Dance of Flowers

Lalan was an outstanding female artist of the 20th century whose artistic practice synthesized various disciplines such as painting, music, and dance, resulting in a large number of avant-garde and experimental works. In 1973, the French Ministry of Culture awarded her a special prize for her innovative L’art synthese. Dance of Flowers was inspired by the “Waltz of the Flowers” from Russian composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s famous ballet The Nutcracker. It is full of strong lyrical and dance rhythms, with intertwined black and white lines resembling the the curling stems of flowers. At the same time, they recall the soft bodies of limp dancer, as if releasing latent, hidden powers. The pictorial language of this work, fused with the grammar of dance, is an important symbol of Lalan’s artistic transition in 1970, epitomizing Lalan’s aesthetic accomplishment of integrating dance into abstraction, and connecting the self with creation.