Tess LETHAM

Tess Letham is an award winning performer and prominent dance-theatre maker based in Edinburgh. 

Her creations emerge from an embodied investigation of human experience, exploring the tensions between inner and outer worlds through surreal performance environments that blend multi-disciplinary theatre, dynamic physicality and striking design.

Her inaugural show, How to Survive the Future, and mid-scale work, Remedy for Memory, were both presented at Dance Base during the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2018 and 2022 respectively. In 2023 she created Where We Used to Wander for Hidden Door’s large scale immersive roaming performance project.

Her recent productions include SPECTRAL, commissioned for Hidden Door 2025, and What Ever Happened to Harmony Banks? which premiered at Dance Base Festival 2025, both receiving high praise from audiences and critics.

Upcoming projects include a choreographic commission with Scottish Dance Theatre, titled Off-Season, which will premier in March 2026, and choreographer for National Youth Dance Company Scotland.

Tess’s performance practice spans theatre, film, outdoor work and large-scale spectacle. She has collaborated with Two Destination Language, Al Seed Productions, Shotput, Edinburgh International Festival 2024, Abby Warrilow, Simon Fildes/Cagoule, David Zambrano, PanicLab, and Mairead McClean/The Wapping Project, and has also performed in several of her own original works.

Improvisation lies at the heart of her performance practice. In 2021, she was awarded the #LoveDanceScotland bursary for her project Six for Six, supported by Dance Base and Tramway. She is currently co-organiser of Blunder Club, a new improvisation performance platform.

She is a highly accomplished teacher, working for organisations such as SDT, The Place, RCS, NSCD and Dance Base. Her teaching methodologies have been significantly influenced by her extensive training with internationally renowned teacher David Zambrano, including Flying Low, Passing Through, Improvisation for Performance and more recently Couple Dancing, sharing this work across the UK and beyond. 

Through these methods she has been drawn to philosophical ideas within the context of movement practices and group learning, which extend to our relationships with others, our environment, our roles within society and our communities. Learning that reaches far beyond the dance studio. 

Her curatorial work and leadership has been instrumental to the development of dance at award winning Hidden Door festival, working since 2021 to create a prominent platform to showcase the talent of dance performance makers in Scotland and beyond at this multi-art form festival. For 2025, she initiated a partnership with Dance Base, bringing a new work in progress from their Spring Scratch Night to be performed at the festival.