chimeras by Tala Lee-Turton, Roxanna Albayati, and Alta Store comes to Reference Point for London Fashion Week 2025

chimeras by Tala Lee-Turton, Roxanna Albayati, and Alta Store comes to Reference Point for London Fashion Week 2025

Taking place as part of London Fashion Week, dance artist Tala Lee-Turton, musician Roxanna Albayati, and fashion collective Alta Store present chimeras an immersive site-specific experience at Reference Point on Saturday 22 February 2025.

Combining dance, music and fashion, chimeras invites audiences to immerse themselves in a series of surreal and enigmatic worlds. Set in a store run by six fabricators who specialise in bespoke one-of-a-kind curios, chimeras offers a transformative, multi-sensory experience.

Presented as a durational piece of immersive storytelling, chimeras unfolds over the course of a daytime popup store and an evening performance. A cast of dance artists and musicians merge warming guitar tones, interweaving live electronics and Iranian folk-inspired strings and vocals with contemporary dance and physical theatre. The performance is accompanied by looks from designers presented by Alta Store, with improvised music arranged by Roxanna Albayati and a dance libretto written by Tala Lee-Turton.

During the day, Alta Store takes over Reference Point, curating an exhibition of their pieces available to purchase on the day. The evening sees the site reopen as a performance space, beginning with an immersive experience that seamlessly transitions into several improvised sonic and visual worlds.

Inspired by posthuman dreams of places where social reality and imagination meet, chimeras playfully attempts to deconstruct and reconstruct mythological identities.

chimeras is performed by dance artists Jordan Ajadi, Maya Yoncali and Tala Lee-Turton, and music artists Marat Ingeldeev, Nicko Mroczkowski and Roxanna Albayati.

British Chinese dance artist and creative producer Tala Lee-Turton graduated from the Bolshoi Ballet Academy before founding her own production company. She creates multidisciplinary work spanning live performance, visual art, and film informed by her experience as an intersectional Barnsley artist. Her work is supported by a number of leading organisations including the Barbican, Northern Ballet, BalletBoyz and Barnsley Civic.

Roxanna Albayati is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher who combines experimental music with performance art, merging cross-cultural improvisation with Iranian classical music and the physicality of performance. A graduate of Goldsmiths, University of London and Trinity Laban, she curates Displaced, a regular concert series at Reference Point dedicated to supporting displaced communities from South West Asia and North Africa.

Alto Store is an independent fashion store and collective, founded by designers SBA, Matilda Little, This Belongs To, Timna Weber, and Elif. Together they support ethical boundary pushing emerging brands and run pop-up concept shops across London and internationally, most recently as part of Paris Fashion Week, alongside their permanent home in Soho, London.

chimeras pop-up shop runs from 12pm – 5pm on Saturday 22 February, with the evenings immersive performance taking place from 7.30pm until late. Tickets for the evening performance are on sale now here  

chimeras, image credit Eventbrite