Visit to Aleth Berenice (Gainsbury Award Winner) Rehearsal

Peripheral Perception Rehearsal

May 23

Norwegian born Aleth Berenice Heger-Hedløy (known simply as Berenice) is a multi-disciplinary artist with a strong background in dance teaching having trained at the Royal Academy of Dance and at the Martha Graham School. She has now branched into choreography incorporating both classical ballet and contemporary dance and is a recipient of this year’s LBC Gainsbury Award. Her piece, Peripheral Perception, is a collection of six short solos and a longer group section danced to Alexander Scriabin’s Preludes for Piano in which each sound was perceived by him as a specific colour. Working closely with pianist Eduardo Fernandez and soundscape artist Elizabeth Langfeld, Berenice has added another perspective by having some of the music recorded on a muted piano highlighting some of the micro-silences within the pieces.

As we arrived at the Wayne McGregor studio in Stratford, the dancers were coming towards the end of the allegro section of their ballet class led by Tiffany Hedman. Berenice then took the dancers through a 20-minute Martha Graham floor exercise before the rehearsal began..

Three of the six solos have already been filmed and today we watched the company of six female dancers and one male dancer working on the remaining sections. Berenice has also engaged help from her family with her sister Eloïse as Assistant Producer and Mum, Violette, a musicologist and silk painting specialist, designing and making the costumes. Some of work will be filmed through a translucent fabric co-ordinating with the colour of the costumes and matching Scriabin’s colour-sound palette, ranging from deep red to bright blue.

The final work will merge live and filmed dance with music and visual experimentation and once completed will be made ready for a live immersive London performance. Berenice says that she hopes it will challenge the viewer to engage with rhythm, silence, colour, music and movement, asking us to question how our perceptions shape and vary individual experiences.

As an emerging choreographer we are delighted that Berenice is one of the recipients of the 2026 award and it is clear that hers is truly a talent to watch. This will be her first mid-length live work and is due to be performed in the autumn. The date and venue will be posted on our website in due course. Miss it and miss out!