Dance International Glasgow Unveils 2025 Programme

The bi-annual festival Dance International Glasgow (DIG), has unviled announced its full 2025 programme. Curated and produced by Tramway, the festival of dance for Glasgow and Scotland will bring a wealth of dazzling live performances to the Glasgow Life arts venue as well as site-specific spaces across the city. The programme showcases Scottish and World premieres, and work and artists with international roots, from Nigeria and South Africa, to Lebanon, Germany and Quebec.

Nigeria's Q Dance Company explodes onto the stage with their exuberant Re:INCARNATION, an ode to the richness of Nigerian culture through dance, music, fashion and visual art bursting with pure and uncompromising joy. In contrast with their ensemble production, Omar Rajeh (Lebanon/France) takes us into his dance and autobiographical universe with solo performance Dance is not for Us. He reckons with the fading image of a past that no longer exists while recognizing performance as a space of shared experience, and the body as a site of hope.

Colette Sadler and Claire Cunningham both present main-stage Scottish premieres developed in Germany. Sadler's The Violet Hour, intertwining dance, song and video, takes draws inspiration from a line in TS Eliot’s The Waste Land, and reimagines a moment of transition as a merging of real and digital realities.  Claire Cunningham's Songs of the Wayfarer - drawn from her lived experience as a disabled person, her memory of training as a classical singer, and the world of mountaineering - invites audiences to pay closer attention to the ways they navigate the physical world.

Choreographer and artist Michael Clark (UK), a radical presence in contemporary culture, will reflect on 40 years of dance making and artistic collaborations in a lecture at the Hunterian Art Gallery, University of Glasgow.

Two Destination Language (Bulgaria/Scotland) conjures a joyous freedom with Bottoms, a Tramway new work commission. In this World Premiere, five dancers seek refuge from an apocalyptic world in a wild dance forged in the industrial revolution. It's the can-can - with crisps, and cava. At Platform, in East Glasgow, Mele Broomes' through warm temperatures (Scotland) explores castor oil’s legacy as a natural remedy. Blending vocals, dance, live cello and electronic soundscapes, it takes audiences on a journey of release, renewal and reconnection with nature and the body. A DIG collaboration with Buzzcut festival’s Double Thrills, Pik Kei Wong (Hong Kong) asks audiences to confront their own perception of the female form in Bird-watching, then Harald Beharie (Norway) explodes the myths of the black queer body in Batty Bwoy.

emilyn claid's The Trembling Forest (UK) is a live art ballet that draws on the spontaneous physicality of live art together with the scenic, choreographic structures of balletic traditions, and features a cast of 20 local, queer-identifying participants. The Scottish premiere of Richard Chappell Dance's Land Empathy (UK) performed outdoors in Pollok Park, is inspired by the pressing challenges of the climate crisis, and explores how culture can enhance our spiritual connection to the natural world. It is free to attend.

Another strand of DIG 2025 gives audiences the opportunity to see new work in development. Project X presents Artist Voice, a choreographic platform of new works from its residency artists. This year’s platform features South African artist Thulisile Binda, French Cameroonian dancer MC Laffite, and multidisciplinary artist patsy. DIG will also include a showcase for artists on Glasgow Life's Gaelic Arts development programme, GUIR! And in a one-day Intangible Cultural Heritage Symposium, Galway Dance (Ireland) presents its residency scheme, and allows participating artists – two Irish, two Scottish - to share their work. 

The closing days of DIG 2025 focus on its family programme, opening with Starcatchers’ Float (Scotland). Created by Kerry Cleland, especially for babies from birth to 12 months old and their grown-ups, Float creates an immersive world for babies, with a performance that ebbs and flows through a beautiful, calm space inspired by the healing properties of water. Vince Virr Company’s new show What Then (Scotland) is a dynamic and captivating dance duet exploring the infinite possibilities of a first face to face encounter. This free show will be performed outdoors, in Tramway’s neighbouring The Hidden Gardens. Older children aged 9+ will love the new production 

from Catherine Wheels - The Unlikely Friendship of Feather Boy and Tentacle Girl (Scotland). The dynamic and visually stunning aerial show explores the joy of friendship and belonging. 

A programme of artists’ films has been specially curated for DIG, screening free in Tramway’s front gallery. From 9 – 16 May, visitors can see watch films from multi-disciplinary artist and activist Elyla (Nicaragua) who deploys the potency of Mesoamerican rituals and ancestral knowledges to mediate urgent social issues. From 17 – 24 May, the short experimental film 1941 by Asim Abdulaziz (Yemen) explores the sense of disorientation and alienation experienced by Yemenis.