Commissions
Culture Liverpool, Liverpool City Council and Chaos Arts CIC are delighted to announce four new commissions for Leap Dance Festival 2026.
Amber Buttery and Owen Gillott
Subverting a traditional Ballroom sequence dance through a queer lens, the work will break away from 'expected' gender roles in partner dance and celebrate queer identity. The project combines live performance, community participation and a dance film.
See it at Queer Moves, Friday 1st May at Unity Theatre.
Rowena Gander
Collaborating with director Izzie Major, Gander will create a physical theatre piece exploring the impact of narcissistic abuse and objectification on an individual’s sense of self, agency, and bodily autonomy. They will use real stories, collected through ethically‑facilitated community conversations, as the emotional and structural basis of the piece.
See it at Queer Moves, Friday 1st May at Unity Theatre.
Dawn Holgate
Dawn will develop a new work with The Dancing Queens; a community group of Global Majority women based at The Caribbean Centre in Toxteth. The work will integrate dance, live song and embodied storytelling to explore radical Black joy, resilience and collective care, alongside powerful narratives of womanhood. The performance will celebrate how Black women move, express and define themselves — affirming identity, voice, strength and lived experience across generations in Liverpool.
​
See it at Toussaint to Move's Windows of Displacement, Saturday 2nd May at Unity Theatre.
Tom Shennan
“It is a Tuesday in Liverpool, and I am still the wind”
At the top of Windsor Street in Toxteth, the wind is strong, salty, and untamed, carrying scents of the Welsh hills, the Irish Sea and the far-off Atlantic. What is it that keeps drawing the wind back to this spot near where the filmmaker lives? In collaboration with choreographer Shivaangee Agrawal, the film uses an autistic lens to empathise with the wind’s distanced, yet tactile, perspective on the people of Liverpool and their daily lives. Drone shots show the wind’s gaze, and through movement the film uncovers a kinship that is specific to this city.
The film will be accessible online, and at selected events throughout the festival.