LAID IN EARTH | ENGLIGH NATIONAL BALLET

Conceived during the global lockdowns of 2020, Laid in Earth reimagines ballet as a cinematic, spatial experience, created to allow audiences to access performance beyond the theatre at a time when live encounters were not possible. Rather than documenting choreography for camera, the project sought to translate the emotional and physical intensity of dance into an immersive visual language designed specifically for the lens.

Developed in close collaboration with director Thomas James and choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, the work is a film adaptation of Cherkaoui’s Torn Apart quartet, set to Purcell’s aria from Dido and Aeneas alongside new electronic compositions by long-time collaborator Olga Wojciechowska.

Filmed at English National Ballet’s East London headquarters, the project was realised under tight budgetary and safety constraints, requiring an agile, concept-driven approach to design and production.

The visual world draws on themes of the underworld, decay, and transformation, approaching these not as static motifs, but as active states shaped by the body.

Suspended vines and a floor laden with earth formed a responsive environment, shifting and marked by the dancers’ movement, allowing choreography and material to shape one another in real time. The scenography functioned as living systems rather than backdrops, amplifying the work’s gothic, otherworldly atmosphere.

From early concept development through to final execution, Winter led the design & art direction. The resulting film exists in a space between disciplines, neither filmed ballet nor conventional dance cinema, but a fully realised hybrid form that explores how performance, space, and image can converge to create new modes of embodied storytelling.

“A gothic tale of death and decay, evocatively filmed.”
The Observer

“This is a wholly realised work – neither filmed ballet, nor ballet film but something other.”
The Stage