Midlands-based dance-development organisation Fabric continues its international season of dance in Birmingham this month with further innovative productions being showcased across the city. 

Forming part of the THIS IS DANCE initiative - a partnership between Birmingham Hippodrome, Birmingham Rep, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Fierce Festival, Midlands Arts Centre and Sampad - the autumn programme includes a UK premiere presented alongside performances by a line-up of international companies and artists. 

First up this month is Jo Bannon's The Dirty Work, showing at the Hippodrome's Patrick Studio on 7 November. Blending the tricks of the trade - a white rabbit, a magic wand, a puff of smoke - with her lived experience of visual impairment, Bannon invites you to glimpse a world where truth and illusion, performance and reality converge. Through delicate choreography and magician’s patter, which reveals more than it conceals, she unveils the invisible labour that shapes how we navigate the world - balancing effortlessly between what is seen and unseen. 

Two further shows at the Patrick Studio this month include GRACES by Silvia Gribaudi (Friday 20 November) and Anatomy of Survival by Frauke Requardt & Vivienne Franzmann (26 November).

In GRACES, three male figures take the stage in a space and time suspended between the human and the abstract: a place where male and female meet without roles and dance to the rhythm of nature itself. With generous humour, Silvia Gribaudi transforms imperfection into an art form, using a direct, raw and deeply empathetic comic style that blurs the boundaries between dance, theatre and performance.

Meanwhile, Anatomy of Survival is an offbeat collaboration between award-winning playwright Vivienne Franzmann and choreographer and psychotherapist Frauke Requardt. The production brings together 22 very different eyewitness accounts of one everyday altercation to show how our nervous systems are stuck in the Stone Age. Performed by two dancers, an actor and a drummer (and one bear), Anatomy of Survival is described as 'a show for all the nervous systems in the auditorium.' 

Elsewhere in November, Midlands Arts Centre (MAC) will showcase Amina Khayyam's BIRD (19 November), in which high energy Kathak weaves the lived experiences of domestic abuse violence survivors against a backdrop of a specially commissioned live music score. 

Over at Birmingham Rep, An Evening with Vidya Patel will bring together artists and live performance in an evening of dance, music and creative exchange rooted in classical Indian dance and music.

For further information on all upcoming THIS IS DANCE productions - and to book tickets, visit fabric.dance/whats-on