“I never hope for anything,” Louise Lecavalier tells me in an interview regarding her latest choreography, STATIONS. “I just try to work as much as I can—listening to what I should do, bring myself to the best place… I try to do the best I can at the moment. I prepare the best I can. What else can I do, you know? It’s like loving somebody: you don’t want to expect something. You just love the person.”
NAC Dance welcomes renowned Canadian contemporary dancer Louise Lecavalier as she brings STATIONS to the Babs Asper Theatre on the evenings of March 30 and 31.
Each one of her pieces is born out of the previous one, Louise says. With her latest creation, she was asked by a theatre group she worked with during her time in Montreal to create choreography telling the story of Marguerite Porete’s death, which came as a result of the avant-garde book she wrote. Her silence is portrayed in Louise’s dance, showing how the 13th-century woman wasn’t able to defend herself.
After performing the piece in Montreal, Louise realized that her choreography had to grow, sending her down the road of STATIONS.
“I started with that [piece], but then it evolved to not one station, but many stations […] It starts as the station of Christ—it’s where you stop in different places and experience different things. For me, there are four stations in the piece and they explore different facets: what I feel, what I perceive, what I imagine… It shows me my path. It speaks of my life as a dancer because it goes in variations of movements.”
Over the course of an hour without intermission, every element of Louise’s performance expresses something beyond words. It’s a co-production you don’t want to miss, having been performed to rave reviews across Canada and Europe since 2020.
“Contemporary dance can be very theatrical, very cerebral,” says Louise. “My pieces are not conceptual. The core of my work is always the movement. I search for the movement, finding the movement that speaks poetry […] I found my personal style, but maybe it was already there soon after I started to dance.”
Louise Lecavalier, creator and dancer in performance. Photo provided.
Louise tells me that learning your own style of dance, as well as standing out with your “way of speaking” through movements, has grown in value within the community. “I view it as something where I want to explore with the body. My ideas are always there, I keep thinking all day long […] but with dance, I try to create something that only [my body] can discover.”
She describes dance as a moving vehicle, where she has control over her choreography. Regarding STATIONS, a creation of hers that she’s been performing for about three years now, she puts that belief into the piece. “I find a new interpretation of it, but it’s slightly different because I watch shows from three years ago, and I cannot be the same as I was [back then] with this choreography because now I know it better, and I’ve explored it in many different ways. I have to grow with the piece, and the piece has to grow with me.”
Louise Lecavalier will perform STATIONS at the Babs Asper Theatre on March 30 and 31 at 7:30pm. To purchase tickets, click here or call 1-844-985-2787 (ARTS). Click here for accessibility information about this venue.
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