{"id":51690,"date":"2020-06-17T11:09:06","date_gmt":"2020-06-17T11:09:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.danceforyou-magazine.com\/?p=51690"},"modified":"2026-04-16T11:33:42","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T11:33:42","slug":"birmingham-royal-ballet-principal-brandon-lawrence-hosts-choreography-challenge-to-stimulate-students-creativity-during-lockdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.danceforyou-magazine.com\/en\/birmingham-royal-ballet-principal-brandon-lawrence-hosts-choreography-challenge-to-stimulate-students-creativity-during-lockdown\/","title":{"rendered":"Birmingham Royal Ballet Principal, Brandon Lawrence hosts Choreography Challenge to stimulate students’ creativity during lockdown"},"content":{"rendered":"

Birmingham Royal Ballet Principal, Brandon Lawrence,<\/strong> has launched an online choreography challenge<\/a> to stimulate students’ creativity and support their psychological wellbeing during lockdown.\u00a0 The dance community has been especially hit,<\/strong> with dance schools across the world closed and events, exams, and auditions postponed.\u00a0Despite the proactive attitude of many dance\u00a0teachers who now deliver online classes, many students report feeling lonely and missing what they call, their ‘dance families’.
\nThe ballet dancer knows this all too well, as BRB has also had to adapt<\/strong> to support the morale of its artists and audience. However, as a performing artist, he also sees a silver lining,<\/strong> as this unprecedented break provides him the time to reflect on his craft and find creative ways to express himself.<\/p>\n

“I felt it was extremely important to connect the bbodance family during this challenging time,<\/strong> especially since Dance Days<\/a> was postponed. Everyone was looking forward to it.\u00a0Many\u00a0professional dancers and companies have been creating dance online; I wanted to make it extra special for bbodance members to be part of their very own piece of original dance. I urge you to let your creativity run wild!”<\/strong>
\nThis is the challenge that Brandon brings to the students of bbodance,\u00a0the\u00a0organisation that trained him, and to whom he has been especially committed since becoming its youngest Patron two years ago. Since then, he\u00a0has taught students,\u00a0inspired graduates,\u00a0and gained the esteem of\u00a0longstanding bbodance supporters.<\/p>\n

The Online Choreographic Challenge is open to students of bbodance teachers from across the world; all genres, ages, and abilities are welcome.<\/strong>\u00a0Students have to express what lockdown means to them by choreographing one of three pieces of music commissioned from the award-winning composer, Andrew Kristy\u00a0especially for this challenge.\u00a0Entries close on 3 July.<\/strong><\/a><\/span>
\nBrandon will edit all submissions into\u00a0a film illustrating the students’ collective experience; in addition, there will be a winner for each of the three pieces of music. Winners will receive special prizes delivered in partnership with Dansez, a sustainable dancewear brand<\/strong> that fights\u00a0marine pollution.<\/p>\n

Originally from Bradford, Brandon Lawrence\u00a0was trained by a bbodance teacher\u00a0and was one of the organisation’s\u00a0top students, a bbodance Scholar,\u00a0prior to being accepted into\u00a0The Royal Ballet School. <\/strong>He was promoted to BRB Principal last year.<\/p>\n

This creative project comes shortly after\u00a0bbodance’s 90th anniversary,\u00a0when Patrons, members, and friends\u00a0from around the world came together for a warm online celebration.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Birmingham Royal Ballet Principal, Brandon Lawrence, has launched an online choreography challenge to stimulate students’ creativity and support their psychological wellbeing during lockdown.\u00a0 The dance community has been especially hit, with dance schools across the world closed and events, exams, and auditions postponed.\u00a0Despite the proactive attitude of many dance\u00a0teachers who now deliver online classes, many […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":51691,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-newsroom"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danceforyou-magazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danceforyou-magazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danceforyou-magazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danceforyou-magazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danceforyou-magazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51690"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.danceforyou-magazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51690\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51692,"href":"https:\/\/www.danceforyou-magazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51690\/revisions\/51692"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danceforyou-magazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danceforyou-magazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danceforyou-magazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danceforyou-magazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}