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“For me, the quest is to emotionally move someone rather than impress or perplex them”. 

Having been totally mesmerised by balletLORENT’s latest show Rapunzel, Zoe Parker finally caught up with choreographer/director Liv Lorent, and here is what she had to say.

As a choreographer, what has influenced you?
When I look at the body, I know some things about it, but I wasn’t influenced that much by my extensive dance training because I was never the dancer I wanted to be. The dancers I recruit will never be my doppelganger – and I wouldn’t want them to be. My dancers are absolutely beautiful and are maturing in delightful and deeply resonant ways. They can do things I cannot hope to do and this is why I direct rather than demonstrate when I choreograph, and my training has helped my eyes to direct their bodies. What compels me to make work is my own life experiences and my need to share them. It is somewhere to put my unresolved reality, and it  feels like a process of alchemy: the meaningful sharing and emotional experience of being human.

How did you first start making work for family audiences?
I first started choreographing work for family audiences with Angelmoth in 2006, through encouragement from Bush Hartshorn who pointed out that the magic, glamour and imagination in our work could be great for kids. I thought it was an interesting challenge. In hindsight, what he said was very smart, as the company are very good at surrendering themselves completely to an imaginary world. In these imaginary worlds we deliver an enormous density of stuff:  many images per second and short changes of scene. I think children really respond to this.

What have you learnt from children about making work?
I find it is a good artistic discipline to work from the perspective of a child's attention span – they are a few seconds ahead of adults' boredom threshold, and they are right. All my work is better when I think about it from a child’s point of view. Underneath the Floorboards explored the anarchic challenge of working around little people who could move in and around the performance. It is like the most challenging performance art you can imagine, a magnificent challenge with no rules and absolute curiosity. As a performer, you get to see yourself through the eyes of the children. The work still has rigour but is presented in a different sense. From children, I think I learnt about being brave. Like in Underneath the Floorboards, how to ‘pull off’, children moving in and amongst the dancers safely, yet still allow the children to be totally free. It was a very ambitious theatrical event and required a great absence of ego from the dancers. 

How did you arrive at the idea of Rapunzel?
After Angelmoth did a two week run at Sadlers' Wells in 2008, I was in discussion about the possibility of using a fairytale for a future work. I wasn’t sure at all about using a classical tale and was leaning toward working with a new fairytale but I was encouraged to consider a new’ take’ on an existing fairytale. I didn’t know I would find one that I loved, but Rapunzel really chimed with me. I liked that the story felt unfinished: in all the versions I have read, you never find out what happens to the parents who lose their child. I found working with Rapunzel was a wonderful thing: the ability to transform the story and take it in all sorts of directions was such an asset. It is such a classic and makes reference to childhood memories. I think it is especially relevant to women of about my age, in those childbearing years. What really struck me in the research and development of this story was that putting children on stage hurts. It pierces the heart to show how idyllic and romantic family life can seem when you have that ‘want’. So the challenge was to keep the tale about wanting to have children and not having children and I couldn’t have asked for a better interpretation from poet laureate, Carol Ann Duffy. We are all part of a huge collaboration and the choreography must mesh into all of it. There is no room for error with the choreography: it’s like a living film of the story. So we are not just throwing ourselves around enjoying the steps. This way of working is much fuller and multi-layered with many props, costumes and sets to negotiate and timings to hit with the voiceover narration. But the many layers in the production moves older people in deep ways and yet still for children it is simple and magical.

I am interested in your referral to being able to trust your dancers completely. What do you mean specifically?
The rehearsal process can be quite intense with the physical and emotional efforts to embody the subject matter, and it can demand a good deal of vulnerability and integrity from everyone in the room. We all have to be confident that it is safe to reveal ourselves and know that this won’t be sabotaged or threatened by others. So our process is highly respectful and open. There is a good example of this in Rapunzel, a deep and dark story which touches base with serious grief. In the rehearsals, a couple of the dancers had to explore how it felt to have a baby taken away and to make yourself vulnerable around material like that, you need to be completely trusting of everyone in the room. I will often share my own personal experiences around subjects so that trust goes both ways. I am a bit inspired from having witnessed dogs’ fight, and noticed how when one exposes its belly to the other - the absolute vulnerability - usually the other dog walks away. I hope to live by the same respectful laws and to treat exposed vulnerability with respect and compassion, and trust that will be returned.   

In an earlier interview, you said that you love “making pieces for real people not dance mafia.” Tell us more about that.
I lived in London in 1993 and was resident at The Place and was really in the mix of things in the early 90’s, where London seemed like the centre of the dance universe. It felt as if a lot of the audiences for dance were a ‘closed shop’ and working around that brought an interesting and intense energy, but it didn’t bring out the best in me: it brought out competitiveness, and this endless quest for originality and sophistication. The problem was I did not want audiences to watch my work ‘stroking their chin’ and pondering. Also, I felt that this particular "dance literate" audience, were already very well served by many brilliant dance makers. So we ended up moving to Newcastle, which was a total accident and found that the comparable dance audience was very small. So I had to really engage in ‘un-snobby ways’ because otherwise it didn't translate to more than a tiny minority. In the North, I found audiences of no- nonsense people who haven't seen countless dance productions or had years of dance training, but were going out more for a bit of escapism: for athleticism, quality, meaning, beauty and romanticism. For me, this was a great thing, as it’s closer to my true  creative nature and aspiration. I feel more in touch with this way of working because it is more ‘human to human’. Our work stays away from ‘in jokes’ – because  although it is very satisfying when you are the one that  can‘get it’ , it is alienating when you don’t. As a company we aspire to create works of emotional clarity, storytelling and beauty. I love touring and the more we tour, the more we find audiences that we can move and touch. Our quest continues to be to emotionally move the audience rather than impress or perplex them.  

What would you really like audiences to know?
I am so proud of balletLORENT's collective ambition to continually try something we have never tried before and arrive at something new and honest. In each new work, we aspire to make something so magical that it transports audiences to another world: it is with this motivation towards beauty, inspiration and emotional connection that we hope to connect human to human.

   
Rapunzel is being performed at Sadlers Wells on 29th & 30th March; visit www.sadlerswells.com/show/Family-Weekend-Rapunzel for further details and booking.


RAPUNZEL - THE MAKING OF


On underneath the floorboards