Expectations are high for Stations, the latest work by dancer and choreographer Louise Lecavalier. She has been a household name in the dance world for decades, first as dancer and muse of Edouard Lockes La La La Human Steps, and since 2006 with her own Fou Glorieux. Her intensity and athletic abilities are impressive, she challenges the limits of her body. Even now that she is 63. Can she develop further, or are we going to see a repeat performance - however appealing?
In four parts, she explores space and dance. The light is her only backdrop; the parts have their own colour and feel, with the patterns the lamps make on the floor emphasising the atmosphere. In one part, the floor is calm and geometric, in another the lamps make zebra or tiger stripes.
Her costume is simple, a black tight suit with flared legs. Clever, because this prevents you from clearly seeing her flighty foot movements and makes her seem to slide across the stage in tight lanes.
Her arm movements are alternately very small with lightning-fast flapping hands, or very wide. The areas in between don't interest her much. The same goes for the pace: she goes very fast or very slow, no middle ground. She usually goes very fast, and has been doing so for over forty years.
Stations as artistic research
In Stations, she investigates what dance is. How does the body relate to space? How to the music? Colin Stetson's hunted saxophone is the dreamed score for the control stage. Fast and rousing, with LeCavalier almost attacking the stage with her movements. In her own work, she has developed a language unique to her and to her body. Her quick foot movements with which she glides across the stage in tight lanes, her extreme balance. Moving forward on one leg, the other at a 90-degree angle, she can make subtle arm movements. Yet it does not become a trick in which she shows what she can do, it is in the service of dance.
Her arms sometimes seem to lure us in. They invite you into her soul to transition abruptly into quick waving hand movements. You may look into my being, but to here and no further. LeCavalier is firmly in control. The vulnerable, open moments are very moving. It is precisely the personal in her barrage of brute force and control that makes this work powerful and innovative within her oeuvre. She herself says of it that earlier she felt the need to fly, now to land. And those landings involve the spectator in her choreography.
The four stages of dance
Fluidity, control, meditation and obsession, the four stages of the body in dance. Every fibre of her muscular body is there, not a second of letting go in the hour-long performance. All right, she lies on the floor for a moment, but even then she is on. She is sometimes a lioness, sometimes a prey animal. She manoeuvres effortlessly from strength to vulnerability. The final movement, Obsession, begins with an impossibly deep backward bend that makes her look upside down at the audience. It has an alienating effect to see her entire face (she bends so deeply) like this, while she makes gentle arm movements.
The music is by Teho Teardo and Blixa Bargeld; the lyrics are fierce. Blixa sings that he cannot sing in blue because that would drain the oceans; not in green because the forests would die' not in red because that would be a bloodbath. He can only sing in black. The heaviness of the lyrics lends an emotional intensity that Lecavalier parries with her intense upside-down gaze.
Stations shows us the dancer we know and love so well. But she has tapped into an emotional depth and a personal layer that are new to her work. So, even after four decades, she can still evolve and innovate. I know again why she is my heroine.
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