Jane founded the dancetheatre company TURNING WORLDS in London in 1990.
Now based in the Eastern Region, the company creates dance works drawing on diverse themes and using cross-disciplinary performance techniques and an interest in

* the epic in the everyday
* emergence: from simplicity comes complexity
* crossing borders: disciplines, cultures, collaborations, technologies


Jane Turner (choreographer), Gwen Jones (Dancer), David Ogle (Dancer), Ann Pidcock (Dancer)

Triggered (35 minutes)

Contemporary dance-music-digital performance that interrogates the nature of interaction and creation. The project commenced in 2010 through support from London Metropolitan and Anglia Ruskin Universities, with initial performances at:

Anglia Ruskin University Thursday June 17th
Correspondences at London Metropolitan University, June 26th
before its premiere @
Kings Place 13th June 2011

Triggered exists somewhere between improvisation and composition, art and science, and builds on the Cage-Cunningham legacy of interaction between music-dance and network systems. The programme combines music and dance in an innovative and seamless manner, opening with the dancers initiating music by interacting with sensor technologies embedded in sculptures both free standing and suspended in the space custom-developed by Richard Hoadley. Understandings of emergence theory inform movement rule systems to build a sonic environment which evolve compositional patterns in live performance.

Contrasts between stasis and movement cyclically unfold in the work by Cheryl Frances-Hoad. Here sound and movement, live and electronic material evolve in response to feedback, resulting in a sophisticated, highly charged performance between performers and dancers.

In Tom Hall's work the position of the dancers is tracked (and mediated) by the composer on a tactile hardware interface. This information is sent to custom written software which creates algorithmic sounding events that correspond (or contrast) to the dancers' positions in space. The musical source material recalls an English folk song as interpreted by Nic Jones, and its treatment here is intended to explore the representation of degrees of musical (and especially tonal) abstraction.

Triggered from Jane Turner on Vimeo.

5 new compositions (2010)
Commissioned by Roberto Filoseta of the University of Hertfordshire music department, 5x4 minute choreographies to new music by postgraduate composers working on the Music for Media programme. These were presented in performance at the Weston Auditorium, Hatfield.

Water Journey 2010 from Jane Turner on Vimeo.

HERD (2009)



HERD conjures powerful responses. Six highly skilled dancers lead the audience into a journey of transformation. Mazes are used as both spatial setting and metaphor in this dynamic and visually rich dance performance that examines the delicate point where the individual and the group interrelate. Modern systems for understanding creation - the scientific theories of complexity and emergence - are overlaid with those rooted in ancient civilisations - ritual, patterns, dance, labyrinths.
HERD reconsiders the age old pairing of Woman and Nature during the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth, highlighting the creative potential of cross-fertilisation between the arts and the sciences.

HERD 2009 from Jane Turner on Vimeo.

TOUR 2009:
- Colchester Arts Centre, Essex 8pm Thursday 12th Feb
- The Cut, Halesworth, Suffolk 8pm Saturday 14 Feb.
- The Facility, London Metropolitan University, 7pm Monday 16th March
- The Computer Laboratory, Cambridge University 7pm Wednesday 18th Feb.
as part of Cambridge Science Festival 2009
- The Hat Factory, Luton Thursday 8th October
HERD was gratefully supported by the Arts Council England, the National Lottery, The Facility at London Metropolitan University, Sargasso Records.

TROOP (2007)


An erotic, exotic projection evolving in time, the Showgirl is a chameleon, adapting her look to the frame. She glories in your gaze and returns the stare.

'Troop is a classic seduction parade.' The Guardian



This vibrant digital dancetheatre work brings together a large cast of with cutting edge visual technologies to create iconic dance theatre that explores our enduring complex relationship with the the Showgirl.
Taking the fast pace and tight structure of a revue spectacular TROOP celebrates the theatricalised female form and the power of the dancing line as the dancers’ differences of identity, desire and experience interweave into a matrix of dazzling dance and digital wizardry.



Baby (2003/6)


"wonderfully wild and touching and not a moment of baby googoo"
Lucy Richardson, Theatre Director
"disturbingly funny, thought provoking and, ultimately, beautiful to watch."Sargasso News

Baby 2003 from Jane Turner on Vimeo.

Babes, Babies, Babyish
Bodies, Biology and the Big Bang,
Five international performers evoke the rites of passage from puberty to pregnancy that make us who we are. BABY mixes delicious dance, stunning imagery and revealing confession, with the latest performance technologies to create stunning performance of wit and invention. The Baby-ence that creates Life
An accessible, intimate theatrical exploration of the extremities of experience that make us flesh and blood.
The two night premiere at London's Institute of Contemporary Arts, May 2003, was a sell out and received an overwhelming response. Consequently Baby was reworked and presented at The Junction, Cambridge and The Cut, Suffolk in 2006.
Created with grateful support from the National Lottery, the ICA, City of Westminster Council, London Metropolitan University, Arts Council England.

BIRDS, BODIES involved seven dancers in work for London Metropolitan University's professional performance programme and as part of The Facility's Labyrinths and Mysteries symposium during 2005. This work used Isadora software and integrated audio systems devised by Nick Rothwell that responded to the performance's evolution in real time. The piece consisted of a number of clusters of devised dance material that explored the social and familiar. The different clusters were performed in varying orders. The order being shifted by critical state shifts.

e-Merge (2004) See>emergence


St.Albans (2001)
Places we come from and possible selves.
Movement, image, projection, suggestion
Nash & Brandon rooms, ICA, The Mall, London SW1



Hybrid (1997)



In the common or garden centre humanity and botany collide. Strange fruits flower.
n. & a. 1. offspring of two animals or plants of different species or varieties: person of mixed origins; thing composed of incongruous elements, esp. word with parts taken from different languages. 2. bred as hybrid from different species or varieties.



Created and premiered at Jacksons Lane Arts centre, London.
Toured: Alsager, Glastonbury Dance Festival, Neuesteater - Munich, ICA-London.
Five Performers. Dance. Music (Daniel Biro). Film. Costume.


Dolly Boom Wrap Cut (1996)
Camera, Speed, Action!

Celebrating the Centenary of Cinema in 1996 this 'witty, well observed interpretation of a film crew on a busy shoot captures the moves of motion picture making in this highly accessible dance piece'. Maggie Pinhorn, Alternative Arts. Commissioned for the Westminster Summer Dance Festival.

Toured extensively from Epsom Playhouse, Portsmouth Festival, Guernsey Street Arts Festival, Glastonbury Dance Festival,
to many Westminster schools and London Theatre venues.
Four Performers.Dance.Music (Malcolm Boyle). Props.

It's a Wonderful Life (1996) a Waltzing Christmastime Performance Installation at Marylebone Station, London supported by the Arts Council, Westminster.

Desert (1995)



Four Mad Dog Englishwomen Go Out in the Midday Sun
Caught in the divide between night and day, earth and sky, these nomads are propelled into a labyrinth of dream and distortion, memory and mirage by the vast hot foreign vista that is Desert.
Time and space suspended, past and future merge into an endless enveloping presence, revealing surprise; our just desserts.

Created with support from the London Arts Board.
Premiered at The Place, London and toured Turtle Key Arts Centre, Luton College
Four Performers.Dance.Music (Daniel Biro). Film.

Come on in, its lovely (1993)

An outdoor dance installation commissioned by Westminster City Council performed at alfresco sites in the City.
Four Performers. Dance. Music (Malcolm Boyle). Objects, Props. Costume.

Beauty and the Beast (1992)


A tale of love and obsession
A look into the mirror to face the myths that make this timeless fairy tale and to see reflected contemporary notions of beauty and horror. Truly a tale about love.

Premiered at the Steiner Theatre, London and toured Hammersmith Palais,
Chats Palace, Tom Allen Centre, Turtle Key Arts Centre.

Four Performers.Dance.Music (Daniel Biro). Set and Costume.

Soho Square (1991)
A dance theatre work sited in a grassy square in the heart of LondonS a place where paths cross, where separate worlds both real and imaginary converge. Characters and forms overlap in a dynamic and visually rich display.

Premiered at Chisenhale dance Space, London as part of the New Choreographers II Festival, London, and toured The Place, The Studio Theatre, Soho Square, Maltings Arts Centre, St.Albans.

Five Performers. Dance.Music (Daniel Biro). Projected Visuals (Ashley Potter).

"at the still point of the turning world" (1990)

A meditation on the infinite spiral, the essence of motion, the endless momentum of movement in time.

"simple, natural movements built from within, generated strong shapes and organically created patterns. Even in its most complex moments, the piece retained a spontaneity that reaffirmed its improvisational basis. Here the rigour of ensemble work was fruitfully married to an inventive and imaginative concept. Jane Turner's choreographyS revealed a capacity to give vivid and concrete embodiment to an abstract idea." Patrick Campbell, MTD Journal of the Performing Arts.

Does the world turn us or do we turn the world?

Created in residency at Morley College, London and toured The Place, The Steiner Theatre, Maltings Arts Centre. Four Performers.Dance.Music (Daniel Biro). Projected Visuals

As an integral part of its creative performance programme, the Company has initiated multiple projects that build bridges between professionals and enthusiasts, artists and organisations, via education, community and cross-arts collaborations.