Lisa Torun
is a choreographer and artistic director of Lisa Torun Dance Company. With her background as dancer, singer and musician, she has developed a unique crossdisciplinary profile where dance, music, film and design are combined in innovative productions. After 12 years in London where she collaborated with the production house Turtle Key Arts she is now based in Malmö Sweden since 2003. There she brings together a pool of collaborators of international standard. With a particular focus on the involvement of music, she has collaborated with several composers and musicians including Kimmo Pohjonen, Derek Nisbet, Kathryn Locke and Pete M Wyer, with whom Lisa also co-wrote in their band Cinnamon Skin. Her own music compositions include a work for the Royal Ballet titled Larynx, for electronics and voice and full score for her dance production Synchrona.
As a choregrapher in residence at Dansstationen, Malmö she has produced Synchrona, Seesaw (rework) Växtverk and Chez Mamselle. She is also the artistic director of Summer Lab there, a process based exchange for dancers and musicians. In Early 2003 Lisa was also the artistic director of the Composer and Choreographer Exchange at the South Bank Centre, a similar process based exhchange project.
In 2004 Lisa choreographed the Turner Prize nominated film 'Un Ballo in Maschera' by artist Yinka Shonibare, with 30 dancers and which was screened at Moderna Museet in Stockholm and on Swedish Television.
In 2005 she made the choregraphy for the play Jordpojken at Helsingborgs Statsteater.
Choreographic commissions in the UK include: 2 works for the Royal Opera House; Larynx for 5 Royal Ballet dancers and Perception Factory, a 7 hour installation piece in the Floral Hall, as part of London Open House 03, 12 dancers and live song-sound mix: 2 works for the Laban Centre; Chez Mselle Sarabande and Sonorities, 19 dancers: Transtep for Shobana Jeyasingh Dance Company Dec 03, 4 dancers; and Miss Mortis a commission from London Studio Centre, 12 dancers.
Lisa was the choreographer representative of Sweden in the Nordic Balcan Exchange HWE in 2004 and 2005 organised by the Nordic Ministry of Culture, Nordscen.
Her works have toured in the UK, Sweden, Macedonia, Serbia, Russia and Lithuania.
As a dancer with Carol Brown Dances UK, she has also toured in Poland, Bulgaria, Germany and Rumania.
Choreographic awards include Sparbankstiftelsen price for dance 2005, Region Skåne dance award in 2003 and Lund dance award in 2003.
Press clippings
"Synchrona is a full evening piece for four dancers/ musicians, exploring the force field between dance, music, song and video. The performance shows how Torun has the ability to combine the different forms of artistic expression... it is impressive how an abstract piece of work of this kind can offer so many accessible expressions, each part is so well composed and defined in relation to the whole. There are sequences of weight and seriousness, interrupted by disarming humour and circuslike acrobatics." Jan A Johansson Skånska Dagbladet (Swedish Daily)
"she moves with a forceful articulateness, blending
satiny ease with luminous sharpness..."
Nadine Meisner, The Independent Review
"Torun's kinetic intelligence is clear throughout"
Donald Hutera, Dance Europe