Louise Lecavalier is renowned for dancing with David Bowie on his Sound + Vision tour and the Fame 90 video, and for being the face of Canadian dance company La La La Human Steps in the 1980s and 1990s. She is also celebrated as contemporary dance's most athletic and acrobatic performer, hurtling through the air like a flying bullet, launching into barrel jumps, and corkscrewing on a horizontal axis.
A Career Beyond Retirement
At 67, Lecavalier has entered an uncompromising phase of her career, choreographing her own solos that are worlds away from any notion of cosy retirement. In Danses Vagabondes, she scampers backwards on stage, dressed in a long coat and hood, evoking druid vibes. Skittish as she bounces on the balls of her feet, her body quivers and quirks with a febrile quality, playing out compulsive repetitions to the restless beats per minute of a techno soundtrack.
Movement and Inspiration
Lecavalier's movement hints at echoes of dances past—wisps of balletic port de bras, some entrechat jumps, a burst of hip-hop footwork—but all through a blurred filter. She is a distinctive, mercurial presence: somewhere between a witchy raver, a manic pixie dream grandmother, and an earnest artist of the avant-garde. Danses Vagabondes is inspired by Carlo Rovelli's book Écrits Vagabonds, a collection of essays wandering through disparate topics, the thoughts of a roaming mind.
Lecavalier is in constant motion, scrolling through impulses with a tight, nervous energy that is strangely engaging. However, when the tempo slows, the wandering goes a little off course. It is hard not to marvel at the way Lecavalier's body remains very much at her command—she can still kick her leg to her shoulder, but that is by the by. Even harder not to marvel at this dancer's unquenchable maverick spirit.
At Sadler's Wells East, London, until 27 April.
