Kultura / Culture 38 | Scena » Scene B l anca L i ’ s VR sp ectac l e Le Bal de Paris in Belgrade This celebrated Spanish artist invites you to the greatest ball in Paris. Music and dance are fused with virtual reality, and the audience is invited to participate by interacting with the dancers live It seems that even the most traditional art forms are unable to avoid the influence of new technologies, and theatre, artistic dance and other performing arts are coming to represent the kind of platform that’s most open to accepting new forms of expression. Opportunities to experiment with new types of narratives, as well as new interactivity with the audience, yield interesting results in the milieu of serious theatre, such as the cheekily playful virtual adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream that’s being performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company... Still, it seems as though Blanca Li – the choreographer who was a guest of the 2010 Belgrade Dance Festival with the wonderful Le Jardin des Délices [Garden of Delights] – has gone the furthest. It thus isn’t unusual that the artistic director of the Belgrade Dance Festival, Aja Jung, is actually bringing her back to Belgrade with a piece that belongs equally to the worlds of dance, theatre, film, fashion, design, animation... “I remember that back then, 12 years ago, there was also talk of an untouchable star in the world of artistic dance who’d worked for Pedro Almodóvar, the Paris Opera, Paul McCartney, Beyoncé, Dior, the Metropolitan Opera etc. I also recall that the technical implementation of the piece wasn’t simple at all, but that the effect was – unrepeatable! And voila, Blanca Li recently became a member of the French Academy of Fine Arts, the first from the world of artistic dance to do so since the celebrated Jiří Kylián. In years when the Belgrade Dance Festival has ever-fewer theatre stages for performing the programme, Le Bal de Paris will reveal a new space to us. Cinema Balkan has shared this adventure with us, so it will soon find itself on the list of the world’s best theatres currently being filled by this virtual magic,” says Aja Jung. With her new creation, Blanca Li invites the audience to a magnificent “Paris Ball” that lasts for approximately 60 minutes, including 35 minutes spent in virtual reality, as an experience designed with the aim of expanding the boundaries of the real and virtual worlds through music and dance. The audience follows a love story through different images from the virtual palette: a ballroom, a beautiful garden and an exclusive night-time scene. Everyone has the possibility to choose their own avatar, the dancers guide the audience through the space, to ensure no one loses part of the script, but everyone is free to enjoy the party in their own way. The costumes, which are enriched with lively and animated patterns, were designed by the creative team of Chanel in collaboration with Vincent Chazal. The costumes develop to match the aesthetics of each act, thus contributing to the all-encompassing harmony of the piece: black and white at the start of the first act, floral and organic for the second act, largely red and green for the final act. So we begin by asking Blanca what led to this collaboration... - What I had in mind from the beginning was that the costumes should be unusual, incredible and modern, considering the fact that the virtual world offers much more freedom to do that than the real one. And Chanel... Everybody knows what a big name it is! And of course, it is important to me that such a great fashion house accepted to get involved in this project. Countless incredible dresses and costumes were created, inspired by their haute couture collection. Every guest can choose their own outfit for the evening. It takes just a small touch of the finger to select their chosen outfit. The show Le Bal de Paris is the first performance that includes live action and virtual reality in parallel. What was the process behind that like? - This is the story of Adele, a young woman who returns to Paris after travelling around the world. During a party in her honour, she encounters Pierre, her former lover, whom she’d hoped she’d forgotten. With many twists and turns happening over the course of three acts, the former lovers will first tear at each other and then fall in love again. This show, however, arose from my desire to create an interactive piece in which the bodies of both the audience Foto: Ruven Afanadori
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