Chris Benstead
1999/00
Thinking back to the generous award I received from LUTSF, enabling me to travel to Indonesia in 2000, it is extraordinary to reflect on the fact that some nineteen years have now passed since this momentous trip.
I was, at the time, deeply involved in composing a new score, commissioned by the Verona Ballet Company, for a family-friendly ballet based on the story of the Ramayana. Since then, I have continued my deep involvement in the world of dance, composing for companies and projects in Portugal, Mexico, South Africa, Slovenia, Cambodia, Italy, Germany, Scotland, England and Palestine.
Thinking back to the generous award I received from LUTSF, enabling me to travel to Indonesia in 2000, it is extraordinary to reflect on the fact that some nineteen years have now passed since this momentous trip.
Chris Benstead
Most recently, I have been involved in a delightful project in collaboration with a German film director who is making a series of documentaries about the journeys that children make to school all over the world – 199 Kleine Helden (199 Little Heroes). We also made a composite version of these documentaries for the cinema called Nicht Ohne Uns! (Not Without Us). I have also been composing for an on-going, five-year, project with director Alan Lyddiard and the senior citizens of Yorkshire and am soon to embark on work on a new two-act orchestral score for a ballet company in Germany.
Aside from all the travelling and composing, I teach a course for the BA1 students at The Place in London on all things music and dance, as well as accompanying dance classes at the Rambert School and for New Adventures, Rambert, Richard Alston Company and for periodical professional courses.