Hidden Door 2025, 11 & 12 Jun: The Report
We head along to the first couple of nights of the 2025 edition of Hidden Door, and revel in the camaraderie and blurring of boundaries of how art can be presented
On a sunny Wednesday evening, we enter The Paper Factory on the western edge of Edinburgh to a somewhat confused start of proceedings. The official launch party of Hidden Door 2025 has been pushed back by half an hour. While keen festival goers queue outside of the box office to get the party started, Edinburgh-based band Eloi have already kicked off their set in the Machine Room. The self-described jazz(ish) neo-soul band aren't deterred by the delayed entrance of their audience, and welcome in the crowd with their relaxed, yet beautifully performed set.
Originally founded in 2009, Hidden Door Festival has continuously carved out room for visual and performing arts in the city by transforming forgotten and unused spaces into sites for art, music, and celebration. This year, the venue is The Paper Factory: a former paper manufacturing site situated on the outskirts of the city and transformed into just as magical a location as Hidden Door Festival historically demands. The Paper Factory is huge: filled with old machinery – mysteriously lit up – and pieces of visual art hidden in every corner, exploring it feels almost like a trip to Wonderland. Letting ourselves drift from piece to piece, we often encounter a performance where we least expect it, and are surprised when we enter the courtyard to brilliant sunshine and the sound of paint cans in full swing as part of the Edinburgh International Mural Festival.
If there’s one thing you’re not going to be at Hidden Door, it's bored: with such a massive variety of offerings, you can bounce between heavy bass and a delicate harp within a ten-minute walk around the Factory, and take in 12 other pieces while you’re at it. At the same time, it never feels overwhelming. Due to the sheer size of the venue, and the friendly, relaxed vibe that seems omnipresent amongst the crowd, there's no stress, no rush. Everyone seems more than happy to let themselves float around, maybe grab a little snack from the exceptional street food offerings in the yard, and just let the art move them in their own time.
When Glasgow-based ethereal pop producer Pearling takes the stage, she's ready to get the crowd moving. Pearling has brought her dancers, Shawn Nayar and Kirstin Halliday, and the show moves between graceful and forceful, from melodious to joyful – both visually and musically.
Pearling on stage at Hidden Door. Photo: Mert Kece
While Pearling is still moving her gear offstage, Halliday is already running to the next room to perform in Mark Bleakley’s dance project Dance Makes The Floor. A collaborative, continually evolving project, it aims to create a collectively made dancefloor which has in this case made its way to Edinburgh. The floor itself only holds a few dancers at a time, but the performance quickly grows beyond this as spectators are invited into the piece, helping to shape and mold the performance in a way that really draws out the immersive and participatory nature of the festival itself.
Under the motto of 'Hard Times, Furious Dancing' (also the title of their latest album), the slime-green mayhem of London-based futurist forest-punk band Snapped Ankles closes the night, drawing us in and spitting us back out into the Edinburgh night, ready and excited for night two.
Snapped Ankles on stage at Hidden Door. Photo: Mert Kece
Night two begins as it means to go on: with more music. Isabella Strange warm up the crowd in the Machine Room, grateful to be playing on “maybe the biggest stage they’ve ever played”, while Sister Madds turn the Jack Daniel's stage on the other end of the venue into your favourite club night. Within minutes, they successfully ask the crowd to get down on the floor, ready to jump up again and throw themselves into the sweaty celebration the night is sure to become. Back in the Machine Room, Tina Sandwich have their audience in a similar thrall. Front woman Tilly O’Connor introduces their song I Want by saying that what she really wants right now is “a shite – but not in those portaloos!”
The atmosphere is one of relaxed camaraderie and enjoyment. The scene is small, many of us are running into old friends and new acquaintances, and we are here under the name of appreciation, not pretension.
SPECTRAL, an aerial dance performance created by choreographer Tess Letham and lighting designer Sam Jones, with music provided by The Reverse Engineer, pulls the audience in immediately. Beginning as what seems to be a simple dance performance, featuring two silhouettes in boiler suits, it soon evolves into a spectacle of music, lights, and a trapeze performance that seems to mingle long forgotten circus memories with hedonistic dreams of your favourite nightclub.
Both delicate and forceful, SPECTRAL provides an unforgettable end of day two of the festival and further exemplifies what Hidden Door excels at: blurring of boundaries of how art can be presented. Here, we're not just at a gig, not just at an exhibition, but at an all-in-one festival where music, dance, performance and visual art interconnect, inviting the audience to look at these mediums in a new light.
Hidden Door 2025 took place at The Paper Factory, Edinburgh, 11-15 Jun
To keep up to date with future events, follow Hidden Door on Instagram @hiddendoorarts