Fifteen years ago, while Lorien Slaughter was a student at the Royal Ballet School (RSB) in England, his mother Jill and grandmother Eileen Gladwin saw an audition advertisement for the Bermuda Civic Ballet summer workshop and signed him up. At the time, the teenager was having a tough time at the RSB, and all he wanted to be during his regular summer break here was a 'normal' kid doing what 'normal' kids did: kick back and have fun in the sun.

"I was so angry," he says of the decision. Today he could not be more grateful not only to his family but also to Coral Waddell, director of the Civic Ballet, for the summer classes which changed his whole approach to dancing.

"Everybody is different, and Coral was teaching the Legat method. The classes were brilliant, and a much more positive environment. The way they were taught made sense. I don't have a totally natural body for classical ballet, so I had to work quite hard on certain aspects at the Royal, whereas the Civic teachers knew how to work with my restrictions. They gave me personal corrections which made an immediate difference, and really inspired me to work for myself at the Royal Ballet School. I absolutely loved that first summer. It was magical."

So much so, in fact, that each year thereafter, when Mr. Slaughter returned to the Island he got involved with whatever was going on at the Civic.

This year he is back, not only as a dancer but also as the choreographer of a piece he was invited to create especially for the BCB programme, 'Summer Selections 2008', at City Hall this weekend. Entitled 'Etude' and set for seven dancers, it is based on the intertwined lives of pianist-composer Clara Schumann and composers Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms — how they studied music together, and their ever-changing relationships with each other — and is 22 minutes long.

"The three composers have three inspirations, and the dancers, who are all young Bermudians, each have their own inspiration," he says.

'Etude' is the first piece Mr. Slaughter has choreographed in ten years, and he admits he is "very excited" about the way it is shaping up. It is being set as he goes, and includes getting feedback from the dancers as to what looks good to them, since he wants to not only engage their emotions but also have them successfully conveyed to the audience.

"I want it to be kind of natural," he says. "Everyone moves differently, and there is such an age range — 12 to 24 — and a 12-year-old doesn't move the same way as a 24-year-old, although the 12-year-old dancer moves brilliantly and is integral to my piece. Working with people, developing things, and stretching the material is very creative."

As a dancer, Mr. Slaughter has had a very interesting career, during which he has travelled the world. Upon graduating from the Royal Ballet School, he first danced with the Birmingham Royal Ballet in England, and toured South Africa, following which he toured with the English National Ballet, performing at London's famed Royal Albert Hall, and also in Australia.

Then came seven years in Japan, working with the internationally acclaimed Tetsuya Kumakawa, a former principal at the Royal Ballet, and the founder of K Ballet.

"He's the rock star of ballet in Japan, a very big deal," Mr. Slaughter says. "They have to station bodyguards at the front of the stage wherever he appears to keep the girls from going after him."

Now back in the UK as a freelance dancer, he has been doing a lot more modern and contemporary dancing because, after 20 years as a classical dancer, he wanted a fresh challenge. He also enjoys the artistic freedom which good contemporary dance can give him. To this end, Mr. Slaughter has been dancing in a Johann Strauss tour — "lots of waltzing" — and worked for the Curve Foundation, a modern dance company, which gave him the opportunity to finally dance a duet, in this case a Hofesh Shechter piece called 'Fragments'.

"That blew me away. I was absolutely over the moon, and had never seen Shechter's way of moving before," he remembers.

Since he turns 30 next year, and knows that he will only ever be in a corps de ballet if he remains a classical dancer, Mr. Slaughter's aspirations are now moving more towards choreography.

"As a result, I go to see as much dance as I can, no matter what it is — modern, classical, Indian, the whole shebang — because dance is the vocabulary of movement, the relationship between what people want to see and 'What I have got to say?'. I think people should find out what they want to say and say it.

"I don't want to pander to "I don't want to pander to what is popular, but to find my own vocabulary and develop my own style. Art is really a powerful tool. To be quite blunt, consumerism is not something I want to be part of."

He continues to volunteer as a choreographer at his mother's dance school in the north of England for people with cerebral palsy who use a Simpson board to communicate with the unimpaired, and of course remains very proud of his strong family connections with Bermuda.

It was here that his mother grew up, and where she and his father were married. The couple became very involved in conservation at Nonsuch Island with Dr. David Wingate, whom he remembers as a small boy being "in awe of". His grandmother was the head teacher at a Somerset school, and he has been coming back to the Island all of his life.

l Other Bermudian choreographers involved in 'Summer Selections 2008' are Bermudians Eric Bean, Nikia Manders, Jenni Rowntree, Jelani Veney and Coral Waddell. 'If by Chance' by Pascal Rioult, is being staged by Brian Flynn and Marianna Tsartolia.

'Summer Selections 2008' takes place this Friday and Saturday evening at City Hall theatre. Curtain time is 8 p.m. and tickets (adults $30, children under 12 $15) are available at City Hall box office all week (except Saturday) from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. (telephone 292-2313). On Saturday evening only, cocktails and dinner will be served upstairs at the Bermuda Society of Arts, beginning at 6 p.m. for which the tickets are $150 and include the performance. The deadline for these tickets, which are also obtainable at the box office or by calling 232-0959, is 5 p.m. tomorrow.