BULLYACHE , Lost Dog, Sung-Im Her, and Yinka Esi Graves & Poliana Lima Studio Sessions 2025 England (UK)

Studio Sessions  is a presenter programme, introducing dance artists based in England to promoters from the UK and abroad, with the ambition of brokering new relationships for international co-commissioning and future touring. Studio Sessions is a collaboration between Dance Umbrella and FABRIC that has been running since 2018.   

Four companies, BULLYACHE , Lost Dog, Sung-Im Her, and Yinka Esi Graves & Poliana Lima will be sharing works-in-progress of new performance presented in partnership with Sadler’s Wells.   

This is a great opportunity for industry professionals to find about these four new works, as well as network with a range of artists, producers and promoters whilst attending Dance Umbrella Festival. 

A Good Man Is Hard to Find draws inspiration from the 2008 financial crash and the Bohemian Grove Cremation of Care ceremony, a real-world, secretive ritual where global elites gather each year to symbolically rid themselves of guilt before making the decisions that shape lives. The show dissects the mythology of power, exposing the absurdity, delusion, hazing, and destruction that define these men who are emotionally trapped somewhere between a god and a teenage boy.   

Through five dancers, live music, cinematic imagery, and visceral choreography, the piece embodies their fractured psyches. Their movements and behaviours reflect their inner turmoil, their relationship to authority shifting and reinstating itself in ever more ritualistic ways. 

A Good Man Is Hard to Find is co-commissioned by Venice Biennale, Sadler’s Wells and Unlimited, and will be their 3rd full length work. 

Ben Duke, artistic director of Lost Dog, is, as a favour to the theatrical world, attempting to kill off Hamlet once and for all. He is trying to stage not a definitive or even an accurate version of this ubiquitous play but simply the last one. This idea is the beginning of a show that explores the role of the artist in these dark days and questions whether the characters who occupy the stage are still fit for purpose. 

Through her signature electrifying movement style, pulsating music and dynamic light design, Sung Im Her | Her Project’s exhilarating new production 1 Degree Celsius invites us to consider the question: How can art spark action in the face of the climate crisis? 

Featuring seven dancers, 1 Degree Celsius looks at the topic of climate change and the effects it is having on the environment. As with all Her’s work, music and light form an essential and innovative character in the production. A new musical score has been created using data collected from rising atmospheric temperatures, and the lighting design is co-ordinated to the rising temperature of the earth. 

A Place to Dance is an encounter between Brazilian dancer and choreographer Poliana Lima and British flamenco dance artist Yinka Esi Graves. Drawing from their shared understanding of the body as a site which is traversed by multiple cultural heritages; when these are placed in the centre, the question of belonging arises. What does it really mean to belong becomes a question of “place”. Lima and Graves recognise the potential dance has to articulate the dynamics of participation and community. An opening in space and time that allows for transformation and belonging.