The place announces its 2025 summer season

The Place, London’s leading centre for dance performance and creation, is delighted to launch its summer 2025 season, with highlights including three international festivals, a Choreodrome commission coming to fruition, and the much-anticipated new show by Gary Clarke Company.

The season is complete by heartwarming family work by Aakash Odedra Company, The Place’s annual Youth Dance Platform and London Contemporary Dance School’s Graduation show 2025. Our popular summer event Family Dance Day also returns with lots of free activities to get the whole family dancing.

“Our summer season demonstrates what we believe The Place does best. Womb Party is an example of an innovative new dance work, which we’ve supported from its inception through our artist development programmes. We’re working in partnership to bring excellent, ground breaking international dance to London and the UK, through the eighth edition of our Festival of Korean Dance, and with Shubbak and Queer East. We’re also delighted to be hosting the final part of Gary Clarke’s trilogy Detention, as part of a long-term commitment to showcase the company’s work in London.” - The Place Programming Team

Highlights of the spring 2025 season include:
• The 8th edition of the popular Festival of Korean Dance, bringing five companies to the UK including Korea National Contemporary Dance Company headlining the festival’s largest show to date (30 JAN – 1 FEB)
• Gary Clarke Company’s highly anticipated new dance theatre show, DETENTION, a sequel to the multi award-winning COAL and critically acclaimed WASTELAND (3 – 7 JUN)
• Aakash Odedra’s family show Little Murmur, exploring the trials and tribulations of growing up with dyslexia (30 MAY)
• Choreodrome commission of new timely and relevant work by Stefania Pinato and Amarnah Ufuoma Cleopatra  
Programme of work this summer at The Place

The Summer programme 2025 at The Place features a timely new work of dance theatre that has been developed during our Choreodrome artist residencies in 2024:

Dance artist Stefania Pinato and interdisciplinary artist Amarnah Ufuoma Cleopatra are playing Fanny and Gina, the hosts of WOMB PARTY, an interactive dance theatre show exploring themes of choice, bodily autonomy and reproductive justice. Through dance, games, real-life stories and interruptions from unwanted thoughts and uninvited guests they create a vibrant celebration of bodily autonomy and the power of choice. Every-body welcome! (25 & 26 APR)

Over the Summer, The Place is presenting three exciting festivals of international artists and work:

A well-established staple of the dance calendar, the annual Festival of Korean Dance returns for its eighth year, bringing five companies to the UK including Korea’s leading dance company, Korea National Contemporary Dance Company headlining the festival’s largest show to date. Jungle features a 17-strong company, gathered onstage for an extraordinary spectacle of vitality. The dancers embody all the elements of the jungle, from the animals, plants, winds and lights, to the humans who navigate it. Their movements, with all their senses and responses, are pure and raw. Based on ‘Process Init’, an unconventional movement research method developed by Korea National Contemporary Dance Company’s Artistic Director Sung-young Kim, Jungle is full of wildly instinctive movements which expand and unfurl, rich with the energy of survival.(7 & 8 MAY)

Kontemporary Korea: A Double Bill of K:Dance is a showcase of two of the freshest new voices in K-dance, each finding inspiration and play in the balance between the mundane and the virtuosic.

0g (zero grams) by Melancholy Dance Company, inspired by the repetitive and seemingly pointless actions of the mythical figure Sisyphus, aims to uncover the meaning of life anew within monotonous daily routines, and is paired with Shinsegae by Ji-hye Chung, a lecture-style solo performance which dissects our most unconscious everyday activity - the act of walking. (13 MAY)

Closing the festival will be London favourites, all-male dance troupe Modern Table with Ham:beth. Loosely inspired by depictions of madness in Hamlet and Macbeth, Ham:beth combines traditional Korean songs with a live rock band to create a powerful gig atmosphere. Seven dancers in slick suits battle against the pressure to conform. Claiming their right to desire, their quests push them into becoming lone heroes as fast and furious choreography builds the thrilling sensation of relentless energy, danger and emotional charge. (23 & 24 MAY)

Part of Shubbak Festival, celebrating contemporary Arab cultures across London through dance, music, theatre and family events, The Place is proud to present The Love Behind My Eyes by Ali Chahrour. This poetic and deeply political dance performance is anchored in the stories, legends, and lyrical poetry (ghazal) of the Arab patrimony, and particularly in the ancient story of the forbidden love between Bin Daoud and his lover Bin Jamea who lived in socially and religiously intense contexts. Full of radical tenderness and breathtaking slowness, two bodies full of sensuality and love are overcome by great sadness and infinite oppression. (28 MAY)

Our partnership with Queer East Festival continues, with The Place presenting a live art element of the cross-disciplinary festival. This year, artist Winnie Ho uses the concept of wok chi (鑊氣), the fleeting energy of wok cooking which gives Cantonese cuisine its distinct flavour, as a metaphor for her diasporic and queer identity. Blending physical performance, immersive scenography, and sensory dramaturgy, aWokening transcends the traditional boundaries of contemporary dance, with food becoming both a cultural anchor and a means of exploring cultural loss and collective memory. (16 MAY)

For five nights, Gary Clarke Company will take residence at The Place with the highly anticipated new dance theatre show, DETENTION, the final part of a trilogy including the multi award-winning COAL and critically acclaimed WASTELAND.

DETENTION explores the impact of SECTION 28: a piece of largely hidden legislation from Margaret Thatcher's Conservative Government in 1988, which 'prohibited the promotion of homosexuality', forcing people from the LGBT+ community into a place of secrecy, fear and shame at a time when the country was in industrial turmoil and the gay community was being ravaged by the onslaught of AIDS.

Gary Clarke's powerful and personal working-class storytelling draws on public and private stories and testimonies, including a rare insight into the LGBT+ Switchboard Logbooks, combined with vivid choreography performed by a company of exceptional dancers, an evocative narrator, a local cast of LGBT+ people, striking designs in film, sound, light and costume and music tracks by the iconic band TEST DEPT. DETENTION is a bold and moving exploration of the violence, loneliness, protests, debates, unlikely allies and the remarkable individuals and organisations of the time. (3 – 7 JUN, press night on 4 JUN)

Dance for and by young people is celebrated this summer at The Place. The annual Youth Dance Platform highlights the best of youth dance from across London and the South East, showcasing an exciting mix of styles in an evening of inspiring dance created with, by, and for young people. (9 & 10 MAY)

Inspired by Aakash Odedra’s dyslexia journey, Little Murmur is a dance theatre show for everyone age 7+, families and schools, blending groundbreaking visuals, sound, and humour to explore the warped and exaggerated realities of living in a world you struggle to process. Featuring groundbreaking projection, an extraordinary soundscape and a blizzard of paper and confetti, this stunning visual treat is an honest and heartfelt conversation about the trials and tribulations of living with dyslexia, facing challenges and overcoming the odds. (30 MAY)

Our annual much-loved Family Dance Day returns on 19 JUL, taking over nearby Coram’s Fields with a jam-packed day line up of FREE events and activities for children (aged 2-10 years) and their grown-ups. Throughout the day there will be interactive storytelling, arts, crafts, dance workshops, plus shows specifically created for family audiences, with more to be announced soon:

You Too Can Tutu is Gandini Juggling’s first-ever children’s show, a tongue-in-cheek take on the grand storytelling of classic ballet in which two ambitious characters are determined to create the world’s first juggling ballet.

the album: skool edition by SAY is an energetic and joyous outdoor dance show created specifically for kids and their families. Combining fast-paced and slick contemporary dance routines to exciting new music, this interactive performance celebrate the joy and innocence of making up dances and get creative with movement.

The dance artists of the future, our graduating students of London Contemporary Dance School take to the stage at The Place one last time for the Graduation Show 2025, before they step out into the world as emerging dance artists. Working with industry-leading and renowned choreographers: Ekleido (Hannah Ekholm & Faye Stoeser), Joseph Toonga, Léa Tirabasso and Monique Jonas, the culmination of our students' three-year artistic and academic journey promises a vibrant convergence of creativity and dedication, while offering a glimpse into the future of contemporary dance.