The buzz of anticipation is building as Hidden Door, Edinburgh’s grassroots festival, moves into the John Hardie Glover-designed former Scottish Widows HQ on Dalkeith Road, rechristened as The Complex. The hive-like hexagonal shape of Glover’s construction, which opened in 1976, lends itself to all manner of underground interventions.

^{The Environments/Picture: Ben Douglas}

This should be clear from The Environments, a series of six immersive voyages through zones that invite the audience to experience the likes of Hill, Wasteland, Garden and Forest. This leads to the less-familiar sounding terrain of Aphotic Archaeology (the aphotic zone being the portion of a lake with little or no sunlight) and Holocene (or current geological epoch).

Dance is to the fore in The Environments, with new works by choreographer Róisín O’Brien and composer Rowan McIlvride; dancer Kai Tomioka explores conflict with artist Zoe Gibson; there’s Chinese folk dance from Yuxi Jiang, and dance theatre by Tess Letham featuring costumes from Cleo Rose McCabe. Elsewhere, opera singer Stephanie Lamprea collaborates with dance artist Penny Chivas, composer Tom W Green and visual artist Oana Stanciu to examine themes of extinction.

^{Alliyah Enyo/Picture: Miriam Craddock}

Moving deeper into the building, audiences will find artist Alliyah Enyo’s seabed zone before ending up in the earth’s depths, care of electronic musician Exterior. With the shadow of real-life volcano Arthur’s Seat looming over The Complex, this should preview an all-too-fitting excavation.

Beyond The Environments, Hidden Door has expansive programmes of visual art, spoken word and poetry hiding in every nook, cranny and corner. More than 30 visual artists will be showing their work, with 20-plus poets and spoken-word artists programmed to perform.

Much of the visual work seems to fit with its surroundings, as artists focus on notions of environment, psychogeography and space in its broadest sense. Ideas drawn from ecology, geology and obsolete fax machines point up relationships between ancient and modern in a carefully selected range of work that creates narratives and environments of its own.

Scotland’s ever-fertile poetry and spoken-word scenes, meanwhile, will show off a diverse array of artists, breathing life into their words and bringing the venue alive; reclaiming bricks and mortar in an artistic eruption that lays down the foundations for future happenings inspired by a seismic past.

Hidden Door, The Complex, Edinburgh, Wednesday 31 May–Sunday 4 June.