Internationally acclaimed dance artist Sadiq Ali has previously impressed with his pieces including The Chosen Haram, but now returns with new production Tell Me.
Through Chinese Pole, aerial artistry and physical theatre, Tell Me explores a woman navigating her HIV diagnosis; in a world still shaped by prejudice, silence and misunderstanding, the show considers her fears and dreams and the effect her diagnosis has on her relationships and her own sense of self.
Sadiq chatted with Culture Fix below to share details about Tell Me which will tour the UK from 16th January – 10th February 2026. It arrives in Edinburgh on the 9th and 10th of February. Tickets are available here.
Hi Sadiq. Would you like to introduce yourself?
Hi, my name is Sadiq Ali and I am a circus artist and performance maker from Scotland who went to train at London’s National Centre for Circus Arts. I specialise in an apparatus called Chinese pole. Chinese pole is generally a five or six metre high pole covered in rubber, which we climb and do acrobatics and dance on.
Tell Me mixes circus, dance and theatre as it reimagines the narrative surrounding HIV. When and how did you realise these mediums work so well to share the story?
I was always very interested in theatre and contemporary dance and I realised when training with this pole that I’d found something that was a storytelling tool that allowed me to express journeys and emotions and narratives in a way that I hadn’t had a language for before. When working with dance and theatre techniques and then with also my interest in set design and generally the entire building of the world, I realised that this combination of extremely highly physical movement allowed us to explore different narratives to the extent which are for me impossible to achieve when staying on the floor.
The story centres on a woman dealing with a new HIV diagnosis, what made that perspective feel right for this piece?
The story centres on a woman dealing with a new HIV diagnosis and that feels right for where we are now. Often a lot of work sits within the past — a lot of really incredible work like It’s a Sin and Pose and these works leave us with memory, with heritage, with lineage — and they don’t update us to where we are now.
The reality is that we’re living in a time where the statistics actually show that diagnosis is higher within heterosexual people than it is within gay men. That’s because of massive advancements in things like preventative care and testing and treatment. So it feels like, doing a piece to reflect on where we are now, it’s really important to look outside of the gay male demographic but also to show that this is something that is an issue for everyone.
How do you go about crafting a narrative that feels honest yet hopeful? Is that a tough balance to craft?
To create a narrative that feels honest yet hopeful, that is the craft. I am a lover and a believer of the theatre space in its ability to be authentic and to go to places which are uncomfortable and to go to places that are euphoric.
Balancing that is the work of an entire team — of lighting, of costume, of sound, of dramaturgy — in which we look at the emotional journey of a work and the visual journey of a work that we’re going to take an audience on. It’s very important to think about what are the audience going to be feeling here and what are we wanting to say to them and what are we wanting to share to them.
For me, most of the time, I’m wanting to connect with them. I am the kind of person who when performing on stage, I enter a really present place in which I’m performing genuinely myself, my openness and my vulnerability in a way that is impossible in any other space — and I think that’s often felt by audiences when watching me perform.
You’ve talked about wanting audiences to experience the same shift you saw in your peers after your own diagnosis. What kind of shift do you hope people walk away with?
I want people walking away from this to have a slightly different understanding of where we are now with HIV, but also to think about how it reflects them. I want them to ultimately have witnessed a really incredible visual and physical journey that at times is abstract and dreamlike, at times is quite visceral, and other times is a bit sexy and sweaty, and have really really enjoyed quite a unique piece of work. But also to give us that power to knock down a little barrier between people — a little bit of stigma that holds people separate from each other — in a time when separation, othering, seems greater than ever. It feels like work that unifies us and lets us look past our differences, because our differences are socialised through these vehicles of stigma rather than just looking at people as people with lives that we have to live and deal with that are much like each other. I hope it gives people a little bit of a humble approach to the people around them while entertaining.
You had a really collaborative team on this show – working with Jonah Russell and Phoebe Knight and an expansive creative team. What do you look for when finding collaborators to put together a show?
When looking for collaborators to put together a show, it’s very important for me to work with circus artists or movement artists who are able to give more than just their movement. By that I mean that I come from a circus background which is heavily gymnastic, and the tricks are great, and they can give you a double, triple back tuck twist — but can they portray an emotion? Often awkwardly or not!
What I find is that actually the virtuosity of a performance, it’s more important to me that I can be drawn into watching someone standing still, and that they are able to draw me in than it is through their technical ability of a movement. So I’m always looking for a balance between a vulnerable, open, emotionally capable in their portrayal performing artist than a technician. And that’s quite hard to drill out of circus artists and gymnasts sometimes. So it’s quite unique in the sense that I’m essentially looking for a back-flipping actor! [Laughs] Often I’m not asking them to speak, but I need to be able to see a world in your eyes.
Performing in and directing Tell Me sounds like a very different experience to The Chosen Haram and Stuntman. How does it feel stepping into this story compared to your previous work?
Stepping into this story is different because it’s bringing two parts of my life together. I’ve worked as an HIV activist since being diagnosed in 2014, and with Tell Me I’m bringing together what was a very separate part of my life, which was my circus work, my career, and I’m bringing these two worlds together.
This is different because it’s a piece of work that is very important to myself in my own journey, but I’m looking at it from how it relates to now and to other people. It’s important to me because it’s a piece that I already know how much of an impact I’ve been on in my own journey and with the people around me in our shared, growing our knowledge.
It’s different because I’m much more in the role of a director within this work and really enjoying coming to the realisation that over the last few years of touring The Chosen Haram and Stuntman and The Unlikely Friendship of Feather Boy and Tentacle Girl, that out in the world I have been learning a lot and am feeling very… I’m enjoying the process of feeling quite competent with directing my own work — choreographically, movement-wise, and design-wise — and this piece has grown significantly from the last works, and I’m enjoying that process.
A lot of public understanding about HIV is still stuck decades in the past. What are you most keen to correct about attitudes?
I’m actually not looking to correct attitudes, I’m looking to raise awareness of a subject matter that people might not think about directly and let them think about it themselves.
The show isn’t a TED Talk. It’s not a pamphlet that’s looking to update people’s knowledge, it’s not a piece of education. It is an emotional journey of a character dealing with a secret that’s so heavy that to them it can affect the whole world. It gives them an opportunity to have a conversation with the past, to realise where we are now, and to think about the future. It’s more of an emotional journey for the characters that we get invested in than it is a piece that looks directly to update people’s education, but it gives the opportunity to have those conversations that then lead on to that.
You’re touring to Salford, London, Worthing and Edinburgh. Do you have a sense of how different audiences might meet this work?
We’re touring the show to four different places initially. The premiere is at The Lowry on the 16th and the 17th of January. We then go down to The Place as part of MimeLondon, then we go to Worthing, and then we go to Edinburgh Manipulate Festival.
I’m looking forward to that. It’s those initial shows of this really new, raw work that will tell us a lot about how audiences receive it before we work on it, give it a little bit of a rest, and launch the campaign to go to Edinburgh Fringe for the full duration of August this year.
The show seems physically intense and emotionally close to home. How do you look after yourself while touring something so demanding?
We all look after each other when on tour. It’s a piece of work that’s about health, about mental health, physical health, about shame, about stigma. I work with such an incredible team of both friends and collaborators that we make space for each other where we need it.
My most important thing about looking after myself when on tour is that I get enough naps. Circus is intense and I am a napper! [Laughs] If I don’t get a nap, I tend to go a bit sideways, so that’s my main thing about how I look after myself.
You often describe circus as a tool for social change. Do you already have an idea of what stories you might want to explore next?
When I describe circus as a tool for social change, what I mean is that I think circus is inherently more powerful than people give it credit for. We think of circus as big tops and tents and traditional circus, but within the contemporary world of dance and theatre, movement, circus is a tool that allows people in through spectacle and can change us in what we think is capable, what we think we are able to do, and what inspires us. We are affected by the things that are around us, and watching a circus show that touches smartly on different areas of our life — about connection, about love, about hope, about misunderstanding — these things give us an in with people that can inspire them in different ways.
There are two versions of this work. There’s this show that’s touring now, and there’s an outdoor version as well. That outdoor version is very special to me because it’s a piece of work about HIV through circus that sits outside of audience demographic. It sits outside of age requirement, and I remember after one of the first shows of that piece watching families with their young children dancing at the end of the piece, and I was a mess — I was bawling — when I realised that we made this work and it didn’t matter who you were or what the audience was, they were involved and they were with us. And I think that’s a very special thing that this kind of work can do.
Tell Me will tour the UK from 16th January – 10th February 2026. It arrives in Edinburgh on the 9th and 10th of February. Tickets are available here.
