and also this

I was hungry for dance last night, apparently. While hunting around (what's up with all these hunger / hunting metaphors?) on youtube for the trailer for The Rain, by Pontus Lidberg (Headlands resident artist in 2008) I came across this one, which I like even better...

louise

I first encountered Louise Lecavalier in the mid-90s, when dance for video was becoming its own genre (vs. recorded live performances) and I was hungrily scrounging around for as much info I could find about choreographers working on the N. American - European circuit. I remember the first time I saw a video of La La La Human Steps: her strength, her fearlessness .. in some ways she seems more like an icon made flesh than a regular human. I never saw her/them live, alas, but she has always held a place among the collection of amazing dance moments that lives in my brain.

More at: http://www.louiselecavalier.com/index_en.html

From Wikipedia:
Louise Lecavalier (born 1958) is a Canadian dancer, known as one of the icons of Canadian contemporary dance. Lecavalier was born and raised in Montreal, Canada. She began her professional dance career at the age of eighteen when she joined Le Groupe Nouvelle Aire. It was there that she met Édouard Lock. Lecavalier became Lock's muse in his company La La La Human Steps. With her mane of platinum dreadlocks, her physical power and her mastery of the full-body barrel jump, which looks like a horizontal pirouette, her image was a signature for the company. She was the perfect embodiment of Lock's frenetic and technically punishing androgynous aesthetic in works such as Human Sex (1985) and Infante, c'est destroy (1991).

when you feel the hit

My friend Kasey, a diehard fan of So You Think You Can Dance, visited last week, and we spent one Saturday evening watching clips from the show on our big projector wall. I must give kudos: some of the dancers are really phenomenal, and some of the choreography reaches that level where the kinetic and kinesthetic impact is so powerful, you feel like the movement is happening to YOU.

For example: (I recommend watching the video directly from youtube in order to see the full screen)


I once saw a dance performance by a choreographer named Robin Stiehm that was about abusive relationships. The piece built up slowly, until a moment about 2/3 of the way through where the male performer lands a solid blow into the stomach of the female performer, who falls and slumps.

It wasn't overdone. It hurt for days.