This year's Dance Umbrella programme (6–31 October) will showcase hip hop, performance art, audio-visual experiences and operetta from artists originating from Cameroon, Greece, South Africa, Taiwan and Croydon.
The live programme will include:
- Change Tempo double bill featuring SU PinWen’s performance art piece Girl’s Notes and Alexandre Fandard’s Comme un symbole at The Place (6–7 October)
- London Battle, curated by Jade Hackett, at Somerset House’s open-air courtyard for a day packed with showcases, workshops, cyphers, live DJs and a big outdoor party in celebration of the 50th anniversary of hip hop culture (7 October)
- Athens-based Ioanna Paraskevopoulou brings MOS to the Barbican, as two performers create an audio-visual experience using everyday objects: umbrellas, plungers, and coconut shells (11–14 October)
- Cameroonian-Finnish choreographer and artistic director Sonya Lindfors with ONE DROP at Battersea Arts Centre, a speculative summoning, a decolonial dream, an autopsy of the Western stage, and an operetta (19–20 October)
- For children aged 3-5 years, Skydiver by Xenia Aidonopoulou at venues around London on the Orbital Touring Network with a dream-like world that waits above us in this multi-sensory dance experience for families (21–29 October)
- A collision of analogue and digital worlds as hip hop movement architects BirdGang Ltd bring together an intergenerational cast from the communities of Croydon for Family (dys)Function at Stanley Arts (21 October)
- South African dance company Via Katlehong at Sadler’s Wells with Via Injabulo (27–28 October)
The digital programme includes:
- Dance films from Ioanna Paraskevopoulou, Trajal Harrell, Vincenzo Lamagna & Danilo Moroni, and SU PinWen
- Choreographer's Cut with Trajal Harrell, who will select his 2019 work Dancer of the Year
- Stopgap Dance Company’s Dance Tapes: a series of choreographies of speech and sound created by Disabled artists from the UK, Japan, and Zimbabwe: Kazuyo Morita with On The Way To My Body and Shyne Phiri with Within My Own Bones.