Big Low Dream
BIG LOW DREAM is a new contemporary dance work about what we reach for, together, in the dark. Choreographer Jessie McCall looks to dream logic - unruly, queer, ethically imaginative, as a way to hold onto meaning in a time of overlapping crises. Paradises slip their frames. Unexpected pleasures co-inhabit with the unthinkable. Spectacle flirts with collapse.
Ominous and funny, intimate and sweeping, BIG LOW DREAM is a rehearsal of possible futures — tender, desperate, and rising.
- Location: Loft
- Ticket Price: $30 - $44 (+BF)
- Duration: TBC
- Date: 25 & 26 September 2026
YMCĀ
Hot off the heels of the Venice Biennale Danza and The Butterfly Who Flew Into The Rave, acclaimed choreographer Oli Mathiesen (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Hine, Ngāti Manu) takes us on a bold takatāpui rebirth of the Village People.
Alluring, camp-soaked, and unapologetically original, YMCĀ invites audiences into a world where appropriation has never looked so good.
- Location: Rangatira
- Ticket Price: $35 - $59 (+BF)
- Duration: 1 hour, No Interval
- Date: 13 & 14 October 2026
- Content Warning: Contains nudity, sexual references, mature themes, possible haze/smoke/strobe, sudden loud noises.
Natural Basic
Body as barometer. The natural basic waltz step is a three-part clockwise movement. Originating in 16th-century peasant dances, it has evolved through countless forms. In Natural Basic, this cadence is a point of departure, a steady loop that drifts off-axis — its centre of gravity slipping.
From the creator behind Slip (2024).
- Location: Loft
- Ticket Price: $29 - $49 (+BF)
- Duration: 50 minutes, no interval
- Date: 13 & 14 October 2026
- Content Warning: Haze/Smoke Effects, Loud Noise & Sound Pressure Effects, Recommended 14+
Off Axis
What happens when the cypher falls off axis? Drawing from Hip Hop culture and freestyle practice, this work explores uncertainty, instinct and the search for new ways to move together.
Created by John “Happyfeet” Vaifale, performed by some of the country's finest freestyle dancers and accompanied by an original Hip Hop score from one of our leading producers — this is not simply a battle or a showcase, but a theatrical journey that expands what Hip Hop can look like, feel like and become.
- Location: Loft
- Ticket Price: $29 - $49 (+BF)
- Duration: 60 minutes, no interval
- Date: 15 October 2026
WHITE NOISE + Oro
An electrifying performance, WHITE NOISE has emerged from award-winning creator/performer Alisha McLennan Marler’s lived experience of disability, as an artist, mother, and person. Presented with a short work from Oro.
- Location: Rangatira
- Ticket Price: $35 - $59 (+BF)
- Duration: 70 minutes, no interval
- Date: 16 October 2026
- Content Warning: Features colour-changing lighting, light smoke/haze and reflective acrylic mirror panels that may create visual distortion. The soundscape used includes short periods of sharp or sudden sounds. Parental discretion is advised.
When It Is Finished + GLIMMER
She made a choice in that moment which changed the course of everything. For her it was finished. Over in a flash. For others, they remember.
When It Is Finished connects two periods of working in two vastly different places. It deals with an emergence of a logic over time and a side-by-side display of embodied knowledge.
GLIMMER is a choreographic meditation exploring the trajectory of transgender time through the embodied experiences of waiting and disjuncture.
Beyond narratives of transition as linear progress or eventual arrival, GLIMMER lingers with the suspended temporalities that shape trans life — waiting for appointments, change, recognition, or certainty.
- Location: Loft
- Ticket Price: $20 - $49 (+BF)
- Duration: 60 minutes, no interval
- Date: 16 October 2026
Tendrils of Tomorrow
Two of our exceptional tertiary dance institutions come together for one night only with original works by Matte Roffe, Sarah Knox with Third Year dancers, Horn's Out and Kerah McLean Duffy.
Performed exquisitely by third year cohorts from New Zealand School of Dance and University of Auckland’s Dance Studies, these brazen, visceral and rebellious dance works explore what it means to be watched, to perform and to make your way in this unstable world.
- Location: Rangatira
- Ticket Price: $29 - $49 (+BF)
- Duration: 60 minutes, no interval
- Date: 17 October 2026
The Room Would Split Open
A body does not re-organise alone. Directed by Kelly Nash, The Room Would Split Open asks what care can do when it becomes physical, political and choreographic. Not softness. Not rescue. A practice of attention.
Beneath the surface of each body are histories, shocks and connections that have never fully disappeared. The work gathers around the body as an archive: a living field of memory, protection and r esponse. It moves through the ache of knowing but not having, the intelligence of survival, and the ways a body keeps the shape of what once held it.
- Location: Loft
- Ticket Price: $29 - $49 (+BF)
- Duration: 60 minutes, no interval
- Date: 17 & 18 October 2026
- Content Warning: Contains references to hospital surgery
Honouring a Dance Creative
Building on a legacy of celebrating dance creatives since 2013, Honouring A Dance Creative returns in 2026. Join us for a free (but ticketed) formal acknowledgement in the Loft and then in the Q Theatre foyer afterwards to connect and reflect. Recipient to be announced soon – for more information visit the Tempo Dance Festival website.
Previous recipients include:
2013 Deidre Tarrant
2014 Jacqui Cesan
2015 Katie Haines
2016 Lynn Pringle
2018 Russell Kerr
2024 Susan Jordan
- Location: Loft
- Ticket Price: $Free*
- Duration: 45 mins, no interval.
- Date: 18 October 2026