Wednesday 8 October –Saturday 1 November 2025
What can dance be?
Photograph credit: Foteini Christofilopoulou
Welcome to nottdance 2025
nottdance has always been a space to ask the big questions, to stretch the idea of what dance is and what it could be. For decades, the festival has welcomed bold voices, unconventional ideas, and work that doesn’t sit neatly in a box - and this year is no different.
Over the course of this year’s festival, artists from Nottingham and across the world will take over the city. Offering up moments of joy, disruption and curiosity, for reflection and forming and celebrating connections.
Whether you’re seeing something for the first time or returning to a long-loved artist, we hope this festival offers something unexpected, something that moves you - literally and emotionally.
Paul Russ - Artistic Director and Chief Executive, FABRIC
Tender Stones
As performers from all disciplines work to construct paper stones, a surreal production line emerges.
We don’t get to keep these bodies forever… you know.
A few months ago, I was reminded that a body is not forever. My dad died, I accompanied him as far as I could go, witnessing from the shoreline. My (dancing) body instinctively knew how to hold the end of time for him, I did not know any of this until it was happening. At the same time, I went to see Laurie Anderson in concert, she said “When my father died it was like a whole library burned down ” those few words seemed to express the enormity of losing someone or something you love, like a large oak descending, (Keeley Forsyth).
My dad’s ascent synchronised with me becoming an artist researcher with FABRIC. I can only describe it as a sort of sad-batical –being with time and loss in relation to moving and dancing in times that are evermore hostile and resistant to freedom, to bodies and motion - How do we keep moving when a child sees fire (Ganavya).
In 2021 I carried my body up a hill and decided not to go down the other side. I was embraced by a small community that included Wainsgate Dances, I spent my time working in the post office, the shop and the café, going to open practice, attending to the necessity of earning a living, patching up a broken heart combined with trying to begin again and sustain practice no matter how forgotten you are or how dormant it’s become.
It’s easy to underestimate…
present somehow, like the sea, you may not be anywhere near it, but it’s there being the sea.
Sometimes it’s important to remember movement moves.
Venue: Nottingham Contemporary
Date/Time:
Wednesday 8 October, 6.30 – 7.20pm
Suitability: Suitable for all
Exploring the transferable properties of stone, we examine how we might begin to move with petrification, heaviness and tenderness. Through the performers (paper) stone making, our attention is drawn towards expansive states of awareness. It’s a strange practice of reverse extraction possibly, and a small acknowledgement of the utterly unfathomable.
During 2022, choreographer Lucy Suggate and visual artist Charlie Ford began collaborating during a residency at Wainsgate Dances. The residency brought together Charlie’s drawing practice into orbit with Lucy’s dance research. Over time these parallel encounters evolved into Tender Stones.
To underestimate time, is to underestimate a body, a life, what it needs and what it is capable of. Our world(s) have been built up to underestimate everything…stillness, quietness, difficulty, flatpack assembly, love, belonging, competition, resources. Over the years of moving, I’ve become interested in how practice-time differs from, let’s say, regular time or institutional time. How easily time, along with body- becomes compressed, condensed into formats, counts, figures, facts. When I reflect on practice, I would describe it as oceanic, vast and unknowable. always
20 years ago I stumbled into my own movement practice as an agitated reaction to the singularity of established dance practices. Back then as a twenty something I had a body that was always out-of-time, so I dropped out, or maybe I was pushed out? to build my own time that embraced multitudes both simple and complex. I thought for a short while I could turn scarcity into abundance, yet over the last few years I’ve felt the spirit (time) turn to stone (time). It’s hard not to become petrified (again) Tender Stones embodies such stoney-ness as a way to begin moving again and ending again repeatedly.
Photograph credit: Fred Howarth
Lucy Suggate with Cool Company (UK)
Photograph credit: Fred Howarth
Lucy Suggate
I’m very excited to be presenting The Disappearing Act during nottdance this year.
The initial stage of the project was supported by LDIF in Leicester, followed by my first residency with (then) Dance4, (now) FABRIC. I was able to bring guitarist Raul Cantizano from Seville to work with drummer and poet Remi Graves as part of Horizon Showcase, back in 2021. This will actually be the first time we perform the finished piece in the UK.
We were meant to bring it to nottdance 2022 but I had recently become a mother and after an intense birth, I wasn’t physically where I needed to be to perform the work. The premiere eventually happened at the Nimes Flamenco Festival, early 2023. We’ve been lucky to tour the piece in France and Spain taking it to Italy, Germany, Finland, Switzerland and even to the US. It’s particularly meaningful for me to finally share the work where I’m from, especially as it’s my first solo production.
The Disappearing Act has been an incredible way of truly understanding what my processes as a creator, researcher and performer are, as well as my motivations for making. What might have been detrimental to the work since its ideation - the process traversing Covid 19, as well as a pregnancy and becoming a mother, in fact meant it was a constant work in progress - I had to adapt the content to the possibilities and my abilities for a few years. Yet, returning to the questions and processes also through different iterations at various stages, has made it become more like a framework to work within, or almost like a collection of which the stage piece is a part.
In many ways time has therefore been an important feature in the work. In a literal sense of the time it took for the work to come together as a stage piece, through and between the pauses and iterations. Yet more significantly working with historical sites and, ultimately, the past. Accessing what of that past is still present with us in today’s reality, has permeated all aspects of the work. The term I borrowed from Christina Sharpe to contain this
idea is ‘residence time’. Where what we think belongs to the past, certainly in the context of black diasporic experiences since slavery, continues to impact our contemporary realities on a physical, structural, optic and ideological level. This in turn has meant that suspension, lingering and repetition are embedded in the choreographic work. Beyond flamenco rhythms there is ‘residence time’ in The Disappearing Act
As I embark on a new production, I understand that the listening that was necessary to work on The Disappearing Act, both in its historical subject matter, but also in its production process, has revealed valuable ways of “doing” for me, which have to do with pace, collaboration, adaptability and sustainability. I hope to be able to hold on to these values as the pressures of production get harsher in our current climate.
The Disappearing Act
The
Venue:
Lakeside Arts, Djanogly Theatre
Date/Time:
Thursday 9 October, 7.30 – 8.30pm
Price:
£10/£8
Suitability: Suitable for all ages 16 and over
A 20-minute post show talk will follow the performance which you’re welcome to join.
She draws on her reality as a flamenco dancer of Afro-Caribbean descent and the historical and representational questions this has raised throughout her career.
Removal, absence and invisibility become materials with which to create.
In a three-part performance, she proposes an experiment in which camouflage and crypsis are the main modes for (dis)appearance and exploring the implications of constantly resisting negation.
With dance, live music rooted in flamenco, text and live video, the work presents itself as an experimental flamenco work, in the form of a reimagined Ghanaian Concert Party.
Photograph credit: Jérôme Quadri
Yinka Esi Graves
Yinka Esi Graves (UK/ES)
Disappearing Act is Yinka Esi Graves’ first solo production.
Photograph credit: Mañez J Jordan
Part of Lakeside Art’s Multibuy Scheme
The nottdance Lecture
Venue: FABRIC
Date/Time:
Friday 10 October, 10 – 11.30am
Price:
Free, booking required
Suitability:
For those interested in dance and choreography
Created by FABRIC in partnership with De Montfort University, this event brings together artistic practice and public discourse — positioning the artist not only as a maker, but as a thinker, researcher, and cultural commentator.
Delivered by an artist whose work has evolved the field of dance and choreography, this lecture offers reflections on the questions that shape their practice, the urgencies that animate their thinking, and the impact of their work within wider cultural and social contexts.
Alexandra ‘Spicey’ Lande (CAN) with MC Jai Nitai Lotus (CAN)
Venue:
Nottingham Contemporary
Date/Time:
Wednesday 15 October, 7.30 – 8.40pm
Price: £10
Suitability:
Suitable for all ages 18 and over
How do we approach different incarnations of the same life?
Mōnad (Ancient Greek “monas ” – “unit”) evokes the idea of a single-celled, selfsufficient organism that contains several universes on its own.
A vibrant look at relationships within interconnected universes, questioning the notion of eternity.
Inspired by this elemental substance and vitalised by the symbiotic relationship it has with dance and Hip-Hop culture.
Photograph credit: Kate Green
Photograph credit: David Wong
Bottoms
Two Destination Language (UK/BG)
Venue:
Lakeside Arts, Djanogly Theatre
Date/Time:
Thursday 16 October, 7.30 – 8.30pm
Price:
£10/£8
Suitability:
Suitable for all ages 12 and over
A 20-minute post show talk will follow the performance which you’re welcome to join.
Conjuring a joyous freedom, Bottoms ’ five dancers seek refuge from the present-day world in fragments of a wild dance forged in the Industrial Revolution. The can-can. With crisps. And cava.
Bottoms is new work from the awardwinning Two Destination Language.
We Move in Close Circles
Salamèche (UK), Orley Quick (UK) & Sam Pardes (USA)
Venue: In somebody’s home
Date/Time: Thursday 16 October, Friday 17 October and Saturday 18 October, 8 – 10.30pm
Price:
£5
Suitability: Suitable for all ages 16 and over
We Move in Close Circles is an immersive performance that takes place in people’s homes, that embraces the beautiful mess of inviting others into our lives.
Join Sam, Orley, Rohanne and Paul – the most horribly nice people you’ve ever met – for a giddy night of drinks, dancing, singalongs, bickering, hysterical come-downs, and accountability circles.
We Move in Close Circles responds to widespread anxieties of belonging and inclusion, by exploring the relationship between care and control in the intimate environment of a home. Tough Sell described the show as “cynical yet joyful: a perfect house party with pitch-perfect tension.”
Photograph credit: Beth Chalmers
Photograph credit: Beth MacInnes
Is this archiving?
The Role Archiving Plays in Hip-Hop Dance Culture
Venue: FABRIC
Date/Time:
Friday 17 October, 10 – 11.30am
Price: Free, booking required
Suitability: For those interested in Hip-Hop dance and archiving
Established voices in Hip-Hop dance explore how the culture archives itself.
Hip-Hop holds knowledge in ways that don’t always align with traditional archiving methods.
Chaired by Dwayne Church-Simms with panelists Alexandre ‘Spicey’ Landé, Marie Kaae and Ian Abbott, this conversation will explore how expertise is passed on in our community and what it means to document, value and share knowledge rooted in lived experience. Facilitated by Natifah White.
Whether or not we call it ‘archiving ’, this is a space for those connected to Hip-Hop dance and the broader Hip-Hop culture in how community-based or creative archiving can work.
Rinse
Amrita Hepi (AUS/THA) & Mish Grigor (AUS)
Venue: Lakeside Arts, Djanogly Theatre
Date/Time:
Saturday 18 October, 7 – 7.50pm
Price:
£10/£8
Suitability: Suitable for all ages 15 and over
What is it about the beginning that remains intoxicating?
Our persistent lust for the first rush of romance, a scene, a canon, a theory, a relationship, a meal or country; beginnings.
Rinse questions whether being on the brink of extinction, or endings, has intensified the seduction of the past. The fraught idolisation of the singular narrative under the grip of hegemony.
Positioning personal narratives in relation to dance, art, feminism, cannons, the void, desires, popular culture and colonial history.
An intimate solo based on a dynamic improvisational score, a continuation of Hepi’s fascination with hybridity under empire and contemporary dance’s preoccupation with the “neutral” body.
Photograph credit: Mariana Machado
Photograph credit: Zan Wimberley
Part of Lakeside Art’s Multibuy Scheme
Sunday 19 October
Design
yourself a day of performances and workshops
Nottingham College City Hub
Workshops
All workshops are £3
Suitability: Open to all abilities
Ebnflōh Dance Company Workshop
Date/Time:
Sunday 19 October
10 – 11.15am (for 18 years and over)
2 – 3.15pm (for ages 13 to 17)
Montreal choreographer and major figure in Hip-Hop dance Alexandra “Spicey” Landé accompanied by MC Jai Nitai Lotus offer this unique opportunity to experience Ebnflōh’s movement.
Explore the technical tools and movement approaches to Spicey’s choreographic practice. Enabling you to translate the movement in your own personal way, renewing your relationship to movement and music.
See the studio performance of Mōnad (see page 7) at 1.15 – 1.45pm for ages 13 and over. Check website for details.
Hofesh Shechter Company Workshop
Date/Time:
Sunday 19 October
10 – 11.15am (for ages 13 to 17)
2.15 – 3.15pm (for 18 years and over)
Led by Hofesh Shechter Company, the workshop is an opportunity to explore the Company’s distinctive movement style.
The workshop will include a full warm up and use repertoire and imagery from Hofesh’s critically acclaimed work, From England with Love, to explore his creative process.
Locating Yourself Workshop with Shivaangee Agrawal
Date/Time: Sunday 19 October
2 – 3.15pm (for 16 years and over)
A gentle and mindful movement workshop for adults that grounds us in our bodies, and offers a way of being present in our experiences without ignoring our feelings.
Performances
Come Rest in Chaos
Shivaangee Agrawaal (UK)
Date/Time: Sunday 19 October 11.30am – 12.30pm
3.30 – 4.30pm (Touch Tour: 10.45 – 11.15am)
Price: £5
Suitability: Suitable for all
Do you ever feel at odds with those around you?
Have you ever wanted to both belong and be left alone at the same time? Do you ever find yourself relating to different perspectives on the same truth?
This immersive experience uses live performance, film and illusion, creating sensory worlds, amongst which four performers dance beside you and sometimes across from you.
As they compose a rhythmic journey through intimacy, conformity and conflict, you’re invited to follow your curiosities through the space and make choices about how you want to be an audience member.
A live-responsive soundscape adapts to these decisions.
Photograph credit: Sabina Claici
nottdance as Place
Venue: FABRIC
Date/Time:
Saturday 25 October, 12 – 1.30pm: Lunch and Exhibition
1.30 – 2.45pm: In Conversation and Solo Performance by Tamara McLorg
3 – 4pm: Dancing on a Blank Sheet of Paper by The Nottingham Ensemble
Followed by a post-show conversation.
Price: Free, booking required
Suitability:
Suitable for all
nottdance past, present and future weaved together through exhibition, live performance and conversation.
Join us for lunch and an introduction to the exhibition.
Discover the story of nottdance through its community. Explore how Nottingham’s vibrant culture and sense of place shaped the festival’s evolution through this open panel and live performance.
Performance, stories, music, dance collected with the people of Nottingham brought to life by Director Alan Lyddiard and Choreographer Tamara McLorg of The Performance Ensemble.
Rendezvous
Venue: BACKLIT
Date/Time: Saturday 25 October, 7 – 10.30pm
Price:
£5
Suitability:
Suitable for all ages 18 and over
FABRIC and BACKLIT invite you to meet us at the Rendezvous. A shared moment with Nottingham’s creative communities.
This one-night gathering opens space to connect, explore, and celebrate expression in its many forms, all held in a spirit of care, joy, and connection.
Photograph credit: Phil Green
Photograph credit: Tom Harris
When I think of the work I think
of circles:
of moving in circles and the circles we move in. I think of the circle we make for a moment of gathering, before rehearsals start. I think of the circle where we practice the complex choreography of eye contact and touch and trust. The circle where we nurture the heightened perceptions that underpin all our work. I think of the circle that gathers up time into a spiral dance of bodies and play and space and music and light.
Back in the day (I’m talking like waaay back), perhaps we would have said, Here comes the chorus, ready with their judgements and their dances. Here come the ones who have gathered together to notice and speak. Here is a choreography, a circle dance, a tight roaring circle. He is the anger and the grief and the shame and the joy and the protest and the roar. We are the chorus, and we’re here with our protests and our dances. Come join our circle. That’s the invitation that Nottingham has always made to us: Come join our circle. And bring your protests as well as your dances.
The first time we came was back in 2014. (Back in the before-days, like waaaaay back, in that old world we used to work in). It was a critical stage of research and development for one of our most celebrated works: Men & Girls Dance, which we developed with support from the Jerwood Choreographic Research Project. Our host partner was the then Dance4, one of the organisations that merged to form FABRIC. Five professional dancers, twelve girls, newspaper, secrets, monsters, laughter, snatches of pop music (Beyoncé: If I Were A Boy), watchfulness and open-ness and all of them there in a line, a straightened circle, watching us watching them (I see you looking at me. You bring your judgements. I’ll meet them with my dances).
We turned up again in 2016, performing the show: different men, different girls, same joy, same monsters, same conversation, same fear, same trust, same need. Now it’s 2018. We’re back in a circle, gathered together in an after-hours shop, talking together about grief (don’t panic if I cry; let me be sad; there will be joy again), holding space for one another, a gathering of attention and attentive listening, a choreography of small gestures (reach, fold, clench, hold, gentle shift of weight, softened hands as witness, soft gaze as care). Now it’s 2019, back again, R&D-ing again, another group of children, encircling us again as we find the work with them and through them, again. Encircling us as our ideas are changed and shaped by them, again. At the end of the week, gathered in a circle, we ask our question: what makes you different from us? How are children different from adults? Their answer: we are iridescent; we are not finished.
(This story I’m telling is out of sync, I think; time is collapsing. But as Time Keeps The Drummer and the children who perform it have taught me, it’s good to escape the tyranny of the calendar and the clock. So I haven’t checked this chronology: what matters is the memory and the feeling, the looping back over all these journeys through all this time. The archive of accuracy is elsewhere). And so now it’s 2025 (this much at least I know for a fact, I think). Time has passed, and we’re looping back to Nottingham again, in this strange new world, in these spiralling moments of collapse and chaos and fear and war, gathering together in fury and with rage encircling rage encircling rage. Once again we’re gathering in Nottingham, making a circle again: us, adult artists and them, extraordinary children from this city of protest: gathering together to rebel against time this time.
(way back, I mean like waaaaaaay back…)
Fevered Sleep (UK)
Time Keeps The Drummer
Fevered Sleep (UK)
Venue: Nottingham College City Hub
Date/Time: Saturday 1 November, 12 – 5pm (durational)
Price: £5/£2.50
Suitability: Suitable for all
day of it, watch the shows overleaf happening the same day
Step into a space where time is fluid, joyful and chaotic. A space of wild abandon and limitless possibility.
This 5-hour durational show for family and adult audiences features a cast of children from Nottingham and a single adult percussionist. Through improvised movement, text, projection, music and lighting, each performance unfolds as an unrepeatable experience, directed live and shaped in real-time.
Audiences are free to come and go as they please throughout the duration.
Photograph credit: Winnie Yeung Make a
Guesthouse Projects (UK)
Date/Time:
Saturday 1 November, 10.30 – 11.20am and 1.30 – 2.20pm
for all ages 8 and over
A funny and tender new contemporary dance performance that uses humour, risky physical duets and heartfelt choreography to poetically consider the complexities of modern-day masculinity as it affects both boys and men.
The Show for Young Men Stretch
Sophia Clist (UK) and Nick Burge (UK)
Date/Time:
Friday 31 October 3 – 5pm* Saturday 1 November 10am – 5pm
Make a day of it, watch the show overleaf happening the same day
Mathroo Basha
Hetain Patel (UK)
Venue: Lakeside Arts, Djanogly Theatre
Date/Time:
Saturday 1 November, 7 – 7.45pm
Price:
£10/£8
Suitability: Suitable for all ages 7 and over
A 20-minute post show talk will follow the performance which you’re welcome to join.
Following the passing of a number of first-generation immigrants in his family, in Mathroo Basha (Mother Tongue in Gujarati), British born artist and filmmaker Hetain Patel reflects on what is lost and what is transformed, revisiting rituals rooted in his family’s working-class Brit-Gujarati experience.
Stretch is a stand-alone interactive installation, a wall made of hundreds of strands of fine shirring elastic under tension, stretching across a space. It is a sound sculpture, a blank canvas, minimalistic and symbolic in appearance. Its many miles of elastic create a permeable threshold or boundary, embracing the architecture of the space it occupies.
The sculpture invites interaction, quietly provoking the viewer into physical engagement, to manipulate it, and to discover its potential to transform and to be transformed. The viewer makes their own multi-sensory journey.
*The Friday exhibition is for SEND individuals and their families only.
Responding physically to audio interviews of women from his family speaking in Gujarati about inheritance, loss and the future, Mathroo Basha delves into the emotional realities of generational change through personal movement explorations where his body becomes the conduit.
Mathroo Basha is performed in English and Gujarati.
Photograph credit: Tommy Ga Ken-Wan
Photograph credit: Jarrad Seng
Photograph credit: Foteini Christofilopoulou
Part of Lakeside Art’s Multibuy Scheme
BACKLIT
Ashley Street
NG1 1JG
www.backlit.org.uk
FABRIC
2 Dakeyne Street
NG3 2AR
www.fabric.dance
Lakeside Arts
University Park
NG7 2RD
www.lakesidearts.org.uk
Nottingham Contemporary
Weekday Cross
NG1 2GB
www.nottinghamcontemporary.org
Nottingham College City Hub
111 Canal Street NG1 7HB
www.nottinghamcollege.ac.uk
St Mary’s Church
High Pavement
NG1 1HN
www.stmarysnottingham.org
Wed 8 6.30 – 7.20pm Tender Stones by Lucy Suggate with Cool Company Nottingham Contemporary
Thu 9 7.30 – 8.30pm The Disappearing Act by Yinka Esi Graves Lakeside Arts, Djanogly Theatre
Fri 10 10 – 11.30am The nottdance Lecture FABRIC
Wed 15 7.30 – 8.40pm Mōnad by Alexandra ‘Spicey’ & Landé MC Jai Nitai Lotus Nottingham Contemporary
Thu 16 7.30 – 8.30pm Bottoms by Two Destination Language Lakeside Arts, Djanogly Theatre
8 – 10.30pm We Move in Close Circles by Salamèche, Orley Quick & Sam Pardes
Fri 17 10 – 11.30am Is this archiving? A discussion on the role archiving plays in Hip-Hop Dance Culture
8 – 10.30pm We Move in Close Circles by Salamèche, Orley Quick & Sam Pardes
Sat 18 8 – 10.30pm We Move in Close Circles by Salamèche, Orley Quick & Sam Pardes
Private home
FABRIC
Private home
Private home
7 – 7.50pm Rinse by Amrita Hepi with Mish Grigor Lakeside Arts, Djanogly Theatre
Sun 19 10 – 11.15am Hofesh Shechter Company Workshop 13-17yrs Nottingham College City Hub
10 – 11.15am Ebnflōh Dance Company Workshop 18+
11.30 – 12.30pm Come Rest in Chaos by Shivaangee Agrawaal
1.15 – 1.45pm Mōnad Studio Version by Alexandra ‘Spicey’ Landé & MC Jai Nitai Lotus
2 – 3.15pm Ebnflōh Dance Company Workshop 13-17yrs
2 – 3.15pm Hofesh Shechter Company Workshop 18+
2 – 3.15pm Locating Yourself Workshop with Shivaangee Agrawaal
3.30 – 4.30pm Come Rest in Chaos by Shivaangee Agrawaal
Sat 25 12 – 1.30pm nottdance as Place: Lunch and exhibition FABRIC
1.30 – 2.45pm nottdance as Place: Community conversation and live performance
3 – 4pm Dancing on a clean sheet of paper by The Nottingham Ensemble
Sat 25 7 – 10.30pm Rendezvous
Fri 31 3 – 5pm Stretch by Sophia Clist with Nick Burge SEND experience only
Sat 1 10 – 5pm Stretch by Sophia Clist with Nick Burge
Make a day of it nottdance as Place
Mary’s Church
10.30 – 11.20am The Show for Young Men by Guesthouse Projects Nottingham Contemporary
12 – 5pm Time Keeps the Drummer by Fevered Sleep
Nottingham College City Hub
1.30 – 2.20pm The Show for Young Men by Guesthouse Projects Nottingham Contemporary
7 – 7.50pm Mathroo Basha by Hetain Patel
Make a day of it
Lakeside Arts, Djanogly Theatre
