Grief is the Thing with Feathers with Beyond Words Dance Theatre Company and Max Porter (In-Person, Birmingham)
About the event
This is an in-person event in Birmingham. You may also like to join us for our online conversation with members of the creative team on Sunday 19th March.
A radical new dance adaptation of Max Porter’s award-winning novel from Beyond Words dance-theatre company. Followed by Max Porter in conversation with Caleb Klaces.
Beyond Words’s Grief Is the Thing with Feathers reimagines Max Porter’s celebrated novel through an evocative interplay of words and bodies, rendering both Porter’s world and the experience of grief as fully kinetic and alive.
Described as ‘poignant and vital’ by One Dance UK, this daring adaptation follows a father and his two sons navigating the aftermath of sudden loss. At the heart of their grief appears Crow: antagonist, trickster, babysitter – a volatile presence who both wreaks havoc and provokes vital transformation.
Performed by five dancers and accompanied by a powerful original score, the work unfolds through the company’s pioneering movement language, Hypha — a gesture-based choreographic system allowing words to be embodied, disrupted, and remade in real time.
Enriched by context, character, and lived experience, the result is a thrilling interdisciplinary theatre experience combining movement, original music, and striking visual design into a powerful, immersive spectacle. Audiences are invited to witness touch, voice, and the power of shared intention through living, breathing storytelling.
This event is part of The Heath Bookshop Literature & Music Festival and is supported by National Lottery Grants Project Funding through Arts Council England.