As a solo figure moves amongst us, the Airedale Symphony Orchestra played a live soundtrack – the music from 80s horror film The Thing. We were excited to join in the Transform festival which received glowing reviews for its "world-class," "empowering," and "visceral" international performances. The Joystick and The Reins is an interpretive dance and music piece, at The Warehouse in Holbeck, Leeds. October 2025.

The Joystick and The Reins interrogates who decides who and what is a ‘threat’ within society, and how these ideas are reinforced through systems of oppression and authoritarianism.

Reproducing intense, hyper-emotional states, Stainton’s references include historical reenactments, police and riot arrest imagery, and 1980s ‘Crime Watch’ episodes.

Complicating ideas of power and dominance, perpetrator and victim, threat and interpretation, the show asks what it means to reconstruct a theatrical scene that draws on truth, and what societal constructs keep people at risk.