Blanca Arrieta (Vitoria, 1970) is a dance creator and collaborator with numerous contemporary creations to her name. She received her training at London Contemporary Dance School/The Place. In 2000, after working as a freelance performer for several choreographers and companies throughout Spain, England and Ireland, began to express her own choreographic voice. Initially, this was through an intense focus on movement exclusively.

 

Works produced during this period are: “Vértigo” (2000), “Zero” (2001) and “3600” (2003). She continued refining her craft through the creations: “Memoria” (2005), “Efecto Mariposa” (2006), “Rest” (co-produced by El Mercat de les Flors, Barcelona in 2007), “En la ciudad de los ángeles” (2008), “Muda” (2008), “Chalada” (2009) and “Frágil” (co-produced by Agora de la Danse and Montréal Danse, Cánada, in 2010). The process of creating these pieces has resulted in an established character and personality to the work. In recent years she has combined the creation of her own: “Argh!” (2014), "Sujetos" (2015), "Despacio" (2016), "Una serie de aproximaciones sucesivas" (2018), "Puzzling" (2018), "Puzzling Solos" (2019), "Siringe" (2021) and "360" (2021), with various collaborations, to further develop her craft outside of her own production.

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Between 2016 and 2018 she was part of the coordination team and artistic assistant for Dantzan Bilaka, a scheme run by the Basque Government for the development of Dance.

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In 2018 she was one of the artist in residency of the program Atalak 2.0 of Dantzaz Company, collaborated with visual artist Mabi Revuelta on her project “Acromatica" and participated in the performance "Any table any room" of Jonathan Burrows and Matteo Fargion at the Artium Museum, InTacto Festival (Vitoria). Also collaborates with the artists Inés Bermejo and Carla Fernández in their project "Germinal", a series of documentaries about the processes of artistic creation.

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Her project “Puzzling” premiered at the Guggenheim Bilbao Museum on December 2018, for the occasion of the "Architecture Effects” exposition. “Puzzling” focusses on physical construction processes, an ongoing study on the architecture of the individual and the temporal and spatial arrangement of the body in motion.

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During 2019 Blanca works on the theatre adaptation of "Puzzling", developing a series of solos focused on the fragmentation of time and the attentive listening. The Vigo Faculty of Fine Arts (University of Pontevedra) supports the development of the production "Puzzling Solos", promoting a collaboration between Blanca Arrieta and the visual artist André Anta. She also participates in the fourth edition of "La escucha errante", an encounter organised by KLEM Electroacoustic Music Laboratory and the UPV / EHU University, in which artists from contemporary music with electronics, performance and dance meet to experiment around the theme of isolation.

 

In 2020 she directed a creation residency at Plesni Teater Llubljana (PTL) in Slovenia with the project “Temporarily aligned bodies”, an exchange project promoted by the Dantzaz Company. Due to unique circumstances surrounding the creation process, the work unfolded remotely via online meetings and video interactions with the dancers. Currently, she collaborates with visual artist Leire Llano in the design and edition of "Layers", a notebook which records the reflections, drawings, notes and illustrations on gesture, self-expression and movement composition developed over the initial creation phase.

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In 2021 she created "Siringe" in collaboration with the KLEM Laboratory of Musical Electroacoustics and the space La Terminal FICC on the island of Zorrotzaurre (Bilbao). "Siringe" is a work of exploration in the dialogue between dance and music. The project brings together a team of artists with different experiences and sensibilities. What transcends the negotiation between the physical and the sound? The work focuses on the study and construction of relationships between the body, sound and voice in relation to a space. 

 

That same year participates in the "Ikuspuntuak" project promoted by the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum, with a reflection on the painting "Las Tres Gracias" (1959) by Antonio Saura. Developed by filmmaker Tamara García Iglesias, the project proposed the creation of 16 audio pieces of 5 minutes duration each, in which 16 women reflect on 8 paintings from the museum collection.

 

In 2022 co-creates the work "Dislocations", together with KLEM Laboratory of Electroacustic Music and creator-performer Robert Jackson, with dancer Laura Cobo. A Concert-Sound Installation which incorporated dance, acoustic instruments and electronic sounds to modify the daily experience of unusual natural spaces in the historical territory of Bizkaia. "Dislocations" took place at the Pobal bamboo forest in Muskiz (Basque Country).

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Blanca is currently working on the development of "Unseen landscapes (still and moving)", a multidisciplinar project associated with the European program TRAINART (Artistic Interventions in Unconventional Contexts) with the mediation of Hacería Arteak. The last phase of this creative process will result in the creation of a full evening Dance work to be presented at Barakaldo Theatre (Bizkaia) in March 2024.