<h2 style="text-align: center;">BLANCA LI - ROBOT PRESS QUOTES</h2>
<p>&ldquo;With the ROBOT, Blanca Li brings humans &amp; robots on stage for a futuristic and hilariously exciting performance&rdquo;<br /><em>Le Parisien</em></p>
<p>&ldquo;While delivering a multitude of brave experiments, Blanca Li did not forget her tremendous taste for kitsch and imagination&rdquo;<br /><em>Telerama</em></p>
<p>&ldquo;ROBOT is a reflexion on our society, now so dependent on computerized and electronic devices. It talks about our addiction to technology, without being a brainy thesis. &hellip; Blanca Li offers a very powerful visual show filled with stage effects, playful choreographies and pungent humour &hellip; What really took the public by surprise, rising to a standing ovation at its premiere at the Montpellier Opera, is her showmanship and how artfully she blends this unbelievable mix of musical sculptures, robots, dancers and props.&rdquo;<br /><em>Omar Khan, El Pa&iacute;s 2013</em></p>
<p>NOTHING IS HAPPIER THAN DANCE!<br />Blanca Li is a dancer and choreographer, but for the most part she is a whirlwind of energy and happiness, extremely joyful and full of kindness. She is an incredible artist, and for twenty years she and her company offered vivacious dance shows for children and grownups, her primary audience. &hellip; Her ballets incorporate a melting pot of cultures, welcoming and celebrating all kinds of dance styles with profound respect&hellip;. This Spanish born dancer, who has long ago settled in France, is equally interested in all types of dance. She was a pioneer in bringing hip-hop and urban dance to the most famous stages of the world. Today, she is presenting her latest show, ROBOT, an uncanny ballet with humans and machines&hellip;. When she is not working on her own creations, you may find her choreographing Beyonc&eacute;, or working on dance scenes for Pedro Almodovar or Michel Gondry movies, or staging a fashion show for one of her fashion designer friends&hellip;<br /><em>Sylvia Jorif, Elle 2013<br /><a href="http://www.blancali.com/files/pdf_114_file_fr.pdf" target="_blank">FULL FRENCH VERSION</a><br /><a href="http://www.blancali.com/files/pdf_115_file_fr.pdf" target="_blank">FULL ENGLISH TRANSLATION</a><br /></em></p>
<p>A ROBOT FOR CHRISTMAS ?<br />The choreographer and stage director Blanca Li went shopping and chose eight uniquely hilarious musical machines and seven humanoids robots to create a mechanical corps de ballet for her piece named &ndash; simply &ndash; ROBOT!<br />&ldquo;When I start a piece, I don't ask myself who the audience would be&rdquo; tells Blanca Li. &ldquo;I'm honest with my tastes and with what I want to tell. It's only when the show is finished that I realize it is a wide audience pleaser, as they say. Then, if the audience likes it, it becomes my best reward!&rdquo;<br />Blanca Li, from Andalusia, once a gymnast in her teens, settled in France in 1993, and became a specialist in choreographed comedies, often theatrical, with multimedia aspects at the cutting edge of show business.<br />With ROBOT, which required three years of robotic research and machine taming by the eight dancers on stage, Blanca Li becomes a central figure in this holiday season&rsquo;s entertainment with a sense for fashion and social trends &ldquo;Even more when I started working on the piece, we live daily surrounded by machines&rdquo; she quips. &ldquo;There are robots everywhere and the audience recognize themselves in the show&rdquo;. While the musical machines from Maywa Denki warm up the ambiance, the NAO robots, the height of a child and as sweet as kids can be, bend their knees, get up by themselves if they fall, and roll their eyes into amazing humanlike expression. At the MAC in Cr&eacute;teil, ROBOT even got a special show for children aged 4 to 14&hellip;<br /><em>Rosita Boisseau, Le Monde, 2013</em></p>
<p>THE ROBOTS OF BLANCA LI STEP UP INTO THE DANCE<br />At Montpellier Danse festival, in front of an overwhelmed audience who gave the show a standing ovation, Blanca Li created the first show ever for dancers and robots. The casting for these is impressive: six NAO robots, small two-feet tall creatures who walk and dance. And the spectacular orchestra designed by Maywa Denki, made from automats who play music through electromechanical devices triggered by humans. Each is more poetic than the other. Seammons is a singing machine, Cylinder Recorder an automated panpipe, Marimca an edelweiss made from six marimbas.<br />&ldquo;I started to create robots because I was asking myself who am I&rdquo;, tells Tosa Mobumichi, president of Maywa Denki. &ldquo; After my musical machines, I created others that make light, and now I wish to create one inspired by Blanca Li : her way of moving is in my head. Meanwhile, I adapted and reinforced my automats so they could weather touring with Blanca Li: it's going to be rough !&rdquo;<br />Between Montpellier, Autumn in Normandy and Cr&eacute;teil, a series is planned for the Theater of Champs Elys&eacute;es in Paris for Christmas. While Maywa Denki has toured around the world, it was Japan where they met with Blanca Li in 2011. The beautiful Andalusian was searching partnership for her show on Robots &ldquo;They are everywhere in our lives. &ldquo;Who leads who?&rdquo; she asks herself; the creatures from Maywa Denki left her speechless. The scenography she has developed around them, magnifying their mysterious presence, tells a lot about her fascination.<br /><em>Ariane Bavelier, Le Figaro 2013</em></p>
<p>Excerpts from a letter from Martial LEROUX, a musicologist and university professor,<br />It is an understatement to say that I liked, or even that I loved this breathtaking show which weaves poetry, fantasy, magic, and most importantly does not try to make us believe in an illusionary world, cleverly bringing us back to an interrogative wakefulness, a nearly philosophical awareness about the future of our world, bringing up the narrow relationship between man and machine, the impossibility for man to escape his destiny, and the ineffable future which mankind is reaching for.<br />There are incredible moments throughout this show, leaving you speechless and eyes wide open in front of so much formal beauty and incredible feats (including those of the lovable little robots, which becomes quite unsettling). The music is often written in minor key, with very simple chords, conveying a powerful and extremely refined and haunting energy. Some Japanese sounds, some augmented chords, and a polyphony which invades our brain little by little, draw us to the origin of the world. By the way, is there anything better than dance to tell us the story of mankind?<br />The dancers mingle with each other, like in an alchemical fusion, men and women coming together with an uncanny dexterity which makes us wonder about our own perceptions in this domain, and who seem to invent an asexual new strain of humanity determined to fight against the fate imposed on us by modern times.<br />The beginning of the show, heart-wrenching with emotion, is based on dichotomy (since this seems to be the key which Blanca Li chooses to open up her subject with) : robot versus man, shadow versus light, black and white versus color, reality versus dream&hellip; A music, in the manner of Steve Reich, made from heartbeats growing to a crescendo, evokes the medical science of the future and its challenging experiments&hellip; And what is to say about this magnificent duet between the little robot and the dancer ? Just stunning, mesmerizing &hellip;</p>
<p><a href="http://blancali.com/files/pdf_109_file_fr.pdf">full review kit </a></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>