Liz Santoro + Pierre Godard
This Is Unreal

October 15-17, 2026

$15-275

performance still from This Is Unreal by Liz Santoro + Pierre Godard. In the background, a green screen projection with the numbers 179 in large blue font at the center, and a collection of dance-related objects situated on a green marley floor. Liz stands in the foreground, dressed in loose-fitting dance clothes, her gaze lifted upwards and her arms wide.
performance still from This Is Unreal by Liz Santoro + Pierre Godard. In the background, a green screen projection with the numbers 179 in large blue font at the center, and a collection of dance-related objects situated on a green marley floor. Liz stands in the foreground, dressed in loose-fitting dance clothes, her gaze lifted upwards and her arms wide.

Performances will take place at The Chocolate Factory Theater, 38-33 24th Street, Long Island City.

Co-presented with L’Alliance New York / Crossing The Line Festival.

Onstage, Liz Santoro recounts her life: her childhood, ballet school, life in New York, her move to Paris, motherhood, and the works she has created with Pierre Godard. But here, truth and fiction cannot be disentangled: some memories are real, others are generated by artificial intelligence; some movements originate from her body, others are fabricated by an algorithm trained on her dancing.

This Is Unreal constructs a hybrid world in which the authentic and the synthetic continuously contaminate one another. An autobiographical pact that goes awry, becoming an autofiction for the age of deepfakes, a dizzying, disorienting game that asks: where does the body end and the machine begin?

Concept, Direction, Text and Choreography: Liz Santoro and Pierre Godard. Performer: Liz Santoro. Music: Pierre-Yves Macé (with excerpts from Chopin, Mozart, Tchaikovsky…). Lighting and Space Design: Mélanie Rattier. Costumes: Rezvan Farsijani. Generative AI: Léo Chédin. Interns: Anaïs Vallières, Beatrice Pozzi.

L’Alliance New York is an independent, not-for-profit organization committed to providing its audience and students with engaging French language classes and audacious multi-disciplinary programming that celebrates the diversity of francophone cultures and creativity around the world. A welcoming and inclusive community for all ages and all backgrounds, L’Alliance New York is a place where people can meet, learn, and explore the richness of our heritages and share discoveries. L’Alliance New York strives to amplify voices and build bridges from the entire francophone world to New York and beyond.

Crossing The Line is a citywide festival that engages international artists and New York City audiences in artistic discovery and critical dialogue to re-imagine the world around us. Crossing The Line is produced by L’Alliance New York in partnership with leading cultural institutions.