Wolves, Maurice and Gaston in action today. #LGYT #beautyandthebeast🌹This is a very demanding musical to say the least and we are very fortunate to be in such incredibly safe hands. Thank you @holgate36@jacobsavagemedia@ashleypekri@imogen.hinchliffe … 😮💨
✨ Meet the Team Behind “Becoming” ✨
Introducing our incredible cast, choreographer, and producer—the women bringing this powerful dance theatre work to life.
The Dancing Queens will be opening the show this Saturday @unitytheatre 7.30pm. With our brand new piece “Becoming,” commissioned by Culture Liverpool, alongside the support of our amazing funders.
We’re honoured to share the stage ahead of Akeim Toussaint Buck @toussainttomove as part of the festival programme.
🗓️ Saturday 2nd May
🕢 7:30pm
This is one to not miss—come and witness the journey, the energy, and the transformation.
🎟️ Get your ticket now and support the work! Go to the Unity Theatre website
📸 Photography: Trevor Green
✨ BECOMING ✨
A glimpse into our creative process with Dancing Queens and choreographer Dawn Holgate 💫
Becoming is a powerful dance-theatre work exploring transformation, sisterhood, resilience and joy — as women reclaim space, voice and collective strength through movement.
Come and witness it live.
🗓 2 May 2026
🕢 7:30pm
📍 Unity Theatre, Liverpool
🎟 Use code LEAP15 for 15% off when booking 10+ tickets
Huge thanks to our partners:
The Black-E (our creative home), Unity Theatre and LIPA for rehearsal space, Culture Liverpool for commissioning this vital work, and Leap Dance Festival & Eleanor Rathbone for making it possible.
Deep love to Dawn Holgate — an incredible choreographer — and to every Dancing Queen, and their beautiful children who help make this space so welcoming, safe and creative.
This is not just a performance. It’s a journey.
Not to be missed. 🔥
This is The Becoming.
This is Sisterhood.
This space is home.
Intergenerational.
Rooted in love.
Holding pain, struggle, and deep joy.
Come and witness the story of the Dancing Queens.
Co-created with the incredible Dawn Holgate, this powerful collective brings their lived experiences to the stage.
🗓 2nd May
📍 Unity Theatre
Sharing the stage with Akeim Toussaint Buck, this premiere is part of a special commission from Cultural Liverpool and LEAP Dance Festival. Big thanks to the Black-e for providing rehearsal space 🧡
Centering the voices of Black, Brown, and global majority women, this work creates space for stories that are too often unheard — stories of heritage, identity, resilience, and becoming.
This is voice.
This is truth.
This is becoming.
🎟 /whats-on/akeim-toussaint-buck-windows-of-displacement-leap-2026/
Who knows… you might even join us.
The Dancing Queens at LEAP 2026- 2 May 7.30pm @unity_theatre
We are thrilled to announce that The Dancing Queens (from the Black Womens Health Forum) will be performing at LEAP 2026. Followed by the amazing @toussainttomove a night not to be missed!
This year, we are honoured to be working with acclaimed choreographer Dawn Holgate, former member of Phoenix Dance Theatre. The work is produced by Ithalia Johnson.
Opening the evening is a powerful new commission by Dawn Holgate, created in partnership with Culture Liverpool for LEAP.
Developed in collaboration with The Dancing Queens — a community of Global Majority women based at The Caribbean Centre — the piece explores themes of radical Black joy, resilience, collective care, and the richness of women’s lived experiences.
This work is a celebration of connection, strength, and storytelling through movement.
This week bought the hip hop, top rock, turning turning with @holgate36 💃🏾 … here’s a flavour. We finished the day using the moves we created to this track to devise routines to a range of other genres of music. LGYT you were superb as always. I loved every minute. (My body is saying different this morning 😂)
Leeds Actors in Training final session of 2025, working on trust and the foundations of physical theatre with @holgate36 . It was remarkably chilled as you’ll see.
As a former professional dancer returning to the performance arena (after a gap of 20+ years), Grief Floats, for me, was an experience of epic proportions. The sea brought huge challenges, not only was it freezing cold (I've never been in the sea before) but each venture into the sea was different to the last. I was violently tossed, spun, and rolled around in equal measure, but I was also held buoyantly and gently manoeuvred by the great North Sea. Grief Floats will remain prominent in my scrap book of performance memories. Thank you to all those I met and collaborated with @company_of_others
