Blanca Li

Blanca Li is a Spanish choreographer, dancer, film director, and actress born in Granada on 12 January 1964. Her training crossed multiple worlds: Spanish dance culture and rhythmic gymnastics in her youth, followed by study at the Martha Graham School in New York, alongside work at institutions associated with Alvin Ailey, Paul Sanasardo, and the Clark Center. Living in Spanish Harlem exposed her directly to developing hip-hop culture. After returning to Spain, she founded an early contemporary company in Madrid, which appeared in the cultural program surrounding Seville's World Expo. In 1992, Li moved to France and established the Blanca Li Dance Company in Paris in 1993, creating an independent base for work that deliberately crossed genres.

In 1998, Li opened Calentito Studios in Paris. The following year, *Macadam Macadam* opened the Suresnes Cités Danse festival and became a widely touring reference point for theatrical hip-hop; a later revival received a Crystal Globe in 2007. Her choreographic field expanded through ballet, opera, cinema, music video, museums, and public events, treating flamenco, classical ballet, contemporary dance, hip-hop, and electro as resources for encounter rather than fixed compartments.

Technology became another creative partner. *Robot* placed dancers alongside humanoid robots and musical automata, while *Le Bal de Paris* invited small groups of spectators into an immersive virtual-reality ball, receiving the Venice International Film Festival's award for best VR experience. In 2019, Li was elected to the Académie des Beaux-Arts in the newly created choreography section—a recognition of a career in which dance authorship moves across independent company work, major institutions, commercial media, and emerging technology without abandoning the physical specificity of performers.