Be among the first to experience Dickson Mbi's TELLUS, a new work supported by the RPS Drummond Lockyer Fund for Dance.

TELLUS is a new work for seven dancers by Olivier Award-winning Cameroon-born dancer, composer and choreographer, Dickson Mbi. It follows a person’s journey to reconnect with their mother and is inspired by stories of Mami Water, a mythical deity living in oceans and rivers, known as the spirit of water in many African and North American cultures. Considered the life source of beauty, power, care, and love, she also has a malign capacity for wrath, violence, and destruction. Funding from the RPS Drummond Lockyer Fund for Dance will support the development of the score, as well as music rehearsals and recording.

TELLUS was supported in 2024 by the Research and Development stream, and in 2025 by the Performance stream of the RPS Drummond Lockyer Fund for Dance.

'Dickson Mbi wants to tell his son a bedtime story. But this is not just any story: it’s an epic drawing from Mbi’s Cameroonian heritage and inspired by the mythical deity Mami Wata. Dancers fuse physicality and grace, whilst Mbi’s immersive score takes  you from gentle lullaby to stirring chants. TELLUS is more than a performance — it’s a ritual to reconnect with  the quiet, powerful source of everything: our Earth, our past, our mother.'

TELLUS will be performed on Friday 6 February at DanceEast in Ipswich, with a free opportunity to watch behind the scenes in the studio the day before, and then Monday 9 and Tuesday 10 February at the Lowry Theatre in Salford.

The RPS Drummond Lockyer Fund for Dance was established in 2007 in memory of the writer, broadcaster and lifelong dance aficionado Sir John Drummond CBE, by John’s long term partner Bob Lockyer OBE, himself a major force in British dance for decades, who sadly died in 2022. In the years since, it has supported a range of collaborations between composers and choreographers, as detailed here on our website.

Click below to find out more and to book for the premiere performance.