Award-winning dance theatre company balletLORENT are headed to Aberdeen later this month with Rumpelstiltskin, and they have enlisted the help of some local youngsters who are set to take a starring role in the production.
Following workshops run in the city by balletLORENT with Bramble Brae School, seven children were selected to take to the stage with the enchanting show at His Majesty’s Theatre on Friday September 28 and Saturday September 29.
The seven children joining the production from Bramble Brae are: Conner Burton (5), Connor McGregor (7), Emily Rose Wood (5), Hanna Adrykowska (8), Rhylan Stuart Quinn (8), Rhys Warner (6), and Robert Smith (5).
Liv Lorent, artistic director and choreographer, said: “We’re so pleased to have found a fantastic group of children in Aberdeen to become part of our team. At this age, children often have innate talent, a lack of self-consciousness and physical beauty in movement, which can be captured and channelled to great effect through projects like ours.”
The young cast, most of whom have never had any formal dance training before, will be joined by four older people who will be recruited from a free workshop which will be held at His Majesty’s Theatre Education Studio on Thursday, September 13.
No previous dance or performance is necessary, however experience of wool-winding and knitting is preferable, and the ability to walk unaided for approximately 20 feet is necessary.
The workshop will involve introduction to the project including a short film, a session based on scenes from Rumpelstiltskin, arm-knitting and wool-winding, creating rhythms of movement with wool and raffia in small groups, and an opportunity to try on costumes and discuss the dates of the project.
Aberdeen Performing Arts Music Development co-ordinator, Kirsty Robertson, said: ‘’The upcoming workshop with BalletLORENT will be a great chance for people across Aberdeen to work with some of the UK’s most prestigious dancers and find out more about this amazing production.’’
A further two children will join the community cast – Ellis McDonald (9) and Chrissy Adams (10) will be playing the roles of Young Rumpelstiltskin and the Young Shepherd’s Daughter.
Both have previously performed in balletLORENT’s fairytale, Snow White (Ellis in Stirling, and Chrissy in Dundee in 2016). These roles are played by different children across the country, whom balletLORENT have previously worked with as part of their talent development programme.
All members of the intergenerational cast will join balletLORENT’s professional dancers to take part in rehearsals in preparation for the performances.
Rumpelstiltskin is the third and final part of balletLORENT’S trilogy of Brothers Grimm fairytales to tour to theatres across the UK following the award-winning and critically acclaimed Rapunzel (2012- 2015), and then Snow White (2015-2016).
Choreographed and directed by balletLORENT’s artistic director Liv Lorent (MBE), Rumpelstiltskin reunites a team of world renowned collaborators who created Rapunzel and Snow White: Poet Laureate Dame Carol Ann Duffy (Whitbread, T.S. Eliot and Pinter Prize winner); five-time BAFTA nominated composer Murray Gold (Doctor Who); narrator Ben Crompton (Game of Thrones); BAFTA and Emmy Award winning costume designer Michele Clapton (Game of Thrones and The Crown); set designer Phil Eddolls
(joint TMA award winner for Improbable’s The Hanging Man); and OBIE and Outer Critics Circle award-winning lighting designer Malcolm Rippeth.
Liv Lorent added: “The children and older people who feature in our production of Rumpelstiltskin add an authenticity to the fairytale world we are creating. The wide age span of these guest performers comes closer to the reality of the communities we all inhabit. The children bring their own dynamic physicality, and the older cast are all dextrous knitters. We have found that our community casts share their creativity with us with great generosity and have enhanced our work with their individuality. Without them, our range of experience is limited as we are all dance professionals and our bodies are trained in a certain way. But with our guest cast we can tell stories of humanity with a deeper truth, and they offer the impressions of what our bodies once were, and what they may become.”
Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy, the show’s scenario writer, said: “It’s a joy and a thrill to be collaborating once again with Liv Lorent and her creative team and to be bringing
to life another seminal fairytale to family audiences who love dance or who have yet to discover it.”
With clever characterisation, Rumpelstiltskin will celebrate the underdog in a tale of a man’s desperate longing for love and belonging, set in a rural world of a shepherd and his daughter. As well as the local recruits, Rumpelstiltskin is performed by eight of balletLORENT’s core dancers who have been central to the choreographic development of the fairytales and who have a diverse age range of 22-54 years and two apprentice dancers from the London Contemporary Dance School Postgraduate Apprenticeship Scheme.
