interwiew

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interview with Blanca Li

After choreographing the opera Dido and Aeneas at the invitation of the musical direc- tor William Christie, director of the baroque ensemble Les Arts florissants, you are back with a ballet accompanied by the same mu- sic.

Why did you want to continue working on Purcell’s score?

‘In the opera that premiered in 2024, the singers interpreted the story of Dido and Aeneas with their voices, and the dance pro- vided a second, exclusively emotional level of narration.

Based on the libretto, we imagined what emotions the characters were feeling, and tried to express them through the body.
By the time the tour was over, I’d fallen completely in love with the music, and I felt I could go further with the dance.

So I recorded Les Arts Florissants during one of the performances, and a few months later, rehearsals for the ballet began, with a group of 10 dancers I’d known for a long time. Following on from my staging of the opera, the ballet tells less the story of Dido and Aeneas than the emotions, the unspoken, the unspeakable, associated with each stage of their love. That’s what interests me, expres- sing the unspeakable through the body.

Dido and Aeneas ends with Dido’s suicide, abandoned by the man she loves. Women die so often in opera that it sometimes seems that’s all they can do...

As Queen of Carthage in mourning for her husband, Dido breaks several rules by living out her love for Aeneas. Her suicide is pro- voked by her lover’s betrayal, but also by the fear of having to face her people.

I focused on the multiple emotions that people can feel when faced with the suicide of someone close to them. Aeneas is often presented as a horrible character who just walks away. But in the libretto, he is trap- ped by a witch, and in life we are sometimes the victims of situations we cannot control.
I wanted to show his reaction after Dido’s death, the weight of his regret and (justified) guilt, through a solo in which he considers taking his own life.

The anguish of having to follow a destiny dic- tated by the gods but which has caused the disappearance of the one he loves, and the pain and horror of this loss are so great...’.