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Louise Lecavalier—Stations

Dance artist Louise Lecavalier has enjoyed a celebrated career in the limelight since the 1980s, going from the lead dancer in Édouard Lock’s trailblazing dance company La La La Human Steps for 18 years to touring with English pop star David Bowie and even starring in his music video Fame 90. Over the years Lecavalier has been recognised with a range of prestigious awards in recognition of her accomplishments, such as the Order of Canada and the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement.

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Louise Lecavalier—Stations

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The 53rd HK Arts Festival ．Feature

2025.01.24

How Louise Lecavalier Found Inspiration in the Limitations of the Body

Text / Shao yi Chan

Pop star David Bowie gave a performance at London's Dominion Theatre in 1988 as part of the fundraising series Intruders at the Palace. As the superstar slid gracefully into centre stage, he was joined by a brawny young woman who lifted, tossed and hurled the singer with effortless virtuosity, and who would go on to become one of the biggest names in contemporary dance.

With her signature bleached hair and androgynous, explosive physicality that separates her from other female dancers, Louise Lecavalier has an onstage persona that goes beyond the masculine/feminine binary in ballet. Apart from her iconic duet with Bowie, she is perhaps best known for her long-time collaboration with Édouard Lock, choreographer and founder of the avant-garde dance company La La La Human Steps, where she worked for 18 years and helped catapult the company to fame.

Now aged 65, Lecavalier may be visibly leaner and toned down in velocity, but is no less brilliant or intense. After spending decades in the limelight as a dancer, she made her choreographic debut in 2012 with So Blue, followed by a series of boundary-breaking works that received critical acclaim. Her latest piece, Stations, considered her most personal to date, offers a rare glimpse into a lifetime of dance research. Divided into four parts, each corresponding to a different state of being—fluidity, control, meditation and obsession—the work is an attempt to find the purest form of dance language beyond the limitations of the body.

But Lecavalier, who will appear at the 2025 HKAF as part of the Icons in Motion dance series, never saw the body as a constraint that she had to be freed from. She's always had a unique way of turning perceived limitations (especially for female dancers), such as ageing and pregnancy, into fuel for her creativity. After leaving La La La Human Steps in 1999, Lecavalier stepped away from the spotlight for a while and embraced motherhood by giving birth to twin daughters. In an interview with Critics At Large, she said: "Three weeks after my twin daughters were born [I decided to return to the stage]. Their immense beauty and perfection was so gigantic… But I also had so much joy that I wanted to give back to the universe which could not be expressed in words. I desperately wanted to dance again."

Ageing, likewise, is simply an opportunity for her to "live in another body". When asked about her secret to keeping up the pace during an interview with Critics at Large, Lecavalier shrugs: "It is a mind thing. The body just has to follow."