Transform, the UK’s leading festival for inclusive, international performance, has announced the full programme for the 2025 edition of the festival. Taking over the city of Leeds from 21– 25 October, Transform 25 will present 14 bold, socially conscious performances that reflect and respond to a rapidly changing global landscape.
29 artists from all over the world – including Australia, Brazil, Jamaica, Palestine, The Philippines, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Switzerland and the US – assemble alongside artists from Leeds and across the UK to present visceral performances, intimate installations and moments of assembly which will be presented in unusual locations and iconic venues throughout Transform’s home city of Leeds.
Transform 25 promises an exhilarating celebration of boundary-pushing performance, weaving together dance, theatre, music, and immersive installations that challenge conventions and ignite the imagination.
Amrita Hepi’s intimate solo Rinse intertwines personal narratives with themes of colonialism, feminism, and pop culture, while Tiran Willemse’s blackmilk, a UK premiere, dissects stereotypes through the choreography of drum majorettes, femme starlets, and rap icons. Ahamefule J. Oluo’s The Things Around Us, another UK premiere, blends jazz, stand-up comedy, and storytelling in a darkly humorous solo, and Dan Daw’s EXXY captures the pressures of a Queer, disabled dance artist navigating fame’s aftermath.
The world premiere of Free celebrates Reggae’s radical roots with original dub music by Akeim Toussaint Buck, while Eve Stainton’s unsettling The Joystick and The Reins pairs choreography with a live 80s horror film soundtrack performed by the Airedale Symphony Orchestra. Ira Brand’s RUNNER, a UK premiere, explores exhaustion and societal value through simultaneous performances in the theatre and Leeds’ streets.
Magic Maids by Eisa Jocson and Venuri Perera, also a UK premiere, fuses performance and ritual to connect European witch hunts with the exploitation of migrant women’s labor. Brazilian collective MEXA’s The Last Supper offers a poignant autobiographical performance-banquet blending food, farewells, and joy, while Samir Kennedy and Sean Murray’s IT’S GOT LEGS!!!!!!!, a UK premiere, delivers a visceral whirlwind exploring identity and performance creation. The experimental Surrender event merges entertainment, food, and conversation, with artists yielding to uncontrollable forces.
Adding to the festival’s allure, Katja Heitmann’s PERPETUUM, a UK premiere co-presented with Light Night and Yorkshire Dance, projects Leeds residents’ movements in a monumental video installation. The festival culminates in the Doomsday Disco, a grand finale hosted by the creators of Leeds’ iconic Love Muscle, promising a party that dances between the end of the world and the dawn of something new.
Creative Director, Amy Letman says: “Two years on from our last major international festival, the artists at the forefront of Transform 25 present performance works that respond to our complex and challenging moment. Transform 25 invites us to pause and reflect on our own responsibility for where we’ve been so far, and where we’re heading next. The festival features productions by intrepid individual performers, large-scale portraits of people and place, an intimate one to one experience, and the chance to resist and summon collective joy together through celebration and community. In a moment that feels so unrelenting, we need more than ever to create space for reflection, connection, hope, and to dream up new possibilities. It’s in this spirit that we assemble Transform 25 and build towards this October.”
Book tickets and learn more at transformfestival.org
