Five minutes with... Liv Lorent

Next Thurs-Fri, Gateshead Old Town Hall, Thurs 10am-1pm, Fri 1pm, 0191-433-6965, gateshead.gov.uk

THE best place to entertain the underfives with dance is Underneath the Floorboards, according to North-Eastbased balletLorent director Liv Lorent, who brings her work to Tyneside next week.

Lorent reveals she was inspired by her own two-year-old son, Albie, who often finds it impossible to sit and watch quietly when attending a theatre show.

Tell me more about why you decided to create a dance piece for small children?

I started the show for Albie’s age group because most parents want to take their children out and me and my partner want to go and see various shows. We attended several children’s shows during the Edinburgh Festival and it’s a very different world because of the youngsters’ attention span and imagination. That was the starting point for our production because we use lots of colour and visual effects as well. Normally, balletLorent do beautiful, glamorous and colourful things with Paul Shriek the costume designer.

How much do you feel under-fives can cope with?

There’s a simple story and narration which supports the dance scenes. The story is of John a boy who has grown out of his toys and is moving house.

He finds a special world underneath the floorboards and he encounters forgotten toys and creatures who help him find his way back home.

Are the creatures under the floor scary at all?

Ben Crompton the writer came up with the name and the concept is something like The Borrowers with a touch of Narnia. Children are quite close to the floor and there’s a hidden world for them where they imagine there are little people inside the telly.

We have purposely made the creatures warm and funny and delightful rather than strange. They are quite magical.

Tell us more about the creatures?

There’s Fawn who has ballet shoes on her hands and feet, there’s Guffy who looks like a big ball of blue fluff and there’s Mimic a colourful birdlike creature who copies children, the movement of the other creatures and makes flying movements. John is the protagonist of the story and it’s his job to communicate with the children.

So is the set children-friendly as well?

Andy Stephenson has made the set in such a way which allows the children to crawl or walk onto it.

Under five years old, it’s impossible for some youngsters to sit still for 45 minutes. I love to see that and I love to see how a dancer looks in the eyes of a child. It’s a beautiful thing to watch and it’s allowed for the audience to sit and watch or for the children to get up and look or explore. There’s not the fear for a parent of ‘I can’t take my child to this performance because they can’t sit still’.

So you don’t mind, as the head of a dance company, having small children wandering up to your performers. Isn’t this a gamble?

I’m very experienced with this because of my own child and I would say I’m even encouraging it. It is a gamble, but the floor is soft so it’s okay for crawlers and toddlers without parents feeling uncertain.

So some days I will be watching the show as a choreographer but on the days I have my little boy with me I can watch it as a parent. So that reinforces the creativity of the piece. It does mean the dancers are having to deal with the unexpected, this is much more challenging because children do surprising things. But it does mean the dancer can’t just deliver their bit and go.

So there’s bound to be some improvisation?

Exactly, part of the fun is seeing how the dancer copes with it. I kind of like that, but I hope I don’t live to regret it.

You’re still operating in that area where parents often fear to take children because they might be embarrassed by them?

Having seen a lot of things as a parent and I suppose, in a lazy way, I don’t always want to go along to things that are interactive for the grown-ups. I don’t always want to stand up and sit down myself and I’d rather be able to sit down and let him get on with it and know he’s going to be fine. The idea here is that the adults spectate rather than chaperone.

Even 45 minutes could be seen as a long time for under-fives?

Well there’s a point towards the end where the children get the chance to have a tea party and they’re able to play with things like wooden fruit and vegetables and little teapots. It’s very cute because the dancers pretend to eat and drink with the children which I think is great fun for the kids.

I’ve also had six children in rehearsals from the ages of six months to three-and-a-half to test out the show’s appeal so we know we’re on the right track.

So who are four brave souls who are taking on an audience of under-fives?

They are Jon Beney, Gavin Clarke, Gwen Berwick and Phillipa White who are all brilliant dancers.

And your future plans?

I plan to be working on a new fairytale for 2012, something alonge the lines of a previous show called Angelmoth. I’m still making up my mind if it will have an Olympic theme.