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CULTURE

‘We live in societies in which women are still not respected the way they should be’

Blanca Li could not be busier: she is a dancer, film director and actress, and does choreography for stars like Beyonce and Daft Punk, and lots, lots more.

Published: 5 April 2017 09:14 CEST
'We live in societies in which women are still not respected the way they should be'
Blanca Li performs a scene from "Goddesses and Demonesses". Photo: Timothy Clary / AFP

There's opera, ad campaigns for Prada and Christian Louboutin, video, art installations. Then, the 53-year-old Spaniard has this other, minor goal: make the world a better place through the performing arts.

“I am very, very inquisitive. I love to mix things. Everything inspires me. The more I see, the more I learn, the more inspiration I have,” Li, who has lived in Paris since 1993, told AFP over the weekend.

“I would like to influence the world more. I want it to change, to improve,” Li said minutes before taking to the stage of the New York City Center for the US opening of her dance performance, called “Goddesses and Demonesses.” It is an impassioned tribute to the power of women.

“Sometimes being an actress is a bit odd. You ask yourself a lot of questions about what you can do to improve the world you have around you and the people to whom you contribute something with your art,” said Li, a diminutive, green-eyed native of Granada in Spain's Andalusia region.

As she spoke, an assistant attached a long braid to her dark hair and fixed it in a bun. During the show, it will come loose and spill down her back, but also fling upwards, sideways and in every which direction, as if the hair, too, were dancing.

“Parity does not exist”

In “Goddesses and Demonesses”, which debuted in Paris a little over a year ago, Li and Maria Alexandrova, the 38-year-old principal dancer at Russia's Bolshoi Ballet, bring to life the feminine archetypes of Greek mythology, from mothers to femmes fatales, at a time when Li says women's rights are eroding.   

“We women made great strides, and then it is as if everything came to a halt,” said Li, who is married to French film producer Etienne Li. They have two children.

“I wanted to talk about how beautiful it is to be a woman” these days, said Li.

She started by studying flamenco, joined the Spanish national rhythmic gymnastics team, and at age 17 came to New York to study modern dance under Martha Graham.

Then she discovered hip hop, electronic music, and found inspiration in classical ballet. And ever since, she has been mixing them all.    

“We live in societies in which women are still not respected the way they should be. Women are still very limited professionally and artistically,” Li complained.

“In France or Spain, parity does not exist. In most things men dominate, and it is not that women are dumber.”    

Li said she finds it stunning that most major choreographers are men.    

She said that, for instance, over the course of her 20-year career Alexandrova had never worked with a female choreographer, until now in this show, with Li.

“In France, almost all dance studios are run by men. It is incredible, a country where it was almost always women who led the world of dance. And it is sort of like they have gotten rid of all of them.”

Outfits that dance

Li's daily concerns show up in her work, in her creations.

In her upcoming show “Solstice” at the Chaillot National Theater in Paris, rehearsal for which begins in three weeks, Li will depict “the relationship between humanity and nature, how it has evolved over time, how our lives and the lives of those who come after us are  going to change.”

And in another of her shows that is still touring, “Robot”, dancers and small articulated machines share the stage in an ironic statement on where technology will lead us.

Ever since Spanish designer Sybilla created the costume for one of her first ballets and then worked with Christian Lacroix at the Paris Opera, Li has made the fashion world dance.

For example, in “Goddesses and Demonesses,” Li and Alexandrova wear stunning clothes designed by Azzedine Alaia, Stella McCartney, Jean Paul Gaultier and Sophie Theallet.

The garments open and close, cover and reveal, puff up and tighten. They even take flight on stage.

“Fashion inspires me a lot because it involves creating movement in clothes, and for dancing that is very, very important,” said Li. 

 But what would Li do if she could not dance? Li finds that unthinkable.

“I have always danced,” she says, laughing.

By Laura Bonilla Cal / AFP

 

 

 
 

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WORKING IN NORWAY

‘There was noone doing it’: The story behind Oslo’s only English bookstore

Six months after launching Oslo's only English language bookstore, Seattle native Indigo Trigg-Hauger doesn't regret a thing.

Published: 30 April 2024 15:05 CEST
'There was noone doing it': The story behind Oslo's only English bookstore

“I really love it. I love that I can finally use my communication skills for something that is purely my own and I just love being in the store, meeting new people, and getting to recommend books,” she tells The Local. 

Prismatic Pages, in the happening Oslo district of Grünerløkka, is already building up a steady following both among English speakers and readers and among Norwegians, with its packed schedule of events like book swaps, book clubs, and silent reading evenings.  

“The English speaking and reading community in Oslo in general is becoming more and more aware of it, and I have some repeat customers who are really spreading the word, which is amazing,” Trigg-Hauger says.

“But it’s sort of a slow burn. Even though all of our events have been standing room only, there are still people coming in every day who say ‘I didn’t know the store was here’, or, like, ‘someone just told me about this’, so I can see that we still have a lot of potential people to reach.” 

Trigg-Hauger inherited her fascination with Norway from her mother, who studied in Oslo as an exchange student and still speaks rusty Norwegian. 

“I always had the impression that we were Norwegian when I was a very young kid, and then I grew up and realised ‘oh, actually, no, she just loves Norway’.” 

She studied Scandinavian Studies at The University of Washington, came away from her year-long exchange year at the University of Oslo with a Bachelor’s degree in History, and then returned to Oslo a year later to do a Master’s degree in Peace and Conflict Studies. 

“I learned Norwegian pretty quickly after I arrived, just because I had a little bit of a basis and I did an intensive course as well, so I am fluent and I have dual citizenship now,” she says. 

These language skills, together with the journalism she’d been doing on the side throughout her studies meant she fell on her feet on graduation, getting a job in communications at the prestigious Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) almost immediately, and then moving on three years later to a similar job at Norfund, Norway’s state development finance institution. 

“After only a year, I realised, this just isn’t for me anymore,” she says of the Norfund job. “I’m really good at communications, but I was tired of only doing it for other people’s projects and not my own. I think I’m very creative and independent. So I needed to do something a bit more flexible and something that was more driven by me.” 

Around this time, during coffee with a friend, she mentioned that she had worked in a bookshop in her home town, Leavenworth, for a year between studies. 

“I said, ‘that’s the only job I’ve ever really enjoyed’, and she said ‘well, you should just open a bookstore’. To which obviously I said ‘that’s crazy’, but then I actually did start to think about it.” 

Indigo Trigg-Hauger ran a book stall in May 2023 as part of her market research. Photo: Prismatic Pages

What helped push her to actually do it was a new scheme run by the local Grünerløkka city area called Lokalstart, where those accepted receive three months of free training followed by continued mentoring to start a business. 

“That really just, like, pushed me to do it,” she remembers. “Part of the course that for me was very helpful was that my course leader and my mentor encouraged me to do some market research. So I actually started in, just about a year ago, in May, I started doing just a table at a local market and I was seeing, like, quite a bit of enthusiasm.”

She realised that while Oslo had several independent bookstores, such as a queer bookstore, and an anarchist bookstore, there wasn’t an English-only one, and certainly not one which did what independent bookstores do in the US. 

“There was no one doing what I wanted to do, which was used and new mixed together and buying used books from customers, which in the US is pretty common for independent bookstores,” she said. 

So last August she handed in her notice, although she worked until the end of the year, and in December she finally opened Prismatic Pages, raising more than 60,000 kroner through the Norwegian crowdfunding site Spleis.

“I ran a crowdfunding campaign, which was also very helpful because I could both market the business and kind of get people’s buy-in, literally.”

She wanted Prismatic Pages to feel more open as a space than more traditional bookshops that she feels can be claustrophobic and worked with an interior designer friend to select the right colour scheme, furnishings and layout. 

“A lot of my inspiration just comes from the bookstores I grew up going to in Seattle, where I’m from, and also the store that I worked at, which was in a small town called Leavenworth, where we would also have small events. It really was like a community space where, of course, we had a lot of tourists and visitors, but also a lot of repeat customers. I was a repeat customer before I was an employee.” 

As for the books, she likes it to be an eclectic mix: something for everyone but still curated. 

“When it comes to books, I think humans are the best algorithm. Of course, some of it is personal taste, but I try not to let that get too much in the way of my selection. It’s a complicated mix of new releases, classics, maybe overlooked releases from the past. And then things that customers tell me about, and I just try to read up a lot on what other people are reading, you know, articles that recommend different lists of books.”

“Of course, sometimes there are themes, like, for example, Pride Month is coming up. I already have a queer literature section, but I’ll be beefing that up a little bit for June, and with the Easter crime season, we had a lot more crime in.” 

Prismatic Pages is already, she feels, a social space of a sort that is unusual in Oslo, particularly when the store holds events when people bring their own books and swap with one another.

“I love that people really start talking to each other,” she said of those events. “It’s kind of rare in Norway for strangers just to talk to each other. But they’ll start picking up each other’s books and discussing them, and that’s really nice.” 

The constant stream of customers also suits her sociable nature in a way her largely desk-bound communication jobs did not. 

“I’ve always been really social anyway. So I’m really active in many different activities. So it’s very nice that a lot of people come by from different areas of my life, all the way back from, like, 10 years ago, when I was an exchange student, up to my most recent jobs. I guess it’s good for my socially extroverted self to get to see new and old faces.”

What remains to be seen, she admits, is whether her new profession of bookseller will be work in the long run. 

“Time will tell if it is financially sustainable,” she says. “I do pay myself something, but it’s not really quite enough yet. So, you know, I don’t want people to think, ‘oh, it’s all just been rainbows and butterflies’. Because, you know, opening a small business is a huge challenge.” 

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