An evening of performance art and music
Yorkshire Contemporary invites you to an evening of performance art and music.
Set amidst the historic surroundings of Rowland Road Working Mens’ Club, for one night only Cabaret Mystic brings together Leeds-based artists exploring alternative traditions and beliefs, from folklore to the occult.
Building upon the tradition of social club variety shows, expect a fun evening of newly commissioned performance art by Vee Dagger, Matilda Njau, David Steans and Lucy Wright with live music from Ultimate Thunder and event photography captured by artist Emma Bentley Fox.
Practical Information
Tickets are free but limited. To guarantee a place please sign up here.
Rowland Road WMC is a cash only venue. The nearest cash point is Tesco on Dewsbury Road or Raja Brothers newsagents, 105 Lodge Lane.
Free parking is available onsite. The nearest bus stop is Burton Road accessible via the 200 / 201 / 202 / 203 / 2 / 3 / 3A buses, a five minute walk away. Cemetery Road Tempest Road bus stop is accessible by 24 bus route from Headingley.
Artist biographies
Vee Dagger
Vee Dagger is a Taiwanese drag artist and DJ inspired by villainesses and overwrought horror. Performing since 2019, her work draws from Taiwanese opera and the Gothic to explore the melodrama of overwhelming emotion, while incorporating her interest in theatrical fashion.
She has performed at Leeds Art Gallery, Transform Festival, Queer East, and every DIY venue that will have her.
Emma Bentley Fox
Emma is a socially-engaged multidisciplinary artist, working between London and Yorkshire. They work primarily in analogue photography, extending to installation, performance, bookmaking and participatory projects – specialising in access and trauma-informed approaches. They have been documenting marginalised communities and spaces across the North since 2018, with a focus on disability and queerness. They currently are working on an R&D project exploring darkrooms as a site of intimacy, transformation and magic, through funding with Arts Council England in partnership with Block336.
Currently artist in residence at Block 336, and part of the Syllabus VIII cohort, other recent projects include: Rights, Cuts, Action! Shape Arts (2025), The Queer Pleasure Archive, Helix Arts, North Shields (2025); No Ordinary Love, LAX (2025), WoW Park: Hidden Histories of Woodhouse, Leeds Cultural Institute (2024), and Confessions of a Party Mum, Hyde Park Art Club, Leeds (2023).
Matilya Njau
Leeds-based artist and horticulturalist Matilya Njau brings people together through plants. Her practice centres on shared moments of gathering and the relationships that can form around the careful study of flora, whether that be through drinking herbal tea, smelling a flower or tending to the soil. Through workshops and collaborative projects, Matilya is interested in the conversations, memories and care that grow from these encounters. Rooted in care and shared knowledge, Matilya’s work reimagines green spaces as places of connection and ritual. Previously Matilya has worked with Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture, the British Library, Leeds Queer Film Festival, Mafwa Theatre, Thackray Museum of Medicine and the University of Leeds along with many others.
David Steans
David Steans is an artist and writer based in Leeds, UK. Working in text, moving image, sound, installation, and collage, across his visual art and narrative writing he uses repetition and iteration to disquieting, uncanny effect. Drawing influence from genre horror, metafiction, and various vernacular aesthetics, he creates a sense of strangeness in technologies of cultural production.
Recent projects include Mummy Hood Nesting Forest (2022), commissioned by Primary, Nottingham, and Puppy the Goblin (2020), screened at Tate Britain in 2022. He has written erotic Deftones fan-fiction for Vice Magazine (Gore Portal, 2025), legend-tripped a cursed tv show for ‘Documents of Contemporary Art: Magic’ (Curtainz, 2021), and published a collection of experimental horror stories for Deptford X, now held in Tate Library (From the Lounge, 2018).
Ultimate Thunder
Leeds-based band Ultimate Thunder formed in 2013 and have gained significant attention over the past few years following the release of their debut album in 2022. The album, recorded over Zoom during the global pandemic has lead to appearances on BBC Breakfast, ITN News, Channel 4 and 6Music, and articles by the NME, Guardian, and the Big Issue.
They have also performed live at Kendal Calling, Shambala, supported Yard Act at Millennium Square and following the release of their second album, A Spider Will Come To Eat Your Flesh have received support from Iggy Pop, Tim Burgess, Mike Watt and Emily Pilbeam.
Lucy Wright
Lucy Wright works across visual art, performance, and critical writing to explore the spaces where folklore, feminism and cultural participation meet. Her projects often emerge from years of study into under-recognised and female-led traditions, especially those associated with her own working-class upbringing in the north—resulting in artworks that serve both as invitations and provocations. Recent activities include Dusking at Yorkshire Sculpture Park and Timespan, Scotland; solo shows at Portico Library, Manchester and Field System, Devon; group shows at Bloc Projects, Sheffield, Leeds Art Gallery and Kristian Day Gallery, Derbyshire; residencies at Hospitalfield, Morning Boat, Jersey and the Hugo Burge Foundation; and speaking engagements at the British Academy and Claire Bishop’s ‘Ancestral Avant-gardes’, Manchester School of Art. Her work has been featured in Sunday Times Style and Weird Walk and in 2026 she is undertaking a major national commission for Create Berwick / Arts&Heritage.