Leading UK dance-circus company Motionhouse will transform Birmingham into the stage for ‘Wondrous Stories’, a large-scale production which will be the opening show of the Birmingham 2022 Festival.

The show will launch the six-month festival from March next year, shining a global spotlight on creativity in the West Midlands that will sit alongside the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games. Audiences will be able to attend seven performances of this free event, which will bring together the people of Birmingham in a celebration of the stories of ordinary people across the region. 

Motionhouse is renowned for its work in unusual non-theatre spaces, and Wondrous Stories will see the company work with local choirs and a community cast of up to 300 from the Birmingham 2022 Festival Critical Mass participation project, as well as its professional performers. A giant aerial spectacle with a flying book, bicycles and a large globe, are just some of the elements that will wow the audience alongside digital projections.

Wondrous Stories will be created and directed by Kevin Finnan MBE, Artistic Director of Motionhouse, who was choreographer and movement director of the London 2012 Paralympic Games. The company is a leader in the field of outdoor performance and large-scale spectacle, celebrated for experimentation with performances. Motionhouse has created work for sites, celebrations, festivals and ceremonies, including four EU Capital of Culture events, as well as being commissioned to celebrate the London 2012 Olympic Games.

The company has a reputation for artistic innovation, and a mission to make world-class dance accessible to all. It creates and tours a repertoire of powerful dance-circus productions to theatres, festivals and outdoor spaces in the UK and internationally, and delivers a wide range of inspirational participatory activities. The company’s accessible dance-circus style attracts large audiences, in a normal year, performing to 120,000+. Motionhouse has been pushing movement to its limits since 1988.