For a good half hour, ten players glide through the logarithm-controlled story, completely artificial backdrops and dance images of all kinds. Their matrix was created from the movements of real dancers using motion capture. Anyone who has glasses, wired, or networked at the beginning is allowed on the playing field. Blanca Li has an eight by eight meter square placed in the middle of the respective location, for example recently at the Venice Biennale, and fenced in with metal handrails – real terrain for unreal events. Knowledgeable companions ensure that no one gets lost: Two flesh-and-blood dancers act as emcees, dance animators and IT paramedics if the participants’ equipment fails. Blanca Li’s mix of live and virtual reality experience in the participatory, immersive and interactive piece “Le Bal de Paris” in any case, tops everything that has been there so far.
In 2016, Het Nationale Ballet launched “Night Fall”, the first digital format that put VR users right in the middle of the corps de ballet. The next milestone was Richard Siegal’s hyperaesthetic “Das Totale Tanztheater”, produced in 2019 for the Bauhaus anniversary. Most recently, the pandemic triggered progress, for example in the form of the VR formats of the Augsburg State Theater, whose dance department moved several performances to the digital sphere. Those who wanted to watch had the VR goggles sent by post from Augsburg and stuck an exercise ball under their buttocks to ward off dizziness. Thanks to its technical finesse, “Le Bal de Paris” not only avoids the dreaded VR vertigo, but also leaves the optical jerking and jerking stage behind.
“Le Bal de Paris” is participatory, immersive and interactive: Two professional dancers in VR gear mingle with the participants – here at the Venice Dance Biennale – and help where necessary.
(Photo: Andrea Avezzù/La Biennale di Venezia)
So put your glasses on and enjoy the fun, which begins in a Chanel showroom with the choice of your own avatar (Chanel is “exclusive partner” and contributes the costumes): pants suit or ball gown, tuxedo or little black dress, cat, deer or a dog’s head – tap once and the transformation is complete. We continue through a mirror gallery equipped with a hundred harpists to the gallery of a festive, waltzing ballroom. The parquet floor is flanked by free-swinging stairs on which couples move, whose kinetic flourishes are more reminiscent of Marika Rökk films than MGM musicals. Visitors in VR gear can not only move their heads and bodies freely, they can also dance and interact with others (music: Tao Gutierrez). There is also a – quite outrageous – love story told. This provides the reason for the onward journey by ship, next destination: a garden party. Acrobats and sporty tango dancers twirl around in a magical park landscape until the final act comes up in the ambience of a Parisian nightclub with can-can and brisk circus chichi.
Is this the future of dance art? Do not worry. Virtual reality will not dig the water out of the theater, although “Le Bal de Paris” ignites a glamorous firework display. It is not for nothing that numerous programmers and coders have been working on it and received the award for the “best VR experience” at the 78th Venice Film Festival in 2021. Blanca Li’s charming invitation to dance is still on tour through Europe, German festivals have so far missed the hit. You should book later.