Blanca Li

Blanca Li, originally Blanca María Gutiérrez Ortiz (born January 12, 1964) is a Spanish choreographer, film director, dancer, and actress.

She has created choreographies for the Paris Opera Ballet, The Berlin Ballet, the Metropolitan Opera, for filmmakers like Pedro Almodóvar and Michel Gondry or for musical artists like Beyoncé, Daft Punk ("Around the World" ), Paul McCartney, Kanye West and Coldplay, among others.

Whether performance, opera, musical, museum installation, event, music video or feature film, she initiates and realizes a great number of projects: "I like to give life to all that’s in my brain".

Never restricted to one style, she gets her inspiration from a broad spectrum of physical forms of expression (from flamenco to classical ballet and hip-hop).

Blanca Li, originally Blanca María Gutiérrez Ortiz, was born in 1964 in Granada, in a nine-member family.

She started to take Flamenco dance lessons during her childhood and participated in a contest to join the Spanish Rhythmic Gymnastics Team.

She was accepted at the age of twelve, but she abandoned the team six months before the Olympics because of growth disorders.

However, due to her need for physical activity, she decided to replace gymnastics with dance.

She moved to New York at the age of seventeen, where she was trained for five years as a dancer and choreographer at Martha Graham’s School.

She also studied with Alvin Ailey, Paul Sanasardo and Merce Cunningham.

In New York she lived in Harlem, where she witnessed the birth of hip hop.

Her first show took place in the East Village and it was a mix of different styles: classical, modern and hip hop dance.

During those years, Blanca met Etienne Li, a mathematician who was also a Franco-Korean graffiti artist.

He designed the pamphlets of her first show and would later become her partner.

During her time in New York, she created Xoxonees with her sister, a flamenco-rap band in which they danced wearing flamenco dressed.

They received an offer in Spain, where they released an homonymous album in 1989.

In the late eighties, she founded her first company in Madrid, a company she performed with in the Universal Exposition of Seville in 1992, also known as “Expo 92”.

Later that year, she moved to Paris.

During her first year in the French capital, she worked in a cabaret at Place Pigalle where she introduced herself to singers and other artists.

She settles in Paris in 1993 to install her own contemporary dance company, with 14 major pieces at her repertory since.

In 1997, she was commissioned by the Nancy Opera to direct and choreograph two operas, La vida breve and El amor brujo, and, in 1999, the world premiere of Un Tango Pour Monsieur Lautrec.

She opens up her own dance studios in Paris in 1998.

Fusion between disciplines and a very Latin sense of humor are present in most of her creations.

Macadam Macadam, a hip-hop piece commissioned by Suresnes Cite Danse Festival in 1999, becomes the reference of the genre, while touring worldwide, from Avignon Festival to Festival of Arts and Ideas in New Haven, Connecticut.

In 1999, the Paris Opera asks her for a contemporary choreography for the Baroque opera Les Indes galantes conducted by William Christie and produced by Andrei Serban.

Monique Loudières, Danseuse Etoile of the Paris Opera Ballet company, asks Li to create a solo for her: Silhouette, to be performed at the Avignon Festival in 2000.

Zap!'', which is successfully performed at Théâtre national de Chaillot in Paris and at The Kitchen in New York City for the France Moves Festival (2001).

She draws inspiration from various sources, from Gnawa trance ceremonies in Morocco for Nana et Lila or Ancient Greek art for Le Songe du Minotaure.

Highest honors in the dance world in 2001: the famous Paris Opera Ballet invites Li to create a new ballet on Scheherazade by Rimsky-Korsakov, together with Christian Lacroix as costume designer.

In 2001, Blanca Li is nominated artistic director and choreographer of the Berlin Ballet at the Komische Oper Berlin in Germany, a company of 24 dancers, for whom she creates a new version of Le Songe du Minotaure, which is also performed at the Mérida Festival in Spain.

She stages the madness of our contemporary world in the wake of September 11 attacks in collaboration with plastic artists Jorge and Lucy Orta for Borderline (2002).

Corazón Loco, playing with love fusion and disintegration, combines dancers with lyrical singers of the vocal ensemble Sequenza 9.3, directed by Catherine Simonpietri on a contemporary score by Édith Canat de Chizy; Poet in New York, inspired by the poems of Federico García Lorca in New York City and commissioned by Andalucia's Ministry of Culture, has gathered nearly 150 000 spectators during its performances at the summer festival in Granada, (two seasons), Théâtre national de Chaillot in Paris, and Teatros del Canal in Madrid.

(Rameau's ballet opera, now part of the Opéra's repertoire, was released in DVD in 2005).

For the turn of the millennium Blanca Li creates, together with trapeze artists, the air ballet Univers Unique.

In 2006, in a series performed at the Théâtre Mogador of Paris, Macadam Macadam receives the Globes de Cristal for Best Musical.

She creates her first one-woman show ''Zap!

Zap!

In 2013, Blanca Li Dance Company celebrates her 20th anniversary with four shows on tour for more than a 100 performances :

Robot had a one-week showing at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2015.

Outside her company, Blanca Li has choreographed and produced a great number of projects for major institutions.