Preview: Certain Blacks Presents Ensemble Festival 2026
Ensemble Festival 2026 | 25-26 July 2026 | Royal Victoria Docks | FREE
Ensemble Festival returns for its seventh edition, bringing another amazing weekend of free, outdoor performance spectacle, which this year aims to explore identity, ritual, ecology, and collective experience.
I was recently asked by a group of young Black men where I was from – ‘Are you from Somalia? No. Are you from Jamaica? No. So you think you are British? Why? You aren’t from here?’ – I was born in Lewisham Hospital; the same place my mum worked all her life and where she died so, this is where I’m from.
Clive Lyttle, Artistic Director of Certain Blacks
Highlights include:
- Fragments of Us (main picture), a dance & spoken word collaboration between Talawa Theatre, FUBUNATION and Sonia Hughes, which aims to explore ancestry, belonging, and shared experiences.
- Garbh by Shyam Dattani and Mira Salat, a contemporary reimagining of the Gujarati folk dance Garba.
- ElevateHer, an all-female wire walking performance from Daughters of the Wire which celebrates female camaraderie and empowerment.
- Nigel “Kobby” Taylor’s The Torch, a gig-theatre mash-up of Afrobeat, hip-hop, rap and storytelling about identity, legacy and self-discovery.
- Stick and Stone from Ferdinando + Bernstein, which promises to combine physical comedy and visual imagery to ruminate on nature, ecological crisis, and reconnection.
- Balance, a circus-theatre reflection on pub culture from Brainfools.
- Family juggling and circus escapades from Cormac Mohally in Captain C-Man.
- U.F.A by Cris Clown, a piece of installation art which sees a clown suspended in the middle of the street!
- Nacho Flores take inspiration from mythology and transformation with the street circus piece Domte.
- And for those who don’t mind a bit of participation, Teatro en Movimiento Callejerx encourage consideration of water scarcity with Water Silhouettes.
Ensemble Festival never fails to deliver an incredible line-up of performance which combines thrilling entertainment with artistic verve and intellectual depth. Something to wow you and to make you think. Don’t miss it!
This content is brought to you via a paid partnership between To Do List and Certain Blacks.
I am Joint Editor at To Do List. I like: nice pubs, film marathons, not doing real marathons, bad comedy, plays/musicals with shorter second halves, and the Oxford comma.
