30 years of balletLORENT

1993

Choreographed by Liv Lorent and Dancers

Dancers: Geoffrey Hopson, Brian Palm, Emma Redding/Sarah Bateson, Ingrid Reisetbauer

Music: Leoš Janáček
Costume Design: Suzie Holmes

Premiered: Bonnie Bird Theatre

Presented: BAC New Choreographers Platform, South Bank and selected to represent Britain at the Second Recontre Chorégraphique Européene at Fougères, France

A quartet about love, and abandonment. The powerful music of Janáček had a very strong influence on the choreography, and the movement was created from a high idealism of the most passion people can offer each other. This graduation work, created at The Laban Centre won the choreography prize for the year, and became the first of balletLORENT’s works to be seen outside of London. 

1994

Rot was a re-imagining of an earlier piece called 9 1/2 Minutes. Liv Lorent explored how people might behave in the run up to impending war and how that time was spent under duress, unpicking the romantic notion that the last minutes a couple might spend together would almost certainly be a movie portrayal of blissful optimism. This was the real starting point to Lorent's forensic examination of gender and relationships. 

Music: Ravel's 'Violin Sonata'

Dancers: Sonia Rafferty and Steven Coates

This piece was part of the London Barcelona Exchange 

1995

Choreographed by Liv Lorent and Dancers

Dancers: Kate Andrew, Patricia Bastian, Eric Colvin, Kit Dickinson, Vincent Gayle, Orla McLaughlin, Pedro Montoya, Andrea Nundy, Cheri Seel, Julia Todd, Beverly Voice

Music: Lee Deal Albatross 1 and 2; John Was The Swan; Alfred Schnitke Concerto for Piano and Strings

Costume Design: Suzie Holmes 

Lighting Design: Simon G Smith

Previewed: The Cutty Sark, Greenwich

Premiered: The Place, London

Liv Lorent’s fascination with this glorious seabird inspired this deeply moving ballet. The albatross is a bird that mates for life and has very sadly become endangered due to being ensnared in trawler nets. Concerned with grief and passion; flight and fall; the dancers performed lifts and dives which propelled them into a spiral of desperation. 

1996

Commission: Artists’ Agency, Northumberland Dance Project, Dance City

Choreographed by Liv Lorent and Dancers (The project which brought Liv to the North East)

Dancers: Three professional dancers and 80 community participants aged 8-82 years. The older people were from Ashington, Gateshead and Newcastle and the young people from Heworth, Walker and Bothal Schools.

Music: Sibelius Prelude - Romance; Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten; Arvo Part Festina Lente, Spiegel im Spiegel; James Macmillam After the Tryst; Dmitri Shostakovich Chamber Symphony; Wojcieh Kilar Portrait de Manon, Massenet and Orawa. Played live by Northern Sinfonia

Costume Design: Pam Allen

Lighting Design: Martin Warden

Premiered: Federation Brewery, Gateshead

Toured: Theatre Royal, Newcastle with Northern Sinfonia playing live (as part of Northern:Electric Festival), Newbiggin Sports & Community Centre and Ballroom Blitz, Royal Festival Hall, London.

A chance meeting at The Place theatre bar with Janet Archer secured Liv’s first choreographic commission and became a catalyst for a young company and choreographer who had never before travelled to the North. The cast was comprised of 80 performers from Walker, Central Newcastle, Gateshead and Ashington and they were all either under 14 or over 60. This commission relocated Liv to the North East and was supposedly a temporary move out of London, but she stayed and now calls Newcastle her home.

1997

Choreographed by Liv Lorent and Dancers

Dancers: Clyde Melville-Bain, Caroline Reece, Steven Skamarski

Music: Arvo Part, James Macmillan, Leopo Sumera, Giya Kanchelli

Lighting Design: Mark Baker, Becky Wilkinson, John Perkins

Premiered: Spring Loaded at The Place, London

Presented: Northern:Electric Dance Festival at Gulbenkian Studio, Newcastle Playhouse and the Southbank Centre, London

This trio was significant as it was the first full length work balletLORENT created solely on paid professional dancers. It was made in Newcastle and premiered in The Place Theatre, London, when choreographer Liv Lorent was a Resident Artist. Accompanied by a collage of contemporary Estonian music, the work was a story of unhappy love. This piece signified the beginnings of a new aesthetic for Liv. An urgent, ultra-committed physicality and emotionally vulnerable performance, which the three dancers brought to the creation of this work. The Director of Dance City Janet Archer introduced dancer Caroline Reece to Liv who has since had roles in most of balletLORENT’s works, most recently Rumpelstiltskin and After Dark. 

1998

Commission: Tim Rubidge

Choreographed by Liv Lorent in collaboration with Tim Rubidge

Dancer: Tim Rubidge

Music: Soundscore created by Philippos Theochardis with music by Ingram Marshall, David Darling and Wocjeich Kilar

Costume Design: Jane Robinson with Jenny PearsonLighting Design: Andrew Biscoe

Set Design: Paul Hardcastle

Premiered: Gulbenkian Studio, Newcastle Playhouse

1999

Commission: Dance City, part funded by the European Community (ERDF)

Choreographed by Liv Lorent and Dancers

Dancers: Geoffrey Hopson, Linda Payne, Caroline Reece, Helen Thomas and a cross-generational community cast of 35 aged 6 months - 75 years.

Premiered: Sunderland Empire Theatre and recreated in Kendal and Barrow-in-Furness with the North West premiere at the Brewery Arts Centre, Kendal.

The interest in working with different generations that had begun with PassAge to Passion continued with La Famille. balletLORENT dancer Helen performed with her baby, Molly, and joined a cast of 30 community performers and three other company professionals. balletLORENT also created a whole new full-length work also called La Famille in Barrow-in-Furness and Kendal.