Lowry stages a breathtakingly eclectic contemporary dance programme for 2025

Inspired by Paula Rego’s Dog Woman paintings, Becky Naumgaud’s THE HEAT brings a searing and surreal dance theatre production to Lowry which promises to ‘fracture the expectations of the home as a place of comfort’.

Set in an ethereal domestic realm where dark psyches unfurl, desires twist and the primal threatens to burst through the cracks, an intergenerational all-female cast showcase their raw physicality to produce striking imagery that transports audiences on a captivating journey, charting the roiling forces that linger beneath the surface of a tranquil home life as comfort and confinement grow increasingly precarious.

Described as ‘somewhere between a variety show and a biology essay’, Thick & Tight’s brand new show Natural Behaviour celebrates the vital role of diversity across all forms of life, exploring what it means to be natural and unnatural through a queer lens with a ‘beautifully performed and life-enhancing’ (Guardian) blend of choreography, impersonation, poetry and humour.

Following their award-winning tour of Tits & Teeth last year alongside sell-out shows at London International Mime Festival, the innovative duo take to the Quays Theatre stage as Associate Artists with a collection of kinetic animal portraits spanning the full spectrum of the natural world with trademark ingenuity, from post-apocalyptic cockroaches and lamenting songbirds to human tyrants and a single blade of grass.

This September, Britain’s oldest dance troupe joins forces with French company (LA)HORDE for a gritty, epic triple-bill led by an assemblage of internationally acclaimed dancers.

Audiences are invited into the stark chaos of Bring Your Own, a ferociously sensual carnival of chaos where raw physicality and choreographical mayhem burst forth in an uninhibited sensory explosion.

In Weather is Sweet, Rambert and (LA)Horde bring the neon-flecked streets of LA’s club scene to life with an absorbing meditation on urgent questions over intimacy, consent and sex-positivity, while A Room with a View challenges the audience, holding a mirror to contemporary society with profound and frequently unsettling insights about our shared priorities.

On Wed 24 Sep, Disco Queen breathes new life into the sparkling spectacle and show-stopping agility of the world-changing competitive freestyle dance form popularised by the iconic 1970s film, Saturday Night Fever.

Audiences can expect high-octane choreography, irresistible beats and a memorable story of resilience, community and dedication as Ella embarks on an impassioned odyssey of splits, spins and high leg kicks, recounting her time as part of a glittering subculture marked by relentless ambition.

From local community to halls to the glitzy competition circuit, Disco Queen explores the highs and lows of striving for perfection in a scene redefined by strong young women in working class Britain, as they each carve out their own path towards becoming a legend.

The following week, Liam Francis Dance Company debuts with Alchemy, an achingly poignant double-bill that seeks to unpack identity, community and transformation through two spellbinding symbiotic vignettes.

In the solo Was.Once.Now.Next., former Rambert dance Francis presents his personal journey through movement, with excerpts from pieces by Merce Cunningham, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Kate Prince, as the Dance Europe ‘Dancer of the Year’ nominee examines the intricacies of shifting identities, the tolls they take and the questions they leave behind with biting wit and tender openness.

Then, the kinetic and intimate trio A Body of Rumours celebrates music, brotherhood and movement in a story of three young Black men who, bound by rhythm, trust and kinship, trace their escape from isolation, competition and comparison to the joy of connection and the beauty of harmony with choreography inspired by ballet, hip hop and contemporary dance forms.

Using Visual Vernarcular – the choreographed and poetic form of sign language – digital animation, kinetic projection and immersive Woojer technology, Chisato Minamimura’s Mark of A Woman uncovers and explores the individual histories and first-hand accounts of the lesser-known relationships between women and tattooing cultures.

Taking place in Lowry’s Aldridge Studios, the pioneering performance project offers an accessible new avenue into women’s social, cultural and historical connection to body-marking.

This performance of Mark of A Woman uses Woojer straps, which are available to book with tickets for this performance on selected seats. Woojer Straps are vibrating belts designed to offer an additional sensory experience for audiences by enabling the user to feel sound vibration.

Book tickets below.

Taking place in the Quays Theatre on the same night, Hannes Langolf’s HOW ABOUT NOW offers a vigorous, thoughtful physical study of vulnerability, self-awareness and the nuances of perception through a blend of spoken word and dance, inspired by Max Frisch’s classic play The Arsonists.

Performed entirely in a sealed glass box, the Olivier-nominated choreographer collaborates with Ermira Goro and Ed Mitchell to produce a haunting depiction of a world in which trust is precarious and the integrity of everything you’ve built stands on a knife-edge.

Book tickets to the poetic yet visceral performance below.

In Binary Opposition, contemporary theatre, dance and visual arts company Restless Sleepers utilise their large-scale interactive stage construction of two rooms with identical walls and floors, separated by a dividing wall, to play with and interrogate the concept of entrances and exits and mistaken identities.

Taking scenarios from their sprawling twenty-year catalogue of work, the company draws on Schrodinger and the mathematical logics of contacts from Negative Space to reimagine an endless array of set pieces in strange, compelling ways.

Following its critically acclaimed premiere at Dublin Dance Festival in May 2024, Mufutau Yusuf’s Impasse comes to Lowry on Fri 10 Oct with an empowered, insightful meditation on ethnicity, identity and the shared experience of the Black diaspora.

Billed as an effort to understand the politics of the Black body in a contemporary Western society, Impasse confronts ideas of representation, misrepresentation and underrepresentation with a dynamic, propulsive dance production that references African immigration while challenging prejudiced narratives etched onto Black bodies throughout history, peeling away racial projections of crudeness, sexuality and rage to reveal power, grace, intelligence, self-autonomy and love.

On Fri 24 and Sat 25 Oct, Hofesh Schecter’s brand new production sees the heart-stopping physicality and fathomless complexity of his choreography on full display, as his peerless dancers welcome audiences into the wild and wondrous theatre of dreams.

Schecter’s latest work plunges into the world of fantasy and the subconscious, revealing the vast array of fears, hopes, desires and emotions that germinate in dreams and penetrate our waking thoughts, as the dancers bring thrilling new dimensions to the interplay between poetry and reality, backed by live musicians and Schecter’s singularly cinematic composition.