EXPERTISE
Sally Jacques brings 30 years of site-specific performance experience to her role as Artistic Director of Blue Lapis Light.
Blue Lapis Light’s company dancers have extensive dance training in all forms of dance, which they incorporate into working on structures with an assortment of technical apparatuses. They are highly skilled in both aerial and ballet techniques and perform with graceful athleticism, while suspended at great heights.
BLL works with the same core rigging, lighting, sound, video and costume designers for all of its productions. Their technical skill in their individual fields, as well as their experience in site-specific work, brings BLL’s vision to life.
Rehearsal for Belonging, Part 1 on Seaholm Power Plant, 2017 | Photo by Earl Mcgehee
HISTORY
64 Beds, an early Sitework by Sally Jacques | Photo by Bill Leissner, 1998
Blue Lapis Light is a site-specific aerial dance company founded by Artistic Director Sally Jacques in 2005. Jacques’ earlier works encompassed social, political, and spiritual themes, and these performances have evolved to explore movement through the air: extending boundaries, defying edges, and suspending graceful athleticism for the risk of igniting ephemeral beauty.
Blue Lapis Light seeks to transform urban environments into inspired works of art, creating beauty that transcends space in their expansiveness, connecting us to a sense of wonder, possibility, and hope. The company’s name draws from Ghandi’s description of a meditation practice, wherein the soul merges with Eternal consciousness taking the form of blue light.
Blue Lapis’ works are mostly large-scale productions, taking place in non-traditional public environments: warehouses, abandoned structures, federal buildings, power plants, or scaffolding at the shores of Lady Bird Lake. The company’s first aerial rig was a rope strung across an abandoned swimming pool where a dancer in a net was pulled from one side to the other. With each work, dancers now explore new apparatuses and develop aerial vocabulary complimentary to the possibility and synergy of on-site collaboration.
Rehearsal for Requiem on the Intel Building in Austin | Photo by Tom Athey, 2006
In June 2006 the company transformed the iconic Intel Shell, an unfinished building in downtown Austin, by creating a tribute to life’s transcendence. Requiem featured dancers floating 75ft from the ground, moving in and out of concrete columns and dancing on guy wire salvaged from the building itself. Over 14,000 people attended these performances.
Blue Lapis Light continues to develop large productions on prominent public architecture. Sites include the historic Seaholm Power Plant, J.J. Pickle and Homer Thornberry Federal Buildings, Hyatt and Radisson hotels, Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum and the Long Center for the Performing Arts. With a hope and prayer for transformation, the company seeks to create works of beauty that continue to touch our collective awareness.