Choreographing Difference: The Body and Identity in Contemporary Dance

Techno Bodies Muscling with Gender in Contemporary Dance The one overwhelming image I have of La La La Human Steps' multimedia extravaganza Infante, C'est Destroy is of Louise Lecavalier flying through the air like a human torpedo. She gets caught by another dancer, thrashes around with him for a while, then vaults right out of his arms and halfway across the stage, only to rebound back into his face. A few minutes and who knows how many heartbeats later, she rears up from the floor one last time, shakes her mane of bleached-blond hairand strutsoff the stage with an attitudethat would make the most viciousheavymetal rocker look like Pete Seeger by comparison. Louise Lecavalier is the star of Ldouard Lock's dance 'n' rock creation, which I witnessed during the 1993 Festival International dc Nouvcllc Danse in Montreal. Throughout this nonstop 75-minute spectacle, Lecavaher's body—both its hardened aerobic energy and its filmed image—is continuously on display. Pitted against the pounding sounds of Skinny Puppy, Janitors Animated, David Van Tiegham, and Emstur/ende Neubauten, her dancing uses the driving beat of the music to stretch dance movements to the outer limits of physical possibility and endurance. At one point, Lecavalier grabs one of the various mikes littered around the stage and, panting, begins to discuss the metaphysical dimensions of music, heartbeats, and physicalenergy. She then produces a mini-mike,which she solemnlyattaches to percussionist Jackie Gallant's chest. With the kind of cosmic, synergistic intensity that makes heavy metal so seductive to teenagers, Gallant begins to pound away at 29 Techno Bodies her drum. The harder Gallant drums, the faster her heartbeat. The faster her heartbeat, the faster she drums to keep up. As Gallant builds quickly to the orgasmic peak of her auto-aerobic union with the drum, Lecavalier comes crashing back to center stage, riding the musical tidal wave just as Gallant finishes. The first ten minutes of Lecavalier's dancing are absolutely awe-inspiring. Within a few minutes, her well-defined muscles are pumped-up and her body is practically pulsating with untapped energy. The way she launches her body across the floor and at various partners is phenomenal. Physically, she is immensely powerful, a fact noted by audience members and dance reviewers alike. Lecavalier is repeatedly described in the lobby as well as in the press as a "human torpedo," a "canonball," a "rocket," or a "bullet." Similarly, her physique is ubiquitously evoked through the popular language of body building as either "chiseled," "ripped," or "granite." One reviewer even took these pervasive images of violence to their logical extreme, comparing the dancing of La La La Human Steps to a war. "Arms swing menancingly like knives, legs flash like bayonets, hips are thrust forward with the aggressiveness and rapidity of machine-gun fire, and whole bodies fly like rockets through the air."1 I find the obsessiveness with which reviewers discuss Lecavalier's body and movement and their inevitable violent or machine-like metaphors indicative of a certain unease with Lecavalier's corporeality. Her all-encompassing focus on vaulting back and forth across the stage creates an intense physicality that both literally and figuratively crosses over gender norms, even in the midst of a cultural moment in which both men and women are encouraged to cultivatea muscularly defined look in their bodies. By taking on the musculature and powerful, explosive movement that mark the achievement of high masculinity in sports, martial arts, and Arnold Schwarzenegger movies, Lecavalier's dancing personna is not easily contained in the role of "pnma ballerina," even though Lock's choreography is so obviously an elaborate vehicle for the display of her extraordinary physicality. After the first ten minutes of the spectacle , however, Lecavalier'sdancing begins to feel increasingly coerced. Whether she is framed by the camera, as in the huge, blown-up films showing her falling slowly through space, or by the men onstage, Lecavalier never seems to be able to break out of Lock's own vision of her body. Edouard Lock is a filmmaker, a photographer, and a director of mega pop spectacles. Critics frequently call Lecavalier his muse, likening her role in Infante , C'est Destroy to a blend of Madonna and Joan of Arc. Visually they have a point. In the filmed section of the dance, she is dressed in metal armor, and while she is performing live onstage, Lecavalier flaunts the same kind of sexuahzcd power that Madonna has successfully commodified...