The Ferryman
2005
Commission: Eunetstar (European Network Street Art Project)
Choreographed by Liv Lorent and Dancers
Dancers: Gavin Coward, Meritxell Pan Cabo, Debbi Purtill, Caroline Reece
Video Films: Menno de Nooijer and Paul de Nooijer
Video Editors: Menno de Nooijer and Alex Fischer
Music composed by Stephan Smagghe
Costume Design: Paul Shriek
Photography: Paul de Nooijer
Premiered: Oerel Festival in Terschelling and toured to seven European Towns and Cities, and Stockton International Riverside Festival (Site-specific)
Four balletLORENT dancers went on tour with this work; Debbi Purtill, Caroline Reece, Meritxell Pan Cabo and Gavin Coward. Several other balletLORENT dancers featured in the film that was a large part of this piece, and the company’s first major experience of outdoor work and festival touring.
Propeller
2006
Commission: BalletBoyz
Choreographed by Liv Lorent and Dancers
Dancers: Michael Nunn and Oxana Panchenko
Premiered: Sadler's Wells
Toured: Internationally
This piece was a commission for BalletBoyz and was hailed as "a sensuous, evocative duet that explores the unique narrative power of dance".
Angelmoth
2006
Writer and Narrator: Ben Crompton
Choreographed by Liv Lorent and Dancers
Dancers: Gwen Berwick, Gavin Coward, Meritxell Pan Cabo, Debbi Purtill, Mariusz Raczynski/Gary Clarke, Caroline Reece, Ray Roa, Kelly Wilson/Winifred Burnet-Smith
Music composed by Andy Ross
Costume Design: Paul Shriek
Lighting Design: Malcolm Rippeth
Set Design: Phil Eddolls
Premiered: Dance City, Newcastle
Toured: England including a two week Christmas run at the Lilian Baylis Studio, London.
Angelmoth was a particularly ambitious piece and represents many firsts for balletLORENT... their first time making a full-length work in two Acts with narration woven into the score; their first time working with a proper narrative arc with an original story by Ben Crompton (Dramaturg on many future works); their first time collaborating with a composer (the score was created by Andy Ross); their first time flying dancers with a proper rig; and their first time working on a set created by designer Phil Eddolls. This work also signified the company’s first London run, with 12 successive shows at the Lillian Baylis Studio at Sadler’s Wells in Christmas 2008.
Angelmoth trailer
The Guardian
What’s On
la nuit intime
2006
Choreographed by Liv Lorent and Dancers
Dancers: Gwen Berwick, Gavin Coward, Kate Jackson, Aaron Knight, Meritxell Pan Cabo, Debbi Purtill, Mariusz Raczynski, Davie Rae, Caroline Reece, Ray Roa, Juliet Thompson
Music: collage
Sound Editor: Ben Ponton
Costume Design: Paul Shriek
Lighting Design: Malcolm Rippeth
Premiered: Hyena Comedy Café, Newcastle
Toured: The UK (Site-specific)
Recreated in 2009 as a collaborative project with 14 dancers from balletLORENT and Carte Blanche Dance Company, Norway.
Liv Lorent imagined what all the company dancers might do if left alone to their own devices in a bar with a bunch of eclectic costumes to try on, a set to swing on, tables robust enough to dance on, lights and wind machines to surrender to and a cracking set of songs on a playlist. The idea was to share the cramped spaces in a bar with an audience and be in touching distance of them while undergoing hours of dancing that pushed the limits of what intimacy meant. The audience were encouraged to come and go as they pleased to get more drinks.
la nuit intime trailer
Liv Lorent managed to touch on many genres of dance while putting an edgy, contemporary stamp on them and allow the audience to see, and almost touch, the intensity and vulnerability dancers endure during a performance.
The Chronicle
It’s always connected to fantasy and feeling, to free- oating imagination and buried emotion, which makes its sensuality both more adult and more childlike – in short, more human.
Sanjoy Roy, Contemporary Magazine
‘Drunkenness’ is the closest word to describe the effect that the performance has on the audience. It is intoxication, but not fuelled by the Spitz’ alcohol fare.
Estelle Ricoux, Dance Theatre Journal
La Penumbra
2006
Commission: danciNG! (World international Dance Festival - Dance City)
Choreographed by Liv Lorent and Dancers
Dancers: Carlos Carrillo, Jacqueline Lopex, Gina Paris
Music: Wayne Valliant, Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan, Giussepi Tartine, George Rochberg, Lucio Dalla, Marin Marias, Philipe Sarde, Christina Pluhar
Costume Design: Paul Shriek
Lighting Design: Malcolm Rippeth
Premiered: Dance City, Newcastle
This commission was inspired by the passionate and visceral approach to ballet that dancers in Mexico had.
The Stage
"The undisputed highlight is Liv Lorent’s ‘La Penumbra’ - an exquisite miniature ballet, spiced with Latin spirit. Her three Mexican dancers are paragons of grace and symmetry, their performances enhanced by Malcolm Rippeth’s lighting design, which creates a backdrop out of their beautiful, oversized silhouettes. If only the evening had ended there we could have gone home happy."
tenderhook
2007
Commission: Scottish Dance TheatreChoreographed by Liv Lorent and Dancers
Dancers: Toby Fitzgibbons, Ruth Janssen, James MacGillivray, Naomi Murray, Victoria Roberts, Rocco Vermijs, Philippa White, Michal Zahora
Music composed by Ezio Bosso; Walking on the truth, Petite valse por violin et cords, Concerto, Lento Les Abandon (verione perquartetto D’Archi), The sky seen from the moon, Seasong 9
Costume Design: Paul Shriek
Lighting Design: John Clark
Premiered: Dundee Rep
Toured: UK & Internationally
This was a dance theatre piece about willingly and effortfully seeking to tie yourself down to another human being. The flights of fancy and skyward reaching were curbed through the piece as couples tried to bind themselves to each other, get their jumping in sync, and discover a resolve to find any way possible to stay tethered to each other.
Working with composer Ezio Bosso and the dancers was an opportunity to push the romantic within the choreography and the music as far as Liv Lorent could, and create a bittersweet performance that toured widely.
Lorent is an impressively inventive dance-maker... crammed with ideas and wit, this is dance for the mind as well as the senses.
The Guardian
“I’m interested in how much and what kind of emotion I can make people feel,” Lorent has said, and in ‘tenderhook’, characteristically, she achieves this not by stories and characters but by more directly physical means – the sway of a spine, the touch of skin on skin, the tug of gravity and the freedom of falling – and so reminds us that the word ‘feeling’ translates both emotion and sensation.
Sanjoy Roy, Dance Now
MaEternal
2008
Commission: Dancing the World ‘08 Festival (Dance City)
Choreographed by Liv Lorent and Dancers
Dancers: Gwen Berwick, Kate Jackson, Meritxell Pan Cabo, Mariusz Raczynski, Davie Rae, Caroline Reece, Juliet Thompson, and a community cast of 11 pregnant women
Music: collage
Costume Design: Paul Shriek
Lighting Design: Malcolm Rippeth
Set Design: Neil Murray
Premiered: Northern Stage, Newcastle
Full of dark humour, dreams and doubt, this surreal work was all about the fear and wonder of pregnancy. It had been inspired by company dancer Kelly Wilson who had danced naked around a pole and on the rocking horse whilst visibly pregnant in a tour of la nuit intime. It was unforgettable and became a new aspect of female experience to be explored by the company. The piece consisted of several professional dancers and eleven pregnant volunteers who worked together over many weeks.
As always, Liv Lorent and her team provide much food for thought as well as leading the audience’s emotions. There are some rather misty eyes at the end!
Peter Lathan, British Theatre Guide
Lusciously sensual and yearningly romantic... Lorent coaxes tenderness and rapture.
The Guardian
Visually simple yet crammed with food for the eye and the imagination, ‘MaEternal’ is felt as much as it is seen.
The Journal
The making of MaEternal
“Lorent is an impressively inventive dancemaker… she is both an original and old school romantic.” The Guardian
Designer Body
2008
Choreographed by Liv Lorent and Dancers
Dancers: Gary Clarke, Gavin Coward, Kate Jackson, Meritxell Pan Cabo, Debbi Purtill, Caroline Reece, Raymond Roa
Music composed by :zoviet*france:
Costume Design: Paul Shriek
Lighting Design: Malcolm Rippeth
Premiered: Sage Two, Gateshead
Toured: The UK. Designer Body was presented at the International Tanzmesse, Düsseldorf and British Dance Edition, Liverpool in 2008.
This work was made with real turntables that could go in two directions and spin up to 20rpm. The concept of this performance was to offer the human body at its most created and artificially presented beauty, with layers of costumes, hats, hairstyles, makeup... and then over hundreds of rotations lose every fibre, and end the body in its most natural and naked form. Designer Body was performed in the round, frequently with tiered seating and each dancer remained on their turntable alone for the 50-minute duration of a score created by :zoviet*France:.
A short film inspired by this work, shot in the Tyne Tower, was shown as part of Channel 4’s Random Acts.
Designer Body trailer
Kelly Apter, Scotsman *****
Rob Cochrane, Culture Catch
Crush
2009
Commission: Dan Daw
Choreographed by Liv Lorent and Dan Daw
Dancer: Dan Daw
Music: Johannn Johanssen, G.I.Gurdjieff, Matt Elliot, Kit Haigh, Ingram Marshall, Simple Kid and King Creosote
Sound Editor: Ben Ponton
Costume Design: Paul Shriek
Lighting Design: Malcolm Rippeth
Premiered: Dance City, Newcastle
Toured: The UK and Australia (including Adelaide Festival)
To Liv, Dan Daw is like a superhero. His body moves in ways that are unpredictable, unexpected and unique to him. His lyricism is all the more interesting for being sometimes jagged or fragmented and some movements take supreme efforts of will and control. For Liv, it was a gift, the stuff of wonder and beauty. She loved working with him and his unique body. The solo they made together was full of images of thwarted ambition, effort towards fantasy and escape, religious iconography and finally freedom. The work was challenging for audiences as Liv and Dan magnified and highlighted Dan’s quirks of movement rather than smoothed them out. Both enjoyed the experience immensely.
Dan Daw, 2018
"I first came into contact with Liv and her work through Scottish Dance Theatre back in 2007. I remember sitting watching ‘LUXURIA’ in Blackpool, there being a lump in my throat and thinking, “My god! Who is this Liv?”. I had the same visceral response when I saw ‘la nuit intime’ and at that early point in my artistic career I’d not seen anything that resonated so deeply within me.
Liv’s work is vulnerable, it is sexy, it is strong and every fibre of my twenty three year old being was telling me that I had to find a way to work with her.
‘Crush’ became the first solo commissioned as part of Dan Daw Creative Projects and paved the way to my commission-based way of working and I continue to challenge the archaic choreographer/dancer hierarchy by inviting choreographers to make work on my body."
Blood, Sweat & Tears
2010
Choreographed by Liv Lorent and Dancers
Dancers: Philippa White, Gavin Coward, Jon Beney, Rob Bell, Gwen Berwick, Baptiste Bourgougnon, Gary Clarke, Meritxell Pan Cabo
Music composed by Ben PontonCostume Design: Paul Shriek
Lighting Design: Malcolm Rippeth
Premiered: Northern Stage, Newcastle
Toured: The UK and the Duet (Act 1) performed at The Roxy, Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
A partly autobiographical work voiced the experience of motherhood as an overwhelmingly powerful emotional rollercoaster where the infinity of unconditional love is discovered for the first time.
Part 1 of the work was a duet created with Gavin Coward and Phillipa White and appeared at the Assembly Roxy for an Edinburgh Festival Fringe run in 2010.
Blood, Sweat & Tears trailer
Sensitively powerful, full of beautifully crafted and exquisitely danced moments. You have given us, once again, a new language to enjoy!
Virginia Kennedy, Dance Artist
Liv Lorent’s ‘Blood, Sweat and Tears’ is a masterclass in emotionally rich dance theatre.
Scotland on Sunday
Thought-provoking and moving, ‘Blood, Sweat and Tears’ is a marvellous evocation of the effects of one of life’s commonest experiences!
Peter Lathan, British Theatre Guide
Underneath the Floorboards
2011
Written by Ben Crompton
Choreographed by Liv Lorent and Dancers
Dancers: Jon Beney, Gwen Berwick, Gavin Coward, Philippa White
Music composed by Kit Haigh
Songs: Kit Haigh and Ben Crompton
Costume Design: Paul Shriek
Lighting Design: Matt Britten
Set Design: Andrew Stephenson
Premiered: Northern Stage, Newcastle as part of the Juice Festival.
Toured: The UK
This new work had live spoken word as well as puppets, original songs, set, props lights, story and dancers.
It was balletLORENT’s most extreme work in terms of allowing anarchy to reign and was influenced by a desire to not repeatedly have to re-seat an adventurous toddler. This show allowed children to follow their curiosity and trundle at will into the soft floor performance area and intertwine themselves into the choreography with the blessing of the ever amazing and adaptive dancers.
Underneath the Floorboards trailer
The Stage
Mary Brennan, The Herald
Supported by The National Lottery Heritage Fund