As a consortium member for Horizon, Fabric hosted Horizon residency artists in the Midlands to support the research and development of new works.
Horizon focused on building deep, sustainable relationships between artists creating performance in England and international partners.
The programme supported artists through residencies, bursaries, showcasing opportunities and onward touring, creating pathways for international collaboration and exchange.
Fabric was part of the Horizon consortium alongside Battersea Arts Centre, Fierce, GIFT, MAYK and Transform. Horizon was commissioned by Arts Council England.
As part of the first Horizon digital showcase in 2021, we hosted two residency artists: Dan Daw and Yinka Esi Graves.
The artists were selected by the Horizon consortium (Battersea Arts Centre, Fabric, Fierce, GIFT, MAYK and Transform) to develop new performance projects. Each consortium organisation hosted a Horizon residency.
Horizon hosted online Residency Moments, allowing the residency artists to share and discuss their works-in-progress with an international delegation of industry professionals via livestream.
Dan Daw, The Dan Daw Show
During this 4-week residency Dan developed his work The Dan Daw Show.
After having spent a lifetime being an inspiration to others, Dan is finally seizing the moment to inspire himself.
Teaming up award-winning with theatre director Mark Maughan, Dan takes ownership of the beautiful mess encompassing all that he is, lets go of who he once was, and makes room for who he wants to be.
Dan is joined by performer Christopher Owen (Joe Moran, Scottish Dance Theatre) in an intimate evening of play where Dan takes back the power by being dominated on his own terms. The Dan Daw Show is a peep into the shiny and sweaty push-pull of living with shame while bursting with pride. This is a show about care, intimacy, and resilience; about letting go and reclaiming yourself.
Credits
- Residency supported by Horizon – Performance Created in England, commissioned by Arts Council England.
- Co-commissioned by Sadler’s Wells, Arts House Melbourne, DanceHub Birmingham, The Lowry, Déda, Cambridge Junction, DanceXchange and Dance4 (now Fabric).
- Supported by Shoreditch Town Hall and Candoco Dance Company.
- Research supported by Jerwood Choreographic Research Project II.
about Dan
Beast, a Trinity Laban/Greenwich Dance Compass Commission, supported by Arts Council England, previewed at the Swedish Performing Arts Biennale (May 2015), Brighton Dome (November 2015), and premiered at Greenwich Dance (November 2015). Resulting from its inclusion in British Dance Edition (March 2016), ‘Beast’ toured to Sydney Festival (January 2018) and Berlin’s Sophiensaele (June 2018).
On One Condition, a co-commission with Murmuration (AUS), premiered at Skanes Dansteater (September 2015), before being presented at Sadler’s Wells, New York’s SoHo Playhouse, Edinburgh and Adelaide Fringe Festivals 2017, where it received the Adelaide Fringe Best Theatre Award.
Yinka Esi Graves, The Disappearing Act
During her residency Yinka developed her new work, The Disappearing Act.
The Disappearing Act was a work in progress and Yinka Esi Graves shared the results of this initial week-long residency with a live audience in the studio as well as via livestream to an international delegation of industry professionals.
The dancer (inspired by the famous Black 19th Century trapeze artist Miss La La) proposes an experiment to explore the ways in which women of African descent navigate hypervisibility and invisibility today. Celebrating the use of shapeshifting and camouflage tactics as ways of survival in hostile environments, The Disappearing Act questions how insidious these can become when we learn to see ourselves through these detached optics.
Inspired by the format of Concert Parties, originating as Fante (Ghanaian) adaptations of 19th Century European variety style performances, Yinka crafts a piece that combines experimental Flamenco dance, live music, and text to stage the hypervisibility/invisibility conundrum.
Credits
- Concept, Choreography and Dance: Yinka Esi Graves
- Guitarist and Music: Raúl Cantizano
- Drummer and poet: Remi Graves
- Singer: Rosario Heredia
- Filming: Miguel Angel Rosales
about Yinka
Yinka Esi Graves is a British flamenco dancer and practitioner whose choreographic work explores the links between flamenco and other forms of corporeal expression from an African diasporic and contemporary perspective.
Having studied ballet and Afro-Cuban dancing in her youth, Yinka has dedicated the last 12 years of her life to flamenco studying at Amor de Dios in Madrid and later in Seville with artists such as La Lupi, Andrés Marin, Yolanda Heredia, and Juana Amaya.
After performing extensively in Spain and the UK, her choreographic work and unique way of working in and around flamenco has been featured at Sadler’s Wells (Sampled 2017), Dance Umbrella’s panel discussion Out of the System, Gibney Dance NY amongst others, reaching audiences nationally and internationally often taking flamenco into new spaces.