Choreography Award Holder 2019: Dan Daw

A bit about Dan Daw Creative…

A queer, disabled artist living in Birmingham, UK, Dan works collaboratively with a growing network of companies and artists to develop new work for UK and international audiences.

Blurring the divide between theatre and dance, all work Dan makes becomes a part of a series of attempts.  With his work proposing that “success” and “failure” could possibly be the same thing, he plays, in different ways, with audience expectation in connection to his body’s deviating functionality.

What does the choreography Award mean to you?

New to the Midlands, this opportunity is timely as I become less London centric and focus on developing Dan Daw Creative projects as a regionally-based performance company. It provides time and necessary space to rigorously explore my own physicality in the context of our new work and more broadly; exploring my crip’s body’s virtuosity. What is my aesthetic and how do I articulate that in a way that is authentic?

What do you expect to develop during your time at dx?

This year, I’m making a new work ‘The Dan Daw Show’. Following on from research as a JCRPII recipient, i’ll again be working with theatre director Mark Maughan. Looking at “inspiration porn” and what it means to be elevated to “superhuman” status as a Crip performer I’ll be using this period of time to begin to piece together the choreographic research already carried out over the past two years and make decisions on the final shape of the work, set to premiere in early 2020.

If you could collaborate with any artist in the world right now who would it be?

Crystal Pite & Christeene

Tell us your first dance experience?

My mother danced in callisthenics competitions and my grandmother choreographed and adjudicated them. My earliest memory of dance is sitting on the kitchen bench, watching my grandmother choreograph routines, and using the microwave as her timer.