Liv Lorent on balletLORENT’s Snow White

TSOTA’s Rich Jevons talks to balletLORENT’s Liv Lorent on Snow White.

What do you find appealing about Newcastle as a base?

I really love it for all sorts of reasons. I’m a lover of the North East generally. I think it really welcomes people who integrity and there is a friendlier feel here as soon as you get off the train. There is a gentleness and a warmth but also people don’t take bullshit. It was really clear that the work I had been doing in London had no place here. This is a place where people enjoy the joie de vivre.

And conversely, what do you like about touring?

We really want to take the work out to people who are not privileged, like you have to have a degree to get it or a very middle class upbringing. And we want to connect with all age ranges.

You are working on a trilogy of works based on fairy tales. What attracts you to this genre?

They are all stories which people have an interest in or a relationship with. But they are a retelling where we can bring out some more modern issues.

Are you ever worried they may be too dark?

A child may often laugh at that darkness – if you remember when you were a kid it can actually be quite funny. And they have some big subject matters like grief, the loss of children, and things that you hard emotionally because they are things that you experience in your own lives.

Snow White is very much about the loss of beauty isn’t it?

That comes from my training in dance, as with most dancers, which was based on comparing your own body with someone else’s and ultimately being a failure due to the loss of beauty, like in Snow White.

What has it being like working with Carol Ann Duffy?

She is amazing and we have built up a great sense of trust and faith in each other and so making Snow White has been even more enjoyable. She has an interest in the deepness and dark but also the lightness and fun.

What would you like people to take away from the piece?

I like to hear that it is the best thing that people have done as a family. Our main aim is to move people emotionally and that takes all the different aspects of theatre.

29 September to 1st October at Lawrence Batley Theatre, Huddersfield. See balletLORENT website for tour dates.