Blanca Li

Choreography and artistic direction: Blanca Li
Original Music: François Eudes Chafrault and Tao Gutierrez
Lights: Jacques Châtelet
Video: Charles Carcopino
Costumes: Laurent Mercier, Mr Pearl and Françoise Yapo.

Coroduction: Biennale de la danse de Lyon, Compagnie Blanca Li, Maison des Arts de Créteil, Opéra de Massy. With the help of la Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations et de la Direction Régionale des Affaires culturelles d’Ile de France – Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication.

A collection of snapshots, glimpses of real life, a collage of different emotions. Life… as a film. For this creation, Blanca Li has chosen to work on several short pieces, composing a patchwork of short stories, of short dance movies. The choreographer draws her inspiration from moments, images, objects, stories, music, fragments of actuality, from all those unpredictable encounters that make her daily life. Some of these ideas take form into pieces with evocative titles like, Doblepaso, Alarme, Round Midnight, Made in China, Game Over… The length of these pieces as well as their form (solos, duos, trios, group compositions) reflect the lightweight, the briefness of these flashes of inspiration. Ephemeral moments treated with humour, poetry or energy, they respond to the need of the choreographer to give freedom to her wandering inspiration without being constrained by duration.

In that way the choreography brings forth such fondamental issues as: how to deal with highheel shoes, or more metaphysical matters like that of artists having to earn a living by performing in the NY subway. As to the sound effects, they prove that Blanca Li has lost nothing of her unmistakable creativeness. For one of her pieces, the choreographer picked out these small plastic instruments we give children to play on at birthday parties. However bad the music they make is, and not sophisticated in any way, Blanca Li just adores the way they sound. But, Blanca insists, the whole point is to have responsible adults play on them. No matter how wild the performance is, with no link between the different themes developed in each piece, it arouses a strong urge to go back to the child within. As if hypnotized, the audience faces a wonderful playground where emotions loom up with no apparent control.

The tittle “Alarme” at first revealed some kind of a panic, a feeling of emergency awakened by a troubled world, but has slowly changed, its sharpness has softened and turned into something smoother. “I want to remember the beauty in all things”, Blanca says. More concretely she asked the artist friends of her team -a photographer, a costume designer, a plastician- to come up with an object, something meaningful to them, and bring it to her. And they will all be on stage along with the eight performers.

Alarm is composed of eight independent pieces:

Alarme
In our contemporary world, in spite of the increasing numbers of means of communication, fear keeps human beings isolated while they live under more and more control. A fancy on the freedom we long for in order to prevent our planet from turning into a threatening and hostile environment.

Doble paso
Many modern women’s professional life can be summed up by the same motto: save appearances no matter what. A free variation on what we become thanks to the way others see us…

Electron
Night, under the city lights or in the dark, releases a kind of energy, which renews and revitalizes the bodies. An hymn to the urban night and the subterranean streams and emotions.

Pochette surprise
Because we should never forget we were once children and never lose our ability to play.

Made in China
Technology doesn’t have to be advanced or sophisticated to move and fascinate us.

Promenade
An exploration of the world of seduction where lie the roots of our most passionate memories. A confrontation between the call of nature and the limits we impose on ourselves.

Round midnight
While midnight is a long gone memory , and dawn still an indecipherable future, a journey into the depths of the feminine soul,, calling for the absolute, for vital instinct and sensual struggles.

Game Over
The light effects, which come as an illustration of the music, break up the bodies and lead us into the heart of the machine.