HP24 - The Dan Daw Show
Dan Daw Creative Projects
Warning: This performance contains scenes of kink, suffocation, humiliation, dominant behaviour, sexually explicit language, flashing lights and seductive disabled people. Before each performance, personalised help is offered to people with special needs, to enable them to experience the show better, for example people with physical disabilities or neurodivergent people
An autobiographical piece that is both muscular and kinky, The Dan Daw Show transcends pain and violence through sexy and disconcerting body-to-body contact.
In a rebuilding process for his relationship with his disabled body, Dan Daw thumbs his nose at the shame with which he grew up. His body, although agile, was alternately observed with suspicion by those around it or deemed only fit to be fixed by medical professionals. The Dan Daw Show rises above these perceptions to joyfully celebrate an extraordinary and powerful body.
With his collaborator Christopher Owen, Dan Daw appropriates the codes of BDSM – expressed in connection with the dominant/dominated relationship – to expose a body that is finally fully emancipated through submission to the other. In the context of consent and mindful communication, what may seem painful or violent to outsiders’ eyes is instead experienced as a joyful and liberating explosion by its practitioner.
In this consciously immodest show, Daw also reverses the power dynamic between himself and a largely non-disabled audience.
And the shame is silenced for evermore.
Performance and collaboration: Dan Daw & Christopher Owen|Artistic direction : Dan Daw |Direction : Mark Maughan|Movement directionand rehearsals: Sarah Blanc |Design: Emma Bailey|Light design : Nao Nagai |Compositionand sound design: Guy Connelly |Dramaturgy: Brian Lobel|Artistic vision: Dr Kate Marsh |Assistantdirector: Thyrza Abrahams |Productionand stage management : Froud|Executive director: Liz Counsell |Coordination: Zed Lightheart |With thesupport of Arts Council England, Shoreditch Town Hall, Candoco Dance Company, I'm Here, Where Are You? Festival and Jerwood Choreographic Research Project II: Invincible Rubber, Katie Vine and Tsubi Du, Phil Hargreaves.
