a dance revisited
At NYU Skirball
Choreography: Daniel Léveillé
Dancers: Lou Amsellem, Jimmy Gonzalez, Marco Arzenton, Marco Curci
Light Design: Marc Parent
Music: Four Seasons by Antonio Vivaldi
Rehearsal Director: Marie-Andrée Gougeon
Production Manager: Megane Trudeau
Artistic Eye: Marie-Andrée Gougeon, Sophie Corriveau
April 11 - 12, 2025
The four nude dancers jump wide-legged with bent knees, arms relaxed at their sides — three penises and one vulva plainly visible — as if sculpted in the stance of sumo wrestlers. Then, without wind-up or flourish, they shoot straight into the air like superheroes. Twenty-four years after its creation, Daniel Léveillé Danse’s remarkable Amour, acide et noix remains as arresting and physically exacting as ever. The Montreal-based company revived the work April 11 to 12 at NYU's Jack H. Skirball Center for the Performing Arts.
Choreographed in New York City in 2001, Amour, acide et noix was first seen in the U.S. at Danspace Project in 2003. The work embraced nudity as costume, not as provocation. “When nude, everyone is equal,” said Marie-Andrée Gougeon, a contributor to the dance’s early development and the current rehearsal director, during the post-show discussion. The original budget, she added, didn’t stretch to cover both lighting and costumes. Lighting won. Even in the early 2000s, full nudity on stage was uncommmon. Today, the shock has worn off, but it still takes a moment for the mind to adjust.
Set to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and a mix of sounds, from snarling heavy metal to the sweetness of birdsong and a John Cage silence, the work unfolds in a series of sharp, idiosyncratic scenes. Movements appear out of nowhere, and land in full stops. A man hurls himself into the air, and lands in another man’s arms or on the woman’s back. Bodies are lifted, counterbalanced, and inverted. The dancers stare out at the audience, blank-faced and matter-of-fact. Yet, despite the neutrality of expression, the dance is full of feeling. Its daring is emotional. There is quiet gentleness when a hand wraps around a waist, tenderness in the way a man eagerly licks the side of another man’s torso. The dance relies on trust, not momentum. Rather than build speed to create force, the dancers use strength and precision to generate each action from stillness. They mark their entrances and exits with crisp, yet lumbering steps. The dance is awkward, and it’s riveting.
The performers' training includes circus, gymnastics, aerial work, street dance, and contemporary forms. They stick their landings like gymnasts, and hold balances with the precision of acrobats. Every movement is necessary; nothing is extraneous.
Lou Amsellem, a model and the lone woman in the cast, flaps her hands beside her head, and tumbles backward into arabesque. She springs from a squat, spirals down to the floor, extends a leg, returns upright, and then launches into a crouched jump, landing with trembling knees. In the duet that follows, she slams into Jimmy Gonzalez, who hoists her in the air, her limbs dangling, before she hoists him. They trade lifts while the German heavy metal band Rammstein plays in the background.
Marco Arzenton and Marco Curci take the stage with their own duet, echoing the deep second positions and sudden jumps of the opening, again to Vivaldi. Silence follows. The choreography, both brutal and tender, and edged with surprise, features jumps that are dangerous and precise.
In a dreamlike scene, the dancers, in a line, descend into a plank position across the stage, then slowly roll onto their backs, heads turning in unison. They fold into a crouch, sit, and roll backward. Led Zeppelin wails, “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You,” in a voice thick with longing. With their bottoms in the air, the dancers sink into their thigh sockets and knees before rising. They exit with weighty steps, under dim lights.
One of the more whimsical scenes comes when the dancers stand at the corners of the stage while a soothing male voice from the Audubon Society describes the songs of various bird species: “The Eastern Meadowlark whistles from fence posts... the Savannah Sparrow trills from a stalk in a wheat field.” Bathed in gentle light, the dancers lift their arms like wings, shoulders spotlit and oddly fragile.
Near the end, Curci crawls on all fours in near darkness. He collapses, stands again, and slowly turns. As the lights fade, Gonzalez reappears. Their exit in darkness is both felt and heard; their heavy steps slowly diminish.
Amour, acide et noix is not about seduction, or spectacle. Instead, it’s about effort made visible, and what it means to be exposed and vulnerable. The relentless piece requires stamina. Yet, it is beautiful and unapologetic in its spareness and rigor. After all these years, it continues to challenge. And, it still lands.
