Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca's visit to New York City during 1929-1930 is the inspiration for Blanca Li's latest choreography ‘Poeta en Nueva York'.  The piece featuring 21 dancers and 10 musicians, which originally performed to rave reviews last summer in Granada's (Spain) Alhanbra  Gardens, is an eclectic mix of flamenco, jazz and modern groove.

This daring Spanish-born choreographer has been an enigma on the French modern dance scene ever since her five-act feminist satire titled "Salomé" - complete with a macho leather-clad John the Baptist - played to sold-out audiences at the Pompidou Center in 1995. With her don't-mess-with-me Latin temperament Blanca Li has had one successful pluridisciplinary production after another.

Resolutely independent, notoriously self-sufficient, and fiercely driven in that Hollywood-style "hey, let's put on a show" manner, Li has come an incredibly long way since her own teenage years as a prodigy on Spain's national gymnasts team. Li gave up gymnastics, enthusiastically took up flamenco, and like most aspiring dancers in the '80s, eventually set off to New York where she studied for five years at the Martha Graham and Alvin Ailey Schools. Back home in Madrid, she founded her first company, but decided to pack up and came to Paris in 1993, where "dance contemporaine" was booming.

Since she began creating her own choreograpies in 1993, Li's approach has been in the life-is-a-cabaret Broadway vein. Her work is fast-paced, sensational, athletic and humorous. She demands a lot from her dancers who, like her, must excel in a wide range of movement arts and not be afraid to tackle a trapeze or stretch their own physical limits to the max... Li's choreography ranges from fashionably experimenting with hip hop in "Macadam Macadam" to a piece for the Paris Opera, to producing short avant-garde films.

What sets her apart is that she likes to do things on a bold Broadwayesque-scale. Li is a true 21st century Renaissance woman with seemingly unlimited talent and originality.

Poeta en Nueva York, May 7-17th,  2008, Théâtre National de Chaillot, 1 place du Trocadéro 75116 Paris