Black and white photo Dominique Le Gendre

Artistic and Executive Director, Dominique Le Gendre FRSA

Born and educated in Trinidad and Tobago, Dominique became actively involved in music, dance and theatre  from an early age. She trained as a classical guitarist in Paris, France while pursuing parallel studies in musicology, harmony and music analysis and composing music for student films.

A Londoner for over 30 years, she has composed music extensively for theatre, film, dance, art installations, television and radio drama for BBC Radio 3 and 4. She composed and produced music for all 38 Shakespeare plays recorded for the audio collection, The Complete Arkangel Shakespeare directed by Clive Brill. She has composed music and been musical director for Shakespeare’s Globe, StrongBack Productions, Talawa Theatre, London Bubble Theatre, Thirty Birds, Wild Iris, Women’s Theatre Group, Theatre of Black Women, Double Exposure Theatre company, Avon Touring and Theatre Centre.

Film music includes Sixth Happiness dir.Waris Hussein; Kennedy/Mellor productions/ BBC Films/BFI/Arts Council England. The Body of a Poet dir. Sonali Fernando and I Is a long Memoried Woman dir. Frances Ann Solomon, Leda Serene Films.

She was invited to become an Associate Artist of the Royal Opera House in 2004. Her chamber opera Bird Of Night, directed by Irina Brown and commissioned by The Royal Opera House was premiered at The Linbury Theatre in 2006. Her chamber works have been commissioned and performed by the Royal Opera House Soloists, Philharmonia Orchestra, Manning Camerata, Lontano Orchestra, Tête-a-tête Opera, The Ibis Ensemble (Trinidad), Ensemble du Monde (New York) and Calabash Foundation for the Arts among others. She has been Associate Artist to Manning Camerata led by Peter Manning who commissioned her musical setting of Seamus Heaney’s “The Burial at Thebes” that premièred at the Globe theatre, London in 2008 directed by St. Lucian poet and Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott.

Dreamwinds, a chamber music poem commissioned by photographer and curator Ingrid Pollard for Museum of London, Docklands’ “Landfall” exhibition was premiered in 2009.

In 2012 with Melanie Abrahams, she co-curated and co-produced the “London Is the Place for Me” festival at The Tricycle Theatre in London in celebration of Trinidad and Tobago’s 50th Anniversary of Independence.

www.dominiquelegendre.com

Administrator/Project Manager, Sally Wood

Sally is a writer and producer currently based in London. She has worked with StrongBack since 2020.

Sally participated in Poet In the City’s Young Producer’s scheme in 2019  and produced Maya Ayim;Borderless and Brazen at Kings Place. With Poetry Translation Centre and Ovalhouse Associate Artist Joana Nastari, she collaborated on Legna Rodriguez Iglesias’, A Little Body, Many Parts, interrogating the question of translation as a liberating force for Latinx women.

Between March and June 2019, Sally directed an immersive dining experience spread over an entire restaurant, of A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Get Out of My Space Productions. She has written and directed several of her own plays, touring them locally to The Bike Shed and Camden Fringe. These included a retelling of Virginia Woolf’s life based on letters; the performance toured to Bath, Teignmouth and Edinburgh.

In 2021, Sally worked with Ministry of Stories as Operations Manager for their escape room project: The Night The Day Was Broken.