Blanche Lafuente

My project for Villa Albertine in Atlanta is an artistic exploration of collective rhythmic practices and their potential for social transformation. For several years, I have been interested in forms where music transcends the aesthetic realm to become a space of belonging, inclusion, and care, as well as in the organic connections between live music and dance.

Atlanta, with its rich cultural and musical landscape, represents an exceptional field of exploration for me. I wish to immerse myself in practices such as drumlines, gospel, and electronic music, which embody strong communal and participatory traditions. These forms are at once festive, spiritual, and political: they carry the memory of African American struggles while creating vibrant spaces of solidarity and collective celebration in which the body is always in motion.

During my residency, I will engage in observation, encounters, and hands-on experimentation. I hope to participate in rehearsals, services, workshops, and events, in order to understand from within how these practices shape the body, the collective, and shared space. I will document this research through sound and/or video notebooks, which will later feed into the creation of a project in France.

The expected outcome is twofold: on one hand, to design participatory workshops open to diverse audiences (musicians, dancers, amateurs), allowing them to experience the power of rhythm as a vector of inclusion; and on the other, to initiate a multidisciplinary creation blending music, dance, and performance, where the energy of drumlines, gospel, and electronic music is transposed into a European context.

This project extends my ongoing research: making music into a shared space, where everyone can find their place, their voice, their breath, and their unique expressivity.

I chose Atlanta because I had a true coup de foudre for the city during my visit in November 2024 for the creation of Music is My Field (with French and American musicians).

It is a city marked by the memory of the civil rights movement (it is the birthplace and home of Martin Luther King Jr.), but also by more ancient spiritual traditions, those of the Native peoples who once inhabited the area (the Creek, Cherokee, and Muscogee peoples). The city’s original name, Panakahuili, bears witness to this history. In many Native nations, the drum lies at the heart of ceremonies: it symbolizes, among other things, the heartbeat of the Earth and connects human beings to all living things. This dimension resonates deeply with my work, which explores rhythm as a vital and collective force.

Atlanta is also known as “The City in the Forest,” an urban landscape where nature remains highly present, almost in tension with the density of the metropolis. This fragile balance between urbanity, memory, and spirituality fuels my desire for exploration.

I wish to meet musicians, dancers, choir directors, teachers, and performers, as well as artists and researchers connected to Afro-American and Native American spiritual traditions. Drumlines, gospel, electronic music, and the memory of ritual drums all appear to me as different ways of understanding music as a collective, spiritual, and political language.

These dynamics resonate strongly with my own practice: seeking to understand how rhythm structures both the body and the group, and how these experiences can inspire new multidisciplinary creations in France—works in which music regains its ritual, symbolic, organic, and celebratory dimension.