Press Release: The Dan Daw Show at Sadler's Wells' Lilian Baylis Studio from September

[Jan McNulty]

Dan Daw Creative Projects
The Dan Daw Show
Lilian Baylis Studio, EC1R 4TN
Thursday 30 September & Friday 1 October 2021
Tickets: £17
Ticket Office: 020 7863 8000 or www.sadlerswells.com 

After curating a Wild Card evening in 2017, Dan Daw returns to Sadler’s Wells with a new London premiere, The Dan Daw Show on Thursday 30 September & Friday 1 October 2021. 
 
Teaming up with theatre director, Mark Maughan (Petrification, The Claim, 24 Hour Plays, Abigail’s Party), movement director Sarah Blanc (Greenwich Dance, Royal Opera House, The Place), and dramaturg Brian Lobel (BALL & Other Funny Stories About Cancer, Purge), Dan is joined in an intimate evening of play by performer Christopher Owen (Joe Moran, Scottish Dance Theatre) where Dan takes back the power by being dominated on his own terms. The Dan Daw Show is a peep into the push-pull of living with shame, while bursting with pride. This is a show about care, intimacy, resilience and reclaiming yourself. 

The Dan Daw Show explores Dan’s relationship to his Cripness (disability) and to kink, and how power, pride and shame all intersect. The duet also examines the importance of interdependence in achieving Crip joy, which is of more significance now than ever. The Dan Daw Show has recently been awarded a Horizon Showcase Residency for 2021. The production has its world premiere at Dance City on Saturday 25 September, 7:30pm. 

Artistic Director and performer Dan Daw said: “The Dan Daw Show marks an important moment in my life, as I take time to reflect on what being in my power means as a queer, Crip man navigating a world not designed with me in mind. With this work, I begin to let go of who I once was to make space for who I want to be and it is, ultimately, a celebration of my finally arriving to a place in my life where I am able to take ownership over my body.”   
 
Director Mark Maughan said: “The Dan Daw Show is a clear statement to the world that achieving joy, whoever you are, is a radical act and an ever-changing process that requires great dedication, care and clarity. At the centre of this all is Dan, whose willingness to make from the heart, with equal parts integrity, humour and vulnerability, is nothing short of extraordinary and makes the show what it is. Collaborating with our team on this piece is a true reflection of the interdependence that Dan so often speaks about, and I so look forwards to sharing it with audiences this autumn.” 

The Dan Daw Show contains adult themes and sexual references.

Supported using public funding from Arts Council England through project grants. Co-commissioned in 2019/20 by Sadler’s Wells, Arts House Melbourne, DanceHub Birmingham, The Lowry, Déda, Cambridge Junction, DanceXchange and Dance4. Supported by Shoreditch Town Hall, Candoco Dance Company and I’m Here, Where Are You? Festival. Research supported by Jerwood Choreographic Research Project II. 

Creative Team:

 

Artistic Director, Dan Daw

Director, Mark Maughan

Movement Director, Sarah Blanc

Designer, Emma Bailey

Lighting Designer, Nao Nagai

Composition & Sound Design, Guy Connelly

Dramaturg, Brian Lobel

Artistic Peer Support, Dr Kate Marsh

Performer, Dan Daw

Performer, Christopher Owen

Production and Stage Manager, Froud

Producer, Liz Counsell 

 

 

NOTES TO EDITORS

 

Listings Information

Dan Daw Creative Projects

The Dan Daw Show

Lilian Baylis Studio, EC1R 4TN

Performances: Thursday 30 September & Friday 1 October, 8pm 

Tickets: £17

Ticket Office: 020 7863 8000 or www.sadlerswells.com

 

BSL Interpretation: Thursday including post-show talk

 

Captioning is provided for both performances. 

 

Running time: 1 hour 10 minutes (no interval) 

 

Creative Team and Company biographies

 

Sarah Blanc is a choreographer, performer and host based in Walthamstow, London. Blanc is Artistic Director of Moxie Brawl, an all-female inclusive dance theatre company, and is one third of Annie Vicky Sarah- a trio of collaborators who are questioning ‘inclusive’ dance practices within creative settings.

 

As a freelance choreographer/movement director, Blanc has worked with companies, organisations and artists such as Little Red Kettle, Complicite. Bryony Kimmings, Royal Opera House, Perth Concert Hall and The Place.  Blanc is currently working with Greenwich Dance on a lockdown series with Dan Daw and Blink Dance Theatre.

 

As a presenter, Blanc co-founded Inside Dance TV and was the main presenter for Art Streaming TV from 2013-2017, where she hosted live streams from around Europe for Aerowaves Festival and from theatres including the London Palladium, Sadler’s Wells and The Place. Previous events hosted by Blanc include Move It (Excel), Imagine Festival & Unlimited Festival (Southbank Centre), Wilderness Festival (for The Place), Bingo Calling for Dabbers Bingo and Fresh (The Place).

Dan Daw is Associate Director of Sydney-based performance company, Murmuration. Working in partnership with Sarah-Vyne Vassallo to commission, develop and produce new work by disabled artists, Dan plays an integral role in the development and delivery of Murmuration’s artistic programs and community activities.

Dan continues to work at the forefront of dance and disability in Australia and the UK, having commissioned two solo works – Beast by Martin Forsberg and On One Condition by Graham Adey, which received the Adelaide Fringe Best Theatre Award 2017. 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. 

Dan began working as a performer with Restless Dance Theatre in 2002, and since then Dan has gone on to work with Australian Dance Theatre (AUS), Force Majeure (AUS), FRONTLINEdance (UK), Scottish Dance Theatre (UK), balletLORENT (UK), Candoco Dance Company (UK) and Skånes Dansteater (SWE).

Throughout his performance career, Dan has worked with Kat Worth, Garry Stewart, Kate Champion, Janet Smith, Adam Benjamin, Wendy Houstoun, Sarah Michelson, Rachid Ouramdane, Nigel Charnock, Matthias Sperling, Marc Brew, Claire Cunningham, Matthias Sperling, Carlos Motta, Martin Forsberg, Carl Olof Berg, Dinis Machado and Javier de Frutos.

A Choreography Award Artist, Dan continues to work at the forefront of collaborative performance making in Australia and the UK. Dan is a recipient of the BBC/South East Dance Performing Arts Fund Fellowship, the Outlet Dance Award and the Russell Page Fellowship in Contemporary Dance amongst others. He has been a part of the National Theatre Step Change programme (2012), Dance UK’s Mentor Bursary (2013), Sadler’s Wells Summer University (2015 – 2018) and Belgrade Theatre’s Agent for Change (2018), furthermore evidencing his ambitions as disabled artist to impact and lead the conversation on dance and disability.

In spring 2019, he began making his next work, The Dan Daw Show with theatre director Mark Maughan as a continuation of their research supported by Jerwood Choreographic Research Project II. ‘The Dan Daw Show’ premieres in 2021.

 

Brian Lobel is a performer, teacher and curator who is interested in creating work about bodies and how they are watched, policed, poked, prodded and loved by others. His practice is most efficiently described as Former-American-Camp-Counselor-Turned-Performance-Artist, and his work has shown work internationally in a range of contexts, from Harvard Medical School, to Sydney Opera House, to the National Theatre (London) and Lagos Theatre Festival, blending provocative humour with insightful reflection. Major projects include BALL & Other Funny Stories About Cancer, Purge, Hold My Hand and We’re Halfway There, Ruach, 24 Italian Songs & Arias and Cruising for Art which have been presented in over 25 countries internationally. Brian has received commissions and grants from the Wellcome Trust, Complicite Jerwood, and Arts Council England, among others. Brian is a Professor of Theatre & Performance at Rose Bruford College, Knowledge Exchange Fellow at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, and the co-founder of The Sick of the Fringe.
 

Mark Maughan is an award-winning theatre director, maker and translator with a special interest in developing ideas with artists from the early stages of a project, who has toured his work across the UK and internationally. Mark is also a reader for a number of theatres across the UK and is a member of the Cross Channel Theatre Group, coordinated by the French Institute. Maughan’s directing credits include The Claim by Tim Cowbury (Shoreditch Town Hall and UK tour), Gross Indecency (East 15), C’est la vie (Print Room), Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass (ALRA), LOBOS by Alejandro Gomez (with Compania Nacional de las Artes. Casa del Silencio, Bogota, Colombia), La Visita by Friedrich Durenmatt (own adaptation of The Visit to Spanish. FUGA, Bogota, Colombia), Trappist (Lyric Hammersmith), Open Plan by Marcelo Dos Santos (Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama), Petrification by Zoe Cooper (Live Theatre and UK tour), The Raunch (as Dramaturg. Underbelly Spiegeltent, London Southbank), How was it for you? (Latitude Festival, Brighton Dome), Address Unknown / Inconnu a cette adresse (Soho Theatre at JW3), 24 Hour Plays (Old Vic Theatre). Works in development include The Rocks by Marcelo Dos Santos (seed commission from English Touring Theatre) and a new piece with Harry Clayton-Wright to premier in 2021. Maughan’s credits as a writer include National Portrait Gallery choral audio guide (read by Simon Russell Beale). Associate Director credits include Abigail’s Party (UK Tour), Les Blancs (Olivier, National Theatre), Шахтарі-Художники (The Pitmen Painters adapted by Tamir Theatre. Kharkiv, Ukraine via British Council), Tonight I’m Gonna Be The New Me (Forest Fringe, Soho Theatre), The Paradise Project (UK / International Tour). Credits as a translator include Caligula (The Round Company), Going Through by Stephane Joubertie (for Boundless Theatre), The World I Live In (for Theatre de la Cite, Toulouse, France), Father Christmas is a Dick (for Soho Theatre). 

Christopher Owen has worked as an independent performer, teacher and choreographer, performing in works by Nigel Charnock, Sarah Michelson, Emanuel Gat, Rachid Ouramdane, Willi Dorner, Boris Charmatz, Jerome Bel and the Trisha Brown Company.  

Christopher founded Empathic Futures, a curatorial and production company working in the disciplines of choreography, dance pedagogy and performance. He has created works in intergenerational, professional and community settings, using choreography as an invitation to imagine, speculate and dream of new realities together. He is artistic co-director of London International Dance Intensive, the UKs first independent artist-led multi teacher dance intensive.  

Christopher’s teaching practice spans a variety of contexts, working with young people, dance students, elders groups and professionals. Through teaching, Christopher challenges traditional notions of contemporary dance technique, by offering new and different ways of accessing one's physical potential and placing importance on individual motivation.


About Sadler’s Wells 
Sadler's Wells is a world-leading dance organisation. We make and share dance that inspires us all. Our acclaimed year-round programme spans dance of every kind, from contemporary to flamenco, Bollywood to ballet, salsa to street dance and tango to tap.

 

We commission, produce and present more dance than any other organisation in the world. Since 2005, we have helped to bring close to 200 new dance works to the stage, embracing both the popular and the unknown.

 

Each year, over half a million people visit our three London theatres. Many more attend our touring productions nationally and internationally or explore our digital platforms, including Sadler’s Wells Digital Stage. In 2023 we’re opening a fourth London venue in London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, to sit alongside our Sadler’s Wells Theatre, Lilian Baylis Studio and Peacock Theatre. Sadler’s Wells’ new space will house a 550-seat mid-scale theatre, as well as facilities for a choreographic centre and a hip hop theatre academy. 

 

Supporting artists is at the heart of our work. We have associate artists and companies, which nurture some of the most exciting talent working in dance today. We host the National Youth Dance Company, which draws together some of the brightest young dancers from across the country. Sadler’s Wells Breakin' Convention runs professional development programmes to champion and develop the world’s best hip hop artists, as well as producing, programming and touring groundbreaking hip hop performances. 

 

Around 30,000 people take part in our learning and engagement programmes every year. We support schools local to our theatres in Islington and Stratford, designing experiences for children and young people to watch, explore and critically engage with the arts. We also run Company of Elders, a resident performance company of dancers aged over 60 who rehearse with renowned artists to make new work for public performances locally, nationally and internationally.

 

Sadler’s Wells is an Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation.