Lolita Danse

Active in Paris in the 1980s, Lolita Danse was a collective of ten artists (Marcia Barcellos, Philippe Chevalier, Daria Eliès, Catherine Langlade, Alain Michon, Dominique Rebaud, Arnaud Sauer, Santiago Sempere, Thierry Azam, and Éric Wurtz) who rejected all hierarchy and fixed forms. They fused dance, music, lighting, and costumes in a dazzling experiment that blurred the boundaries between stage and life, dancer and choreographer, performance and play. Influenced by the revolutionary spirit of post-1968 France and inspired by the multidisciplinary vision of American choreographer Alwin Nikolais, Lolita Danse sought to transcend individual identities and achieve "total and irrepressible freedom" (Isabelle Bucklow). Their performances—which took place on the stages of major theaters as well as on street corners in France and abroad—combined multiple influences in a rich assemblage of gestures and sounds.