Blanca Li

Blanca Li

Born: January 12, 1964
in Granada, Andalucía, Spain
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. 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 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! 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). ...

Source: Article "Blanca Li" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.

Movies for Blanca Li...

Title: Bailando con las estrellas
Character: Jurado
Released: May 15, 2018
Type: TV
The Spanish version of the worldwide successful format “Strictly Come Dancing/Dancing With the Stars” that sees celebrities, paired up with professional dancers, performing dance routines which are judged by a panel of renowned ballroom experts and voted on by viewers.
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Title: La resistencia
Character: Invitada
Released: February 1, 2018
Type: TV
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Title: Capitaine Marleau
Character: Delphine
Released: September 15, 2015
Type: TV
Beneath her eccentric appearance, Captain Marleau is a formidable detective. Her Sherlock Holmes deerstalker cap, her character, her unusual appearance, her humor, her unpredictable behavior--Captain Marleau is not your average gendarme. She never rushes an investigation; she becomes the investigation and relentlessly pursues the suspects.
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Andalusian rose
Title: Andalusian rose
Character: Rosa Maria Dolores
Released: November 25, 2002
Type: Movie
Sister Angèle is a nun just twenty-one years old. She sells the honey gathered by her fellow nuns at the street market. But she also indulges in strange activities – she secretly visits a young man, Paolo, in a bungalow on the beach. She also visits patients in hospital. It’s here that she’s met a young Spanish woman, Rosa Maria Dolorès, whose days are numbered. This encounter, along with her relationship with Paolo, bring her face to face with herself, make her listen to the sound of her beating heart.
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Dance Challenge
Title: Dance Challenge
Character: Elena
Released: May 22, 2002
Type: Movie
A musical comedy set to a hip-hop beat, the feature debut from actress-turned-director Blanca Li finds a dedicated young breakdancer abandoning his comfortable life in a bid for fame in the U.S.A. Dropping out of school and leaving home to escape his overbearing mother, 18-year-old David dedicates all of his time to perfecting his moves with his dance team, the Urban Cycle Breakers. As David and his team begin gearing-up to face-off against a rival group of intimidating dancers, his dreams of finding romance with Samia and making it to the world dance finals in New York finally seem to be coming into focus.
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Title: Vivement dimanche
Character: Self
Released: September 20, 1998
Type: TV
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Sleepless in Madrid
Title: Sleepless in Madrid
Character: Rosi
Released: February 13, 1998
Type: Movie
Eva, Alba y Juan are the protagonist of the story. Eva gives birth to Marina, Alba has just been left by her boyfriend. And Juan is happily married. Their paths intersect one night and their lifes will change forever.
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Pigalle
Title: Pigalle
Character: Divine
Released: February 2, 1995
Type: Movie
It's a grim world of prostitution, drug dens, transvestites, junkies and murderers. The seediest side of urban life is examined in this tragedy. The film follows the complex, interwoven lives of four characters as they live their harsh and gritty nocturnal lives on the city streets. The main characters are Fifi a pickpocket who is simultaneously involved with Divine, a transvestite hooker and Vera a peep show dancer who refuses to be a hooker. Vera lives with her would-be pimp Jesus le Gitan, a small-scale drug dealer. When the area riff-raff become embroiled in hostilities, two of main characters are slowly killed in horrible ways. Fifi is then left to avenge their deaths.
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French Twist
Title: French Twist
Character: Sopha customer
Released: January 18, 1995
Type: Movie
After learning of her husband's infidelities, a housewife invites an itinerant lesbian to move in with them. None of their lives will ever be the same again.
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Kika
Title: Kika
Character: Victim of the Murderer
Released: October 29, 1993
Type: Movie
When American author Nicholas brings in a cosmetologist named Kika to prepare the corpse of his recently deceased son, she inadvertently revives the young man, then falls in love with him. Forces conspire against the couple, though, as Nicholas wants Kika for himself.
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Title: Télématin
Character: Self
Released: January 10, 1985
Type: TV
Télématin is a French breakfast television news show, broadcast on France 2 since January 7, 1985. It is broadcast in Metropolitan France weekdays from 6:30 to 9:00 am CET. TV5 broadcast the show in Canada in its entirety until September 2011: it now shows a 90 minute version between 6:30 and 8:00 am Eastern Time, when the French original version is now 2h30 long. Télématin is hosted by William Leymergie. The show is daily seen by around 40% of the French morning audience, a very high percentage for French TV. In Metropolitan France, the newscasts are presented at 7:00, 7:30 and 8:00, with newsflashes at 6:30 and 8:50, and two press reviews at 7:20 and 8:30. The 6:30, 7:30 and 8:50 newscasts are usually presented by a female reader and the hourly newscasts by a male. The usual readers are Nathanaël de Rinquesen, Sophie Le Saint, Julien Benedetto, Sophie Gastrain, Patrice Romedenne and Frédéric Vion.