Celebrating 30 years, GDIF 2025 is back this Summer with FREE outdoor theatre, dance, circus and installations!
Greenwich+Docklands International Festival (GDIF) London’s leading and longest established FREE festival of outdoor performance returns to Royal Borough of Greenwich, Newham and the Thamesmead from Friday 22 August to Saturday 6 September with the first wave of programming announced. To celebrate 30 years of the award-winning annual festival, 30 companies from across the world will present new work inspired by the theme Above and Beyond.
This year’s festival will open with with French company Lézards Bleus with their new production Above and Beyond which has been specially commissioned for the GDIF. Meanwhile, The Weight of Water in Thamesmead on 5 – 6 September, will see Dutch company Panama Pictures use physical theatre to explore the climate crisis. A huge floating structure tips back and forth on water, with nail-biting choreography as dancers fight to cling on. More jaw-dropping outdoor performance is featured in Turning Worlds from 30 - 31 August at Greenwich Peninsula when the theme of Above and Beyond is explored through a fusion of circus and robotics.
Other festival highlights will include Black British theatre company Talawa (Play On, UK Tour) collaborate with acclaimed Black British dance company Fubunation (The Ruins Series) on the world premiere of Fragments of Us on 4 Sept in Woolwich. And the hugely popular Dancing City returns featuring an exciting new partnership with New York’s iconic Fire Island Dance Festival which will see a stellar line-up of international LGBTQIA+ dance artists perform at GDIF. Dancing City will also feature three London premieres from groundbreaking disabled artists and companies, along with a huge variety of work from exceptional homegrown and international artists.
The popular Greenwich Fair also returns to its historic nineteenth century home in Greenwich Park. GDIF’s reinvention of the original fair brings together a packed programme of street theatre, games and family fun to the beautifully re-landscaped Wolfe Statue Piazza at the top of Greenwich Park Hill. Amongst the highlights will be puppetry in Theatre-Rites and Miguel Altunaga’s Eshu at the Crossroads, Miss High Leg Kick’s celebration of ecology Lady Garden and the UK premiere of an all-female high wire performance, Epiphytes, from Belgian company Des Chaussons Rouges. Framed by London’s best view, this performance offers new perspectives on our relationship with the natural world and will provide extraordinary images of the festival theme in action.
A limited edition coffee table book Above and Beyond: 30 Years of Greenwich+Docklands International Festival’ written and edited by Fiona Hughes, published by Unicorn Publishing Group on 22 August. This must-have book is full of stunning never-seen-before photography and is available to preorder now and to buy online, in select stores and at GDIF events from 22 August.