Contamination is Blanca Li's watchword. This young Spanish dancer, born in Granada in 1964, is a true "nomad" of the show. Her restless path, vitally hungry for adventure, sees her debut at 12 years old in the national gymnastics team. At 15, a change of horizon and immersion in modern dance. At 17 she is already the winner of a scholarship from the Hispanic-American Committee for Cultural Exchanges that will take her straight to New York to Martha Graham's school. She studies there for five years, simultaneously attending the schools of Alvin Ailey, Paul Sanasardo and the Clark Center.
Her first company is called Nomadas, debuts at the Squat Theater in 1984 and is proactive in a "contaminated" style between flamenco and new dance. But the tireless Blanca doesn’t stop there: she organizes a fierce little group, Blanca & the Xoxonees, which she dedicates to improvisation in the theaters and trendy clubs of New York. It is composed of a sui generis group of “flamenco rappers”, jazz and world music musicians, “graffiti artists” and dancers. In 1987 a new creative phase begins. The French Cultural Center of Marrakech commissions Blanca Li to create a dance theater show, inspired by the Moroccan oral tradition. With “Les Contes de l’Alhambra” (this is the title of the piece), Blanca Li begins to collaborate with the Gnawas musicians, who will later influence her future activity. Meanwhile, the Xoxonees leave New York and move to Spain. Their first album comes out with a contract with CBS in 1989. But the restless Blanca, with a new twist, decides to continue her path alone. She returned to New York to work with Jon Faust, a Latin music expert who also worked with David Byrne, and then founded an artists’ association in 1990: the MUAC. Idea number four: Blanca Li opened a bar in Madrid dedicated to “movida”, El Calentito. The nightlife venue of the MUAC, El Calentito was the perfect place to enjoy flamenco, cabaret, theatre and music. One of her regulars? Pedro Almodovar. But Blanca Li didn’t stop there. She worked on the Fura dels Baus, opened a dance studio, organised choreographic meetings, and in 1991 presented “Pan”, a choreography that explored trance in dance to the music of the Gnawas, and “Nana”, a piece selected among the finalists of the international choreographic competition in Madrid. For the second edition of the choreographic meetings organized by the MUAC in Madrid in 1992, Blanca added three more pieces to “Pan” and “Nana”, signing a full-night show in front of an audience of a thousand people. Her company was finally selected in 1992 to participate in the Expo in Seville in the program “Jovenes Valores del Siglo XXI”, directed by Miguel Bosé. And here is the last change: Blanca Li moved to Paris. “Nana et Lila”, the show performed in Rovereto, is a bit of a summary of this nomadic and polylingual training and activity. The debut took place last summer between the Trans Europe festival in Berlin and the Roseau Théâtre in Avignon. The work was born as a recreation of the show presented in Seville. Five Gnawas musicians and a renewed cast of dancers from several countries took part. “Nana” is a piece born from the mix of flamenco and contemporary dance. It is divided into three pieces, “Romance”, a reflection on a woman’s love for a soldier taken away by a war that isn’t hers, “Minera”, a solo by Blanca Li on solitude and maturity, “Nana”, a piece inspired by the cultural conflicts of today’s world.
A dance that stands out for the choreographic relationship between soloists and female choir, played on the music of Juana la del Cepillo, Paco de Lucia and Camarón de La Isla.
A very different panorama for “Lila”, born in the wake of the Afro-Maghreb tradition of Gnawas musicians, on stage alongside the dancers. Divided into two parts, “Blanco” and “Pan”, it is inspired by the festivities of the Gnawas, linked to the states of trance that characterize the rites of the beginning of the night, in which the color white dominates (“Blanco”), and those of dawn, associated with red and black and sublimated in “Pan” by the celebration of the natural forces of the earth. Costumes by Spanish fashion designer Sybilla, sets by painter Victor Ramos and sculptor Jorge Vasquez, lighting by Richard Bessenay.
