Line-up for 2025 Greenwich+Docklands International Festival revealed

Exclusive: The Greenwich+Docklands International Festival (GDIF) will return this summer from Friday 22 August to Saturday 6 September, marking its 30th anniversary with a 16-day programme of free outdoor theatre, circus and dance.

This year, themed Above and Beyond, opens with a UK premiere from French company Lézards Bleus, who bring their aerial parkour production to Woolwich. Set to a new score by Roma Yagnik and culminating in a performance from the Citizens of the World Choir, the piece will see performers navigate the rooftops of local buildings in a display of choreographed movement and vertical spectacle.

Among the festival’s large-scale events is The Weight of Water by Dutch company Panama Pictures, staged on a floating structure in Thamesmead. The production fuses circus, dance and live music to confront themes of climate crisis through physical struggle and imbalance. Elsewhere, Turning Worlds takes over Greenwich Peninsula with a weekend of experimental works merging performance and engineering, including a robot pas de deux from Germany’s ULIK and a giant rotating metal spiral used as a stage by Netherlands-based TeaTime Company.

GDIF’s “festival within a festival” Dancing City returns, this year with a new partnership with New York’s Fire Island Dance Festival and premieres by disabled artists. Details of the full programme will be announced soon.

Also returning after a hiatus is Greenwich Fair, reimagined for its original 19th-century setting at the top of Greenwich Park. The family-friendly weekend includes performances such as Epiphytes, a high-wire act by Belgian company Des Chaussons Rouges, Lady Garden by Miss High Leg Kick, and Eshu at the Crossroads by Theatre-Rites and Miguel Altunaga.

On Thursday 4 September, the world premiere of Fragments of Us will take place in Woolwich, a collaboration between Black theatre company Talawa and dance company Fubunation, directed by Sonia Hughes. The performance explores Black masculinity through poetry and movement. Also premiering the same day is Go Grandad Go! by Company DHW, a family show mixing hip hop and storytelling.

A limited-edition book, Above and Beyond: 30 Years of Greenwich+Docklands International Festival, will be released by Unicorn Publishing on 22 August. The publication, written and edited by Fiona Hughes, captures three decades of the festival’s most memorable moments with unseen photography and behind-the-scenes stories.