The Place announces its 2027 Spring Season

Today, The Place, London's leading centre for contemporary dance and home to London Contemporary Dance School (LCDS), announces its Spring 2027 season. Bringing together artists at every stage of their careers, the season spans new voices, established choreographers, celebrated companies and opportunities for audiences to discover the next generation of dance makers.

Throughout the season, audiences can experience a wide spectrum of contemporary dance theatre, from intimate storytelling to ambitious new choreography. Award-winning and internationally acclaimed artists sit alongside emerging makers developing new work, reflecting The Place's long-standing commitment to supporting artists, championing creative risk-taking and creating space for connection and belonging through dance.

Highlights include:

• CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED WORK BY LEADING COMPANIES with the homecoming of Lost Dog's celebrated Juliet & Romeo, returning to the theatre where its journey began, another chance to see Company Chameleon and Ockham's Razor which sold out in previous season; as well as Barrowland Ballet, Leading Light award nominee at Fringe 2025.
• NEW WORK FROM RISING CHOREOGRAPHIC TALENT including National Dance Awards Emerging Artist winner Liam Francis and the first Resolution: next steps – extending The Place's longstanding commitment to artist development beyond the festival itself with new commissions by selected artists for the main programme.
• IMAGINATIVE STORYTELLING FOR FAMILIES AND YOUNGAUDIENCES in Brooke Milliner's What's Your Power? and Scottish Dance Theatre's Pirates!
• OPPORTUNITIES TO EXPERIENCE THE NEXT GENERATION OF DANCE ARTISTS. Across the spring, London Contemporary Dance School present experimental new choreography and repertoire by leading contemporary choreographers, offering audiences a chance to experience the breadth of talent emerging from one of the world's foremost dance conservatoires.
• CELEBRATIONS OF THE IMPACT OF DANCE AS A LIFELONG ACTIVITY, from young people performing on a professional stage to older dancers creating new work, and people living with the impact of brain injury sharing their creativity and experiences through dance.

“There are plenty of opportunities to discover new artists at The Place, and in Resolution: next steps, a chance to experience our curated selection of artists from Resolution 2026 who impressed us with their bold new movement ideas. Some shows are just too good not to bring back and this season we have three such gems; a second chance to discover exceptional works by Scottish Dance Theatre, Ockham’s Razor and Lost Dog. If you missed them first time around, don’t make the same mistake again.” - Christina Elliot, Head of Programming and Producing

SHOW BY SHOW:

The Place presents

Resolution: Next Steps

COPTERS AND HEARSES 2: HEALER COMPLEX by JJ James & Joca Veiga/

Ring Me Hollowby Elisabeth Mulenga

2 MAR

Choreographer JJ James and fashion designer Joca Veiga’sCOPTERS AND HEARSES 2: HEALER COMPLEX topples headfirst into a world of sacrifice, healing and spiritual psychosis. This second instalment of their collaboration between dance and fashion moves beyond the glossy facade of the runway to expose the darker side of the wellness industry and its obsession with self-optimisation. Performed by an ensemble of five dancers driven by blind faith into commercialised healing rituals, the work unravels the promises of an industry that turns self-care into a commodity. Are we ever truly “fixable”, and how far will we go in the name of self-improvement?

Ring Me Hollow is a duet about unrequited love, deception and the desperate desire to be loved. Inspired by fake memoirs and forged histories, choreographer Elisabeth Mulenga explores the stories we invent about ourselves and each other, and the lengths we might go to in order to sustain them. Drawing on the atmosphere of a 1970s romantic thriller and set at the turn of the millennium, the work follows two protagonists caught in a consuming pursuit of love, where the boundaries between truth and fiction begin to unravel. As the performers move between intimacy, alienation and reconciliation, Ring Me Hollow asks: can a lie ever be an act of love? (2 MAR)

The Place presents

Resolution: Next Steps

BLUEPRINT by Lauren Scott/

Curtain Call by Seirian Griffiths

3 MAR

BLUEPRINT by Lauren Scott bridges the live immediacy of street dance cultures with contemporary theatre, interrogating the translation of underground dance practices into longer-form composition. Anchored in popping, animation and hip-hop, this quartet formalises street dance’s innate rules of engagement: active listening, call-and-response and rhythmic nuance. Driven by an immersive, hyper-textural electronic soundscape from composer Chloe Mason, Lauren Scott invites audiences into a fresh architectural vision for street dance on the contemporary stage.

Curtain Call by Seirian Griffiths sets the scene at opening night. The director has finally created his magnum opus, “a work of impossible ambition.” Everything has been planned to perfection. But at the half-hour call, the rights to the source material are suddenly revoked and the entire cast quits. As the countdown to curtain-up continues, a highly strung stage manager and an unforgiving interviewer push the increasingly desperate director to confront an uncomfortable question: was there ever going to be a show at all?

Inside / Among

Liam Francis Dance Company

27 FEB

Liam Francis, a leading figure in an emerging generation reframing the British dance scene, and winner of the Emerging Artist award at the National Dance Award 2025, presents the London premiere of a powerful new double bill Inside / Among, exploring the space between self and collective.

Dual Till The Death looks at the contradictions we each carry within ourselves. We can be serious and playful, aggressive and tender, mature and youthful, often all at once. Francis transforms these inner tensions into psychologically charged dance theatre. The dancers move between opposing impulses, revealing the complexity, humour and vulnerability of what it means to be human.

A Body of Rumours looks outward towards community, connection and belonging. Inspired by the concept of brotherhood; it looks at a relationship forged from a shared understanding of experience, culture, hopes, similarities, wants, and difference. Drawing on his experience as a Black dancer, Francis also considers the unspoken practices and tensions that have shaped his experience alongside his desire for connection. Chloé Mason captures the sounds of their dancing bodies in real time with a layered and multifaceted soundscape.

Obscura

Company Chameleon

2 APR

Obscura is a powerful and original double bill directed by Kevin Edward Turner MBE, dancing between light and darkness, exploring the shadows of self and society that stirs reflection long after the final step.

A powerful and nuanced trio, delicate and explosive in equal measure, Umbra spotlights exclusion and the universal search for understanding and to be understood. Refuse, a quintet inspired by Géricault’s iconic painting The Raft of the Medusa, spotlights displacement by shining a light on the lived experiences of asylum seekers today.

Umbra looks inward at the parts of ourselves we deny, while Refuse looks outward at exclusion. Together the two works explore different aspects of the human experience and share stories relevant to the world we’re living in right now. (2 APR)

Collaborator

Ockham’s Razor

Part of Mime Festival 2027

19 – 23 JAN

Following last year’s sold-out success, Ockham’s Razor return with Collaborator, an intimate duet, crafted and performed by the company’s Artistic Directors, Alex Harvey and Charlotte Mooney. For 20 years, the couple have been making circus together. They’ve lifted, caught and carried each other; stepped on and around each other. They’ve been dropped. They’ve picked each other up.

With just two performers, a suspended frame and a stage, Collaborator is an irreverent, deeply physical and heartfelt exploration of creation, compromise and the negotiations involved in making something together - a decision, a work of art, a life. Winner of The List Award for Best Dance, Circus and Physical Theatre at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2026.

Juliet & Romeo

Lost Dog

16 & 17, 20 - 24 APR

With the company’s signature blend of dance, theatre and comedy this duet reveals the real story of Romeo and Juliet. It turns out they didn’t die in a tragic misunderstanding; they grew up and lived happily ever after. Well, they lived at least. Now they’re 40ish, at least one of them is in the grips of a midlife crisis, they feel constantly mocked by their teenage selves and haunted by the pressures of being the poster couple for romantic love.

Directed by award winning director/choreographer Ben Duke,Juliet & Romeo takes on our cultural obsession with youth and our inevitable issues with longevity.

Wee Man

Barrowland Ballet

14 APR

Wee Man is a powerful and highly physical dance-theatre performance by award-winning choreographer Natasha Gilmore. Performed by an all-male cast of both men and teenagers, this candid and compelling work explores the shifting—and stubbornly static— rules of masculinity across generations. From one of "Scotland’s most successful contemporary dance companies'"(Reviews Hub), with evocative sound by Luke Sutherland and text created with Kevin P. Gilday, Wee Man blends raw movement, humour, and honest storytelling to unpack the "rulebook" of male behaviour - from everyday pressures to darker, inherited ideals.

Runner up for the Leading Light award, Scottish Theatre Awards on the Fringe 2025.

FAMILY PROGRAMME

Pirates!

Scottish Dance Theatre

28 & 29 MAY

Scottish Dance Theatre’s family show Pirates! returns to The Place where it delighted audiences young and old in 2025. In this adventure about identity and friendship, best friends Tom and Daisy are swept into the world of Captain Sandy Rogers and her rowdy crew, encountering slippery zombies, strange underwater creatures and a final showdown with the wicked Captain O'Greed. Featuring a playful mix of dance, theatre and storytelling, Pirates! is the latest creation of Scottish Dance Theatre’s Artistic Director Joan Clevillé, featuring the full company of dancers, lavish set and costume design, and original music by Luke Sutherland.

What’s Your Power?

Brooke Milliner

20 FEB

What’s Your Power? is a joyful new hip hop dance theatre adventure from choreographer Brooke Milliner. Three school children with extraordinary abilities are invited to a mysterious School of Magic, where they learn to understand and control the powers they’ve tried to hide. Guided by an eccentric Professor, they discover that fitting in isn’t always all it’s cracked up to be. Blending high-energy hip hop dance, humour, imagination and larger-than-life characters, What’s Your Power? celebrates individuality and invites young audiences to discover the power in being themselves.

PERFORMANCES BY LONDON CONTEMPORARY DANCE SCHOOL

London Contemporary Dance School at The Place presents

Mixed Bill

SAY/ Holly Blakey/ Ben Wright

18 & 19 MAR

A Mixed Bill of repertoire works showcases the BA students their extraordinary talents, as well as the legacy of the institution's long-standing history of pioneering contemporary dance choreographic practice, restaging two commissioned pieces from previous Graduation Shows by choreographers SAY and Holly Blakey, and a repertoire piece from Ben Wright.

London Contemporary Dance School at The Place presents

Percolator

A collaboration with Aishwarya Raut / Kenny Wing Tao Ho / Hawiyya Dance Company

11 &12 FEB

Percolator gives final-year undergraduate students the chance to create and perform new work in an intentionally compressed rehearsal period. Working with choreographers Aishwarya Raut, Kenny Wing Tao Ho and Hawiyya Dance Company, the students embrace experimentation and share ideas still in the process of taking shape.

DANCE ACROSS GENERATIONS AND LIVED EXPERIENCES

Camden Youth Dance Festival

School and Community Groups

5 MAR

The annual Camden Youth Dance Festival is a celebration of dance by young people across Camden aged 11-18 years. Young people from schools and community groups in our local borough will showcase their talent on our professional stage. Performing for an audience of family and friends on a professional stage is a wonderful opportunity for young people to share the passion and enthusiasm that they have gained through participating in dance.

Mixed Bill: Seasoned

Community groups and companies of over 60s dancers

6 MAR

Seasoned is an uplifting mixed bill of brand-new works performed by older dancers whose creativity has been shaped by a lifelong relationship with movement. Bursting with warmth, humour and vitality, Seasonedcelebrates what it means to keep dancing, growing and connecting.

Rosetta Life presents

Our Heroes: The Superfan Club

Beyond The Odds

31 MAR

Our Heroes: The Superfan Club by Beyond The Odds is a dance theatre performance that invites audiences on a journey to find inspiration from their disabled heroes, performed by people living with the impact of brain injury. An ensemble cast of eighteen each travel through a portal, where an imagined encounter with their disabled hero takes place. Leslie finds Beethoven who brings rhythm and light. Jenny finds Marcus Garvey and her voice. Marek finds Helen Keller and gestures the language of the heart. Our Heroes: The SuperFan Club is presented by Rosetta Life, the innovative arts and health charity.