Fabric Reveals Autumn Season as Part of City-Wide Stage For Dance

Fabric has announced four performances this autumn, presented as part of THIS IS DANCE. THIS IS DANCE is a growing collective of presenting partners, co-producers, and commissioning organisations dedicated to showcasing ambitious international dance in Birmingham, challenging expectations of what dance can be, and bringing joy to audiences across the city.

Now in its second year, THIS IS DANCE, is a unique partnership which includes Fabric, Birmingham Hippodrome, Birmingham Repertory Theatre, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Midlands Arts Centre, Fierce Festival and Sampad Arts. The partners share an ambition to create more opportunity, supporting artists, and increasing engagement, making dance a vital part of Birmingham's cultural identity.

THIS IS DANCE will ensure that audiences across the city experience the very best dance being made in the Midlands, across the UK and around the world. The latest programme brings together a local and international line-up of artists and companies from the UK, Italy, USA, Canada, Poland, the Netherlands, Germany and Benin.

Paul Russ, Fabric's CEO and Artistic Director said: 'THIS IS DANCE demonstrates how organisations with distinct identities can work collectively to grow the city's cultural offer, positioning Birmingham as a city where adventurous dance and performance can flourish.'

Russ added: 'THIS IS DANCE will strengthen Birmingham's reputation for bold and adventurous performance and create the conditions for dance and choreography to reach wider audiences and have greater impact than would be possible independently.'

Fabric's autumn season features two partnerships which challenge expectations of what dance can be. Fabric is delighted to be co-presenting with Fierce Festival the UK premiere of Weathering by Faye Driscoll at Midlands Arts Centre, Wed 14 Oct - Fri 16 Oct 2026. Weathering will be one of the highlights of Fierce's 2026 festival programme. This landmark show features ten performers who create a slowly evolving live scene on a moving platform, forming a living sculpture of constantly shifting images, connections and relationships. Bodies gather, separate and reconfigure glacially shifting, as the work unfolds in real time before the audience. Surrounding the stage on all sides, spectators are close enough to hear every breath, smell the sweat and feel the heat of the action.

Fabric is also co-presenting three exciting new performances with Birmingham Hippodrome in The Patrick Studio in November.

Jon Gilchrist, Birmingham Hippodrome's Artistic Director and CEO, said, 'We're excited to build on the success of THIS IS DANCE with a vibrant new season. Together with Fabric and our partners across the city, we're creating more opportunities for artists and audiences to experience bold, inspiring dance from Birmingham and around the world.'

Peek behind the velvet curtain of The Dirty Work (Sat 7 Nov 2026), a new solo performance by Jo Bannon. Blending the tricks of the trade – a white rabbit, a magic wand, a puff of smoke – with her lived experience of visual impairment, Bannon invites you to glimpse a world where truth and illusion, performance and reality converge.

With generous humour, Silvia Gribaudi's Graces (Fri 20 Nov 2026), transforms imperfection into an art form, using a direct, raw and deeply empathetic comic style that blurs the boundaries between dance, theatre and performance.

Fresh from a triumphant debut at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival where the show earned four start reviews, Anatomy of Survival (Thu 26 Nov 2026) is an offbeat collaboration between award-winning playwright Vivienne Franzmann and choreographer and psychotherapist Frauke Requardt, bringing together 22 very different eyewitness accounts of one everyday altercation to show how our nervous systems are stuck in the Stone Age.