Out of the spotlight: seven of dance’s hottest hidden talents

The performers may be in the spotlight and the choreographers may take the glory but a lot of people work behind the scenes to put dance on stage. Here are some of the current talents, new and established, who are busy making bodies look glorious, transforming the atmosphere on stage and helping to tell stories in dance.

Lucy Carter, lighting designer

One of the most familiar names in dance lighting, Lucy Carter also works across theatre and opera, as well as making her own installations. But the former dance student is particularly well known for her longtime collaboration with choreographer Wayne McGregor, dating back to the mid-90s. She’s designed McGregor’s major works including Chroma, Infra, Atomos and Woolf Works, and the latest Margaret Atwood-inspired MaddAddam, coming to the Royal Ballet soon. Her lighting works in alliance with McGregor’s ideas, creating spaces both architectural and atmospheric and edging into future realms. In 2021’s Dante Project, Carter’s lights became a player in the drama in the show’s finale, topping off the journey from hell to heaven with a real coup de theatre.

Vincenzo Lamagna, composer

The Italian composer got a taste of the dance world when he first moved to London and started accompanying dance classes. He was one of the musicians in Hofesh Shechter’s raucous Political Mother and has gone on to forge a fruitful relationship with choreographer Akram Khan, first scoring Until the Lions, then replacing experimental producer Ben Frost as composer on Khan’s radical rewrite of Giselle. Lamagna’s music is cinematic in the sense it’s thick with atmosphere and strongly tied to the storytelling; it may use lush strings, ominous rumblings, tense minimalism or haunting sonics to achieve its effect. Lamagna’s score for Khan’s Creature (made for English National Ballet) will be released as an album in February.

Rike Zöllner, costume designer

In the swipe of a hand, a little black dress transformed into gold, the alchemy of the double-sided sequin never better employed on stage. That was in Dimitris Papaioannou’s Since She for Tanztheater Wuppertal, costumes created by designers Thanos Papastergiou and the German-born, Wales-trained Rike Zöllner. Zöllner’s solo costume work has produced more striking scenes on stage, such as the people wearing endless coils of braided yarn, looking like abundantly tentacled sea creatures, in Colette Sadler’s Ritualia. Or costumes that were part of the performance in Caroline Finn’s Ludo for National Dance Company Wales, extending the dancers’ bodies with stretchy shapes. Zöllner is currently researching a PhD in “the dramaturgical potential of interactive costumes” – can’t wait to see her findings on stage.

Steph Be, producer

No use being a fantastic performer if you can’t put a show and crew together and get it on stage. So often, behind a successful artist is a great producer, and one emerging in the realm of contemporary hip-hop is Steph Be, who worked with award-winning choreographer Ivan Blackstock on his searing show Traplord. Be – who trained originally as a dancer and choreographer – works with Fubunation (duo Rhys Dennis and Waddah Sinada) aiming to create visibility for black dance and culture in live performance, film and photography, and also with the choreographer Becky Namgauds and on last year’s Dance Umbrella festival.

Eleanor Bull, set and costume designer

Bull started out designing for theatre, but since winning a Linbury prize for stage design in 2017, she has also worked in dance. Her style is wide-ranging. There was the pyramid of suitcases and trunks effectively setting the backdrop for Phoenix Dance Theatre’s Windrush: Movement of the People, about Caribbean migration to the UK in the 1950s and 60s. She has worked with choreographer Joss Arnott, most recently designing the fantastical fairytale Tin Man. And the funeral couture Bull created for Rambert dance company’s Cerberus gave high-end style to a brilliant piece of absurdly comic dance theatre, which will be touring again later this year.

tyroneisaacstuart, composer and performer

He describes himself as an “interdisciplinaire”, a saxophonist and composer who spent his teenage years playing with pioneering jazz group Tomorrow’s Warriors but also dancing with hip-hop company Boy Blue. Just as he styles his name all flowed together, tyroneisaacstuart’s talents all mesh into one: not just a composer but an instigator who also performs, as in his album/film S!CK incorporating music, spoken word and dance (and featuring young jazz talents Moses Boyd and Theon Cross). He has worked as a dramaturg too, most recently with Nora Chipaumire in her show ShebeenDUB as part of last year’s Dance Umbrella.

Elin Steele, set and costume designer

Steele was not long out of college when she was chosen as an associate designer for Matthew Bourne’s youth-led production of Romeo + Juliet in 2019. After designing costumes for choreographers Sophie Laplane, Ed Myhill and Andrew McNicol (as well as a number of theatre shows) she landed a big job, devising sets and costumes for a new full-length ballet production for Scottish Ballet, The Scandal at Mayerling, with a cast of 40. The results were hailed “stunning” and “sumptuous”, and she is now working again with Scottish Ballet director Christopher Hampson on a reinvention of Cinderella that will open in Glasgow in December.