Above: Children from Heathfield Primary School, Darlington, who took part in balletLORENT’s Snow White at Darlington Hippodrome in 2025, with the cast.
Earlier this year, Animated magazine featured balletLORENT in an article exploring our long-standing work with community casts.
Artistic Director Liv Lorent MBE talks about why working with people of different ages, backgrounds and experience has been part of balletLORENT since the company began in 1993. The article also hears from four people who have taken part in our community casts over the years, including Ebony, who first performed with us aged eight, and Helen, who joined the community cast of Best Worst Dances in 2025.
Community casts have been part of our work for more than 30 years, from our early productions in London to our work today in Newcastle and on tour. As Liv explains, they are an important part of how we make our work and are never simply an addition to the professional cast.
Read the full article below.
Dancers and their babies on stage in Rapunzel 2024
Phtographer: Luke Waddington
Artistic director Liv Lorent MBE shares why working with community casts has been central to her Newcastle dance theatre company’s ethos and matchless aesthetic since day one. Then hear from four people whose lives have been touched by this commitment to exploration and inclusivity
My admiration and fascination for different-looking examples of humanity and how they move is enduring. Community casts are integral to my work because I have a deep love of beauty in its many forms. They are people without dance training who voluntarily put themselves forward to perform in so many of my pieces.
I started working with dancers of different backgrounds in London in 1993 when I graduated from Trinity Laban. Rehearsal space in a community centre was given to me on the condition that I worked with long-term unemployed people for 30 hours a week.
The mix of body types, ages and experience could only be approached choreographically with optimism, dignity, creativity and letting go. I did not consider myself a choreographer who was working with community dancers, whatever that meant. I had launched balletLORENT and was choreographing on willing bodies. I got £10 extra a week on top of my dole for the privilege.
It was quite radical in the UK at this time to have this kind of mix of bodies and backgrounds grouped together onstage and to call it ballet. From the start, balletLORENT has enjoyed defying expectations of how a dancer might look.
In 1996 I moved to Newcastle for a commission called PassAge to Passion and we have been based there ever since. It involved three professional dancers and a community cast of 80, aged from 8-82. This was my first time working with these age groups. It was an invigorating experience and taught me so much.
I’m a fervent believer that you would be doing a disservice to your art form, your work, and fellow human beings if you include community performers when you don’t really, really want to.
It is not a joy for every choreographer and not everyone’s work is enhanced by diversity of age or movement styles. I can’t stand the idea of directors exploiting dancers whatever their age, background or training, and treating them as human props. We all need to believe in what we are creating, and the performers we choose to work with.
I hope that our community casts get a beautiful taste of what it feels like to be creative with their bodies; that they enjoy the rewards of physical commitment to an idea and becoming part of a piece of art. It is a bonding experience and creates very lasting memories for both cast and audience.
When Ebony was eight years old, she appeared in balletLORENT's Snow White at Warwick Arts Centre alongside Akeim Toussaint Buck. Now 18 and studying at Northern School of Contemporary Dance, she recently reconnected with him after a performance at Transform Leeds festival.
I had friends who'd been in panto, but I'd never been on a professional stage before.
Being chosen to be in the community cast was unreal. Every child was matched with an adult dancer and Akeim was mine. I didn't realise it at the time, but for someone of mixed heritage, who grew up in an area that wasn't very diverse, it was hugely important for me to see a professional dancer who looked like me.
There were about 10 children in the community cast and we got very close, spending lots of time together. It was so fun to work with professional dancers. It feels like there's a huge gap between doing an after-school dance class on a Wednesday and actually being a dancer.
I think for both me and my mum, it really opened our eyes that people do this for work and not just for fun. That it can turn into a big career.
We had so much freedom during the rehearsal process. I can remember being read bits of the script and listening to musical prompts and then being given creative tasks. It was very new to me to be devising our own parts. I was used to being given an eight count and told what to do.
Children have so much energy, which can be at odds with the way they have to be in school. I can remember pushing my energy down at school and being told to be quiet and sit still. To be in an environment where my enthusiasm was encouraged was so refreshing.
After I met up again with Akeim, he posted this on Instagram:
Moments like this remind me of why I exist in this space….to inspire and to charge my own path for the next generation. Ebony was maybe the only person of Afro heritage in that community cast and I was the only person of Afro heritage in the pro cast so for us to work together was a beautiful and powerful moment, big up Liv Lorent and the whole BL family.
Ten years on, it's very special to know that my formative moment was also so important to him.
Helen is 51 years old and lives in Tyne & Wear. In 2025, she joined the 16-strong community cast of a pilot production called Best Worst Dances. It was performed in front of a small audience at balletLORENT's studio in Newcastle's West End.
Midlife is when the unlived life comes knocking. I have four children and for the last 17 years, my main role has been as a mum. I have always encouraged my children to be brave and challenge themselves and I guess I needed to do that for myself.
I saw a post on balletLORENT’s Instagram and it just leapt out at me. I knew I was looking for something to push my creative boundaries.
I trained as an actor but stopped performing nearly 20 years ago as I never felt good enough. So I left to do more teaching-based practice as it felt safer. Now, being older and wiser (sort of), I regret that decision and my earlier lack of self-belief. I wanted the opportunity to explore my creative self again on stage without any pressure.
It was a real treat to be surrounded by the creative talent of dancers who are warm and so in love with what they do - as well as being brilliant. Their energy and playfulness was infectious.
It was freeing to play creatively and explore a discipline in which I have no skill. I have no expectations of myself to be good. So I can just be and enjoy.
Being a woman who has been challenged by the menopause and felt a little creatively lost, this experience helped me re-find my creative joy. It has taught me to be braver and to enjoy the journey.
I love how Liv pushes and challenges the stereotype of dance and dancers - how inclusive she is. Liv pushes boundaries with wonderful results. Watching her creatively unpick and mould during these rehearsals has been my favourite thing about the whole experience.
I am grateful to the opportunities this inclusive company offers members of the community. To be part of this has been amazing.
Gavin Coward has been a creative partner at balletLORENT since 2001. He dances lead roles as well as working with community casts.
balletLORENT's work is about love and humanity, and so you're going to need many different types of bodies to authentically represent that. This is where our community casts come in.
They always play a vital part within a piece and are never an afterthought or add on. Whether they are two or 82, they are creative collaborators. Working with community dancers is integral to making our shows.
I'm very aware that our community casts can pull off magic that professional dancers cannot match. Liv will say 'try that move again like the children did it', but often we can't. Too much training can sometimes get in the way.
You can't rush community casts up onto the stage. You have to create a safe space for people to be comfortable and build up trust. Lots of adults don't move very much. Getting mind, heart and body in flow is liberating.
As dance artists, we want to implement change. We celebrate the social connections our casts make, the new experiences they have, the new ways of thinking that might follow.
Working with primary schools close to our venues on our fairytale series tours (Rumpelstiltskin, Snow White, Rapunzel, The Lost Happy Endings) is full circle for me. We partner with schools where most of the children don't experience out of school dance activities. For many, working with us will be their first time in a theatre, never mind on a stage. I was one of those kids, so I know it's brilliant.
We choose children who are expressive with their bodies, can feel the music and engage in imagination. Getting picked is so important to the children. We can handle wild kids and will always take the risk!
The older I get, the more I'm interested in movement rather than 'dance'. I want to see bodies freely communicating feelings rather than doing proper steps or proscribed dance styles. This is where our community casts excel.
Marieke, from Perthshire in Highland Scotland, is mum to community cast member Rhona. She accompanied her daughter on stage in 2016 when she was just four, and Rhona later took part in a second production aged eight via her primary school.
We heard via Rhona's nursery that a dance company were looking for community cast members for a production of Rapunzel at our nearby Pitlochry Festival Theatre.
Rhona was already involved with Highland dancing and I knew she would love to do this. As she was only four at the time, we were invited to take part together, which was really special.
I can remember we both had costumes and we played with brightly coloured ribbons and threw giant red balls around on stage. One of my jobs was to stop the balls going into the audience! It was lots of fun.
And then, amazingly, four years later, Rhona came home from her tiny Highland primary school, which had only 35 students, wearing a big smile. She said she had met balletLORENT again and had been chosen to be in a new production of Rumpelstiltskin.
On this occasion, my only involvement was drop offs and pickups, but I knew she was in safe hands and would have a great time.
Watching this time from the audience, I could see that having all ages on stage really brings something extra to the show. Friends and family of the local children in the production came to see them perform, bringing many people to the theatre who wouldn't normally come.
Rhona, now 14, has come a long way since first dancing with balletLORENT. She now takes several dance classes every week.
Her experience with balletLORENT definitely inspired her. Their level of care and investment into their community casts meant the connection was never going to be a one-off - or even a two-off! We keep in touch and have met up with them on their Scottish tours. I think the link with balletLORENT will always be there for us.
