Liv Lorentartistic director, balletLORENT

The Arts Foundation Choreography Award was awarded to Liv in 2005 and accompanies the Jerwood Choreography Award she received in 2001, rewarding her commitment and professional standing within her art form.

Liv has had extensive training as a dancer and choreographer, at the Arts Educational School, Tring, finishing with a BA (Hons) Dance Theatre degree from the Laban Centre, London. She was an associate Artist at the Place Theatre in London, before relocating to Newcastle upon Tyne in 1996, to become resident Choreographer at Dance City.

She established balletLORENT in 1993, and has since won many awards for her work. Her choreography has a history of great individuality and diversity of dancers, which sometimes manifests itself with cross generational work including the much acclaimed Strange Glitter with a cast aged from 8yrs to 70yrs. The success of this work which toured nationally and was featured as part of British Dance edition 2000 led to a commission from Singapore Dance Theatre and the British Council and the creation of a full length intergenerational work with a cast of thirty - Into the Mouth of the Orchid. Liv was also invited to create Life Stories on a cast aged from 4yrs to 75yrs for the opening of The Patrick Centre, Birmingham through DanceXchange. 2008 brought a new work MaEternal in which the company perfromed alongside a cast of pregnant women from the community. MaEternal premiered at Northern Stage on the 14th May.

Liv also takes commissions independently from balletLORENT for choreography on dance and theatre companies, higher education students and other collaborations. Some of these commissions have included The George Piper Dances; Dance City; Scottish Dance Theatre - award winning LUXURIA and Tenderhook; Northern Youth Dance Company; Northern Stage, National Youth Music Theatre and Northern School of Contemporary Dance.

balletLORENT is well known for its site-specific work of which one of the most ambitious to date has been ballet in Shriek within the Tyne Bridge Tower, Quayside, 2000/2001, claimed as "Newcastle's arts event of the year". This work, along with Strange Glitter, was supported through The Arts Council of England, National Touring Programme to tour nationally in 2001.

In 2002 balletLORENT created a new work The Ball. This work toured to thirty venues throughout England as well as being programmed in Düsseldorf, Belfast and Brugges. The Ball made a successful transition to an outside venue and was performed in Trafalgar Square; London as part of the celebrations of its World Square status awarded in 2003 The Ball received "best performance" at the "North East Creative Awards" in September 2003.

The Arts Council of England funded La Vie des Fantasmes Érotiques et Esthétiques in 2004, which toured extensively throughout the UK in Autumn 2004 and Spring 2005, including a premiere performance at The Theatre Royal, York. La Vie was designed to tour small and middle scale venues.

In summer 2004, Liv was commissioned by Scottish Dance Theatre to produce a new work LUXURIA that is still touring nationally and internationally, it also won a prestigious Herald Angel Award in the last week of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

In 2004/05, Liv also collaborated with film producers Paul and Menno de Nooijer and musician/composer Stefaan Smagghe to create The Ferryman, balletLORENT's largest collaboration to date. The Ferryman toured nine European festivals with 31 performances and was curated and produced by Eunetstar.

Inspired by recent balletLORENT successes - The Ball and La Vie des Fantasmes Erotiques et Esthetiques, Liv developed a new site specific piece in 2005/06. la nuit intime is a luxury of intimate, exotic dance installations to animate each individual night and venue which continues to develop the company’s reputation for creating uniquely original dance presented in a social context. la nuit intime was programmed to launch the opening of Northern Stage, Newcastle upon Tyne, in August 2006 and completed a second successful UK tour in Spring 2007.

Back in 2000, whilst working together on Ballet in Shriek, Paul Shriek suggested to Liv that an ideal project to celebrate their creative fusion would be a fairytale. The outcome of this was Angelmoth which premiered in Dance City in December 2006 and was the company's first production aimed at an audience of young people as well as adults. Angelmoth was the result of a number of creative collaborations, with the fairytale experience being completed by set designer Phil Eddolls, composer Andy Ross, writer/narrator Ben Crompton and lighting designer Malcolm Rippeth. Angelmoth toured during autumn 2007 and spring 2008 and the company have been invited back to Sadler's Wells, London for a three week run in December 2008.

The premiere of Designer Body took place at The Sage Gateshead in January 2008, followed by a performance at British Dance Edition Liverpool on the 1st February. Designer Body is a richly textured piece of dance theatre that displays the dancers' exceptional qualities of grace, strength and balance as they perform on their own metre wide revolving plinths. The work is supported by long- term collaborators Paul Shriek for costume, Malcolm Rippeth for lighting design and balletLORENT specially commissioned :zoviet*france: for music who produced a powerfully atmospheric score. balletLORENT is planning to tour Designer Body during spring 2009.