Innovating our artforms
/ As a world-leading conservatoire, we embrace digital creativity
We support and develop talented performers and creators throughout their artistic lives so that creativity can flourish.
During the Covid-19 pandemic we showcased the talent and adaptability of our community from their homes around the world through exclusive livestreams and pre-recorded creations shared on digital platforms such as Facebook and YouTube.
#SelfIsolationCreation was an antidote to lockdown isolation that embodied our brand values, tapped into digital creativity, and championed content from our staff, students and alumni.
One of our first ventures into the digital realm of performance, the annual Daryl Runswick Composition Prize had its digital debut on our TL YouTube channel on 27 March 2020 and returned online in 2021.
In a competition adjudicated by Stephen Fry, seven composers presented musical works inspired by social distance: these include responses to empty London architecture, the loss of a parent and the politics of wealth.
Pivoting these events from in-person to virtual has significantly increased our reach, offering an international platform to showcase our student talent.
Watch 2021 CompetitionIt’s a marvellous thing to feel part of something that promotes, rewards, encourages and celebrates young musical talent.” – Stephen Fry
Responding to the experience of lockdown in his hometown of La Paz, multidisciplinary Bolivian artist and TL alum Mateo Dupleich Rozo created experimental short-film hola casita (hello little house) which welcomes the viewer into moments of intimacy between his home and its inhabitants.
Watch
Second-year undergraduates recreated and reimagined significant major works by prolific contemporary choreographers Lea Anderson, and Yvonne Rainer.
Watch nowStrings department students and staff came together to create the ‘From My Room Orchestra’, an online ensemble that kept our strings community alive through music while showcasing their technical mastery and resourcefulness – both important skills to have in an ever-evolving musical world.
The digital Orchestra united with leaders in contemporary music The Smith Quartet and three Trinity Laban dance artists to create a finale for our digital summer season. Recorded in bedrooms and living rooms across the world by our students and staff, the collaborative cross-arts performance of Glass’ 2nd string quartet Company unites our community.
Their first performance was an uplifting rendition of Pachelbel’s Canon in D Major:
Pachelbel's Canon in D
TL Innovation award winners Mass Hysteria premiered their new dance work ,’in this .net’ on 14 May 2020. Bringing together 12 dancers online with music by Mass Hysteria’s founding member Monika Blaszczak, they explored our changing space and sense of touch, asking “does the cloud become a voyeur? Do you?”.
Watch NowDuet for One challenged entrants from TL’s String department to use their musical and digital skills to perform duets with themselves. Watch all the entries, including winner Hannah Littlechild’s rendition of Moz-art for 2 violins by Alfred Schnittke on TL’s YouTube channel.
Separated by geography, but united as a community in music, TL piano students all over the world came together using whatever instruments and recording equipment they had to hand to perform J.S Bach’s entire 48 Preludes and Fugues.
Watch now
Olivia Fraser presented a unique concert of contemporary music streamed live from her home. The programme included Edwin Roxburgh’s astonishing Study 1, the piece which won her the Trinity Laban Gold Medal 2020 Audience Prize.
Watch nowI was keen to stay away from the traditional and to push myself to give the audience something more unusual. This is a mindset that I have no doubt came from studying in the innovative and creative environment that Trinity Laban fosters.”
Curated by James Layton, one of six winners of the inaugural TL Innovation Award, ‘Into the Ocean’ was an integrated concert and recording series showcasing the work of recent graduate composers.
The 30-minute programme, performed by American violist Stephen Upshaw (Trinity Laban’s Richard Carne Junior Fellow for Individuals 2016-17), was reinvented for a digital audience and included Georgina Bowden’s Yaban Arilar (Wild Bees) and Heather Stephenson’s Passacaglia, two new commissions specifically written for ‘Into the Ocean’ by TL alumni.
Watch nowOur talented second year undergraduate dance students shared five months worth of choreography work online, creating a series of websites and social media accounts that showcase their creations.
Discover their channels:
Offering tasters ahead of the full festival, Preludes to New Lights brought seven days of exciting preludes, previews and postludes.
Watch AgainDiscover brand new work created by BA3 and choreographers in collaboration with artists Lizzi Kew Ross, Zoi Dimitrou, Daniel Squire, Sarah Golding and Alleyne Dance.
Together, they explore parallel investigations into essences of the human experience as found in Shakespearean sonnets, as well as reimagine how to connect to each other and with our urban and natural environments.
Begin inside the dancers’ homes through gestural hand conversations and then move through and out to the texture of walls, snow and trees.
Choreography/Artistic Direction: Zoi Dimitriou
Music: Thierry De May
Costume: Abigail Hammond
Editors: Pavel Putley, Berta Pibernat Trias
Student Editors: Coleman Ellen, Curiel Camilla, Gnoni Julia, Ioannou Eirini, Phillips Courtney, Woolley Emma, Elina Karacosta.
Special Thanks to: Kathryn Crick
Dancers: Barnicoat Dane, Blake Gaby, Bracewell Natasja, Chan Chloe, Coleman Ellen, Curiel Camilla, Dawson Hannah, Francis Megan, Gibbons Emily, Gnoni Julia, Hockin Stephanie, Hopper Fallon, Ioannou Eirini, Jarvis Bethany, Karacosta Eleni, McConnell Sarah, McConnell Sarah, Phillips Courtney, Roberts Meg, Shakerley Philippa, Thomas Gwen, Woolley Emma.
The title, PluReal, hints at a plurality of realities coexisting and inhabiting one single screen in an attempt to share a communal experience of dance and the very unique joy of moving.
Inspired by the music of Thierry De May, ‘Floreal’, this film was created by crafting bare and pore materials, within our everyday contexts, inspired by spatial geometries, small details that attract our imagination and ways for reimagining how to connect to each other and with our urban and natural environments.
Discovering wonderland
Concept & direction: Lizzi Kew Ross
Performers & co collaborators: Abbie Coxhill, Alice Upcott, Alix Durge, Becca Harris, Bethany Stevens, Brittany Farren, Charlotte Gedge, Ciara Macfarlane, Freddie Smith, Georgina Simms
Composer & musician: Mark Lockheart. Garden Rain (Imaginary Dances album) & Surfacing ( In deep album)
Costume stylist: Lorna Isles
Editing team: Ciara Macfarlane, Freddie Smith & Alice Upcott with assistance from PJ Davy & Ian Peppiatt
Sound editor: PJ Davy, with contributions from the students
Dawn to dusk again
Concept & direction: Lizzi Kew Ross
Performers & co collaborators: Ioli Kaskani, Kaitland Baker, Poppy Browning, Becky David, Zara Everington, Charlie Naylor, Chiara Pagani, Roseann Dendy
Composer & musician: Mark Lockheart. Saxophone Improvisations 2021
Costume stylist: Lorna Isles
Editing team: Kaitland Baker, Lizzie Kitchener, Charlie Naylor & Chiara Pagani, with assistance from PJ Davy & Ian Peppiatt
Sound editor: PJ Davy, with contributions from the students
These two pieces originated from musing on ideas of framing and windows in collaboration with the musician Mark Lockheart. They are companion pieces looking at moving between the inside to the outside worlds we currently find ourselves in.
David Hockney said that ‘everything is interesting because you are looking at it’. We look out of windows and others look in at us.
Discovering wonderland starts inside the dancers’ homes as a gestural hand conversation. Then moving through and out to the texture of walls, snow and trees, and continuing the exchange there. Dawn to dusk again begins outside on benches. It progresses through parks taking the energy of the outside, back inside, to the interior alone-ness of the individual window frames of the dancers’ homes.
Movement Direction and Film Direction: Daniel Squire
Film Editing and Co-direction: Corrie Harris
Soundtrack: Sonnets I, XII, LXXI, CLIV by William Shakespeare, arranged and recorded by Daniel Squire
Sound Editing / AV Support: PJ Davy
Costume Realisation: Klara Landin Larsson
Movement Creation and Performance: Ruby Abbas, Andrea Callaghan, Molly Curtis, Marchela-Vasilena Dimitrova, Trevena Essel, Petra Jansson, Izzy Jay, Antonia Latz, Izzie Lister, Rebecca Long, Anna Nicholls, Amelia Parker, Abbie Pillans-Payne, Rosie Roberts, Rebecca Runchman, Sointu Saraste, Paris Sower, Emillie Storey, Sophie Taylor, Lydia Swift, Katy Wren and Alice Zaccardi
A parallel investigation into essences of the human experience as found in Shakespearean sonnets; and the predominance of the public self as a two-dimensional, cropped representation of one’s whole. The movement and footage generated by these investigations has — along with the text of four Shakespeare sonnets — been subjected to a rigorous pattern of presentation, inspired by the works of iconic American artist Sol Lewitt (1928–2007)
Concept and Choreography: Kristina Alleyne, Sadé Alleyne
Directed by: Kristina Alleyne
Editors: Johanna Bullamore Brown, Niamh Abraham
Editing Supervisor: Simon Chorley
Costume Design: Abigail Hammond
Sound Design: Chris Prosho
Music Design: Sadé Alleyne
Performers: Group 1: Emily Baker, Johanna Bullamore Brown, Julia Dajani, Chloe D’arcy, Georgina Earnshaw, Frankie Goodinson, Emma Greene, Charlotte Hatcher, Aurora Jenssen, Jaz Lymn, Ella Newton, Donna Smith, Amy Timmins, Olivia Walton.
Group 2: Niamh Abraham, Liv Cann, Sula Castle, Yu-Chien Cheng, Zoe Cochrane, Leia Judd, Martyna Kupczak, Miriam Levy, Olivia Neil-Trenchfield, Sara Rantala, Tenia Savva, Nina Tomlinson, Olivia Wallis Jackson
“It’s not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive, but those who can manage change”- Leon C. Megginson
Our starting point was to research and listen to stories of people being pushed out of society, left with nothing but their own company and the strangers around them. We looked at stories of people who has or is physically sleeping rough on the streets and the traumas they experience. We decided to capture the ‘during’ and ‘after’ effects of feeling separate from society and showing different moments of living in improvised dwellings.
Witness how the separate stories unfold, and whilst they are dealing with their traumas alone, this somehow unites them all, as each of them have their own individual stories to tell.
Special Thanks
We would like to say thank you to the 26 amazing aspiring artists of Laban.
Our role was to create a whole company piece as choreographers, but we naturally embraced other roles by instilling trust, humility, confidence, creativity, bravery, and a strong work ethic within the virtual connection.
We wanted to challenge and push limits beyond their expectations. We wanted to assist them into becoming the artist they were capable of becoming through this physical creative process. It was a challenging work as we all had to be creative remotely, somehow this correlates with the theme of the film.
Between the achievements, playfulness, failures and the challenging moments during the time we spent together, we are so proud to see the dancer’s passion shine through in their physicality and we are excited to see how much they will grow onto the professional industry.
Thank you for your hard work Laban Students 2021.
Choreography: Sarah Golding
Composition Ezra Axelrod
Costume Klara Landin Larsson
Edited by: Bethan Amey
Overseen by: Ian Peppiatt
Student editors: Emily Gillson-Gant, Daisy Hingorani-Short and Isaac Banks
Dancers: Miel Sabre Kleinman, Rosie Copp, Sunniva Rorvik, Zinzile Marsh, Sophie Keoshgerian, Freke Casteels, Courtney Town, Emily Gillson-Gant, Lauren Mair, Inka Auvinen, Ellie Wilson, Claudia Chrzanowski, Megan Eyles, Jasmine Semujju, Daisy Hingorani-Short, Charlotte Bennett, Sarah Deane, Ella Harris, Ella Oxley, Josie Bower, Holly Morris, Emily Brown, Sonny McCook, Morgan Culver, Grace Goddard, Hannah Alvey, Isaac Banks and Kira Brown
Special Thanks to the dancers who were always open, vocal and giving it their all…I look forward to meeting you. To their families/ friends/ housemates for being so tolerant of the noise…thank you. x
This work is a reflection of the hours we have spent dancing together. The regular check – ins, forming relationships and trust, voicing the same frustrations that we’re tired of hearing but still need to express, figuring out what left and right is if I turn around and face the other way, still thinking about attempting to crack musicality and unison even though the music reaches us at different times. All the while trying to keep some sort of authenticity.
