Didon et Énée

Fate forbids what you pursue
(Dido to Aeneas, Act I)

Text by Valeria Crippa

A journey through ecstasy and madness, charting the torments of a doomed love. Its final destination: the abyss of suicide, where Dido literally buries—“when I am laid in earth,” as she sings in her final lament—her passion for Aeneas, who has forsaken her. From its 1689 premiere, Henry Purcell’s poignant three-act opera Dido and Aeneas, inspired by the tale in Virgil’s Aeneid, touched a nerve with the young women at the boarding school for well-bred ladies where it was first performed during the coronation of William III of Orange and Mary II Stuart. The ill-fated love between the Queen of Carthage and the Trojan hero—destined to found Rome—continues to cast its powerful spell on the female imagination, inspiring contemporary women artists to this day.

Following Sasha Waltz’s acclaimed choreographic adaptation, it is now the turn of Spanish artist Blanca Li—one of the boldest and most tech-savvy innovators in dance—to ride the emotional rollercoaster of Didon et Énée. Her interpretation is set to the original music recorded by the renowned baroque ensemble Les Arts Florissants, conducted by William Christie. A choreographer, dancer, actress, and director, Li was born in Granada, Andalusia, in 1964, and has cultivated a polymathic career. She was elected to the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 2019, served as artistic director of Madrid’s Teatros del Canal from 2019 to 2023, and in 2024 became president of the Parc et Grande Halle de la Villette, one of France’s foremost cultural institutions.

“Didon et Énée is a beautiful work that explores love in all its facets,” says Li, who began her artistic journey in Spain’s national rhythmic gymnastics team at the age of twelve. At seventeen, she moved to New York to study modern dance with Martha Graham. “Through the music, you can truly feel every emotion of the characters. It’s an approach that renders this ancient story utterly contemporary. I worked for a year and a half with Les Arts Florissants and William Christie, and during that process I fell completely in love with Purcell’s music. That’s when I began to ask myself what kind of choreography I might create for this iconic British opera. Eventually, I asked Christie to record the music live during one of the final nights of their tour, so I could then choreograph freely.”

This production marks Li’s second collaboration with Christie, following Les Indes Galantes, directed by Andrei Serban for the Paris Opera. “Christie and his ensemble are the gold standard in baroque music. I’ve learned to love this repertoire through their performances,” she explains. “Working with them was an exhilarating experience, especially as I was in a phase of obsessing over the tiniest details. The level of rigor and care in Les Arts Florissants is simply unmatched. I like to demand a lot of myself, and finding someone equally exacting is a relief.”

But it wasn’t only Purcell’s score that captivated Blanca Li—it was also the impact of Virgil’s tragic tale, with its gods, witches, and spells. “It’s a story that traverses every possible phase of love: from the freshness of initial emotion to seduction, to the giddy joy that makes you laugh out loud. Then love burns out, and the darker aspects emerge—disillusionment, abandonment by Aeneas, and ultimately Dido’s suicide. In just over an hour, the opera moves through overwhelming emotional terrain, all underscored by music of astonishing beauty.”

To translate this spectrum of emotions into dance, Li devised a distinctive choreographic language. “The movement flows from the diaphragm—that’s where strong emotions are physically felt, the seat of both pain and joy. Everything that is expressed—the characters’ feelings—is mirrored in movements that originate there. I tell the story of the Trojan hero’s love through dance because it’s the perfect language to convey timeless emotions to today’s audiences.”

Li’s choreography gives shape to the inner landscapes of her characters: betrayal, pride, fear, and unease resonate powerfully in our contemporary world. These themes are also interwoven with subtle references to nature, the environment, and climate change. Water floods the stage, evoking the sea, forcing the ten dancers of the Blanca Li Company—Martina Consoli, Alizée Duvernois (Dido), Coline Fayolle (Belinda), Meggie Isabet, Maeva Lassere, Julien Marie-Anne (Witch), Quentin Picot, Gaël Rougegrez, Gaétan Vermeulen, and Victor Virnot (Aeneas)—to slide, slip, and struggle amid metaphorical waves of emotional storm. The chiaroscuro lighting by Pascal Laajili enhances the sense of mystery surrounding this psychological drama.

This staging is markedly distant from Li’s last work presented at the Spoleto Festival dei Due Mondi, Le Bal de Paris de Blanca Li—an interactive, dreamlike experience using VR headsets for the audience. Premiered in 2021 at the Théâtre National de Chaillot, Le Bal de Paris won the Golden Lion for Best VR Experience at the 78th Venice International Film Festival. The work embodies the high-tech side of Li’s creative research, as she actively embraces new frontiers such as artificial intelligence. “AI is completely transforming our lives. I continue to work with technology, and I’m currently trying to build a metaverse for artists,” she says.

Le Bal, now on a world tour, is among Li’s most popular successes. In 2022, she also brought a dazzling hip-hop version of The Nutcracker to the Suresnes Cités Danse Festival, blending breakdance, popping, and Spanish dance through eight virtuoso Spanish performers. Thanks to collaborations with filmmakers, designers, and musicians—Pedro Almodóvar, Jean-Jacques Annaud, Michel Gondry, Daft Punk, Paul McCartney, Beyoncé, Blur, Coldplay, Jean Paul Gaultier, Azzedine Alaïa, Stella McCartney, Christian Louboutin—Li has long been embraced by France’s top cultural institutions. She choreographed Shéhérazade and Les Indes Galantes for the Paris Opera, Treemonisha at the Théâtre du Châtelet, and received commissions from the Spanish National Ballet (Pulcinella) and Uruguay’s Ballet Nacional Sodre (El Quijote del Plata). She has also directed three feature films: Le Défi, Pas à Pas, and Elektromathematix.

Li’s artistic philosophy is deeply inclusive: “I want everyone to dance—even those who say they can’t.”

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