Sensuality, luxuriance, intimacy and open-heartedness – such are Lorent’s enduring strengths. – Sanjoy Roy, The Guardian
Liv Lorent trained at the Arts Educational School, Tring for five years, and completed a BA (Hons) at the Laban Centre, London. She established balletLORENT in 1993 and went on to represent the UK in the Deuxiéme Rencontres Choréographiques Internationale. Liv became an Associate Artist at the Place Theatre in London, before relocating to Newcastle upon Tyne in 1996 to become resident choreographer at Dance City.
Liv has received many awards for her works including: the Jerwood Choreography Award 2001; The Arts Foundation Choreography Award 2005; Five Journal Culture Awards: Artist of the Year 2008; Performance of the Year (Rapunzel) 2012 and Finalist for Performance of the Year (Underneath the Floorboards) 2011; Arts Council of England category (Snow White) 2016 and Performance of the Year (Rumpelstiltskin) 2017. In 2014 Liv was awarded an MBE for Services to Dance through the New Year’s Honours List.
As Artistic Director of balletLORENT, Liv has been touring works both nationally and internationally to much acclaim including: Strange Glitter; The Ball; la nuit intime; Angelmoth; Designer Body; Blood, Sweat & Tears; Underneath the Floorboards; Rapunzel; The Night Ball; Snow White and Rumpelstiltskin. The company has collaborated with other international companies including; Carte Blanche, Bergen in 2009 for a remount of la nuit intime; Eunetstar in 2005 for a European Street Art Festival tour of The Ferryman; Cultuurcentrum Brugge programmed The Ball in 2005 at Koninklijke Stadsschouwburg and Tanzhaus NRW Dusseldorf, Germany in 2004.
Liv enjoys working with performers who are diverse in terms of their age and experience. Many works created since the early beginnings of balletLORENT have featured an intergenerational cast and have included children, older people and pregnant women alongside the professional dancers. These large scale works of twenty to eighty dancers include PassAge to Passion; Life Stories; La Famille; and MaEternal. Thirteen young people and children aged between 2-17 years old joined balletLORENT’s professional dancers on stage for the national tour of Rapunzel; eleven 5-8 year old’s featured in the national tour of Snow White; Rumpelstiltskin featured a community cast of eight children between 5-8 years old and up to five older people aged 65 and over; and The Lost Happy Endings features community casts of children aged 6-11 at each theatre.
Having an independent dance company means having freedom of ambition, and the ability to change shape and direction as many times as we feel driven. There has been no strategy, but a deep desire and curiosity to explore how wonderful dance is, how many ways it can be created, what it can communicate. Happily I have an amazing group of dancers that have let me endlessly experiment with them. And a board of trustees, producer, collaborators and staff who will keep an open mind and allow me to keep making work in response to our changing times and my changing life. – Liv Lorent MBE
Commissions for Liv include: Propeller for the BalletBoyz; tenderhook and the Herald Angel award winning LUXURIA for Scottish Dance Theatre; Into the Mouth of the Orchid for Singapore Dance Theatre and Movement Director for Great North Star. Liv has collaborated with Northern Stage since 1998 with Threepenny Opera and choreographed their 2009 Christmas show Peter Pan.