Dan Daw

Delving into Dance

"Beast Martha" image by Zoe Manders

“NS Image 1” image by AdeY

Dan Daw is an Australian dance artist based in Birmingham. Dan grew up in Whyalla, in country South Australia. Starting dance at a young age, his grandmother was a callisthenics teacher, so was surrounded by dance and movement from a young age.

"[Dance] It gave me an outlet and a way to express myself, and to be in a space where I could see myself represented."

Dan started dancing with Restless Dance Theatre in 2002, before dancing with a range of different companies including; Australian Dance Theatre, and Force Majeure (Australia), FRONTLINEdance, Scottish Dance Theatre, balletLORENT, Candoco Dance Company (UK), and with Skånes Dansteater (Sweden).

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, Martin Forsberg, Carl Olof Berg and Javier de Frutos.

Dan left Australia to work with Candoco Dance Company, finding a lack of opportunities in Australia, depressed at the prospect of needing to go on the dole after significant performance opportunities. There are bigger conversations that need to be had about who can be considered a dancer within an Australian context and who is missing out on professional opportunities.

The Dan Daw Show - image by Josh Hawkins

Dan's work often blurs the lines between dance and theatre and can have a common theme related to time.

Dan has created solo works – ‘Beast’ by Martin Forsberg and ‘On One Condition’ by Graham Adey, the latter receiving the Adelaide Fringe Best Theatre Award 2017. In 2020 Dan will premiere his new work The Dan Daw Show, which explores inspiration, porn and audiences expectations of disabled artists.

Dan was interviewed during a successful run of Thank You Very Much by Claire Cunningham during Manchester International Festival.

This is the first episode in a season looking at Australian dance artists working and living overseas. The next interview is with James Vu Anh Pham who is a company dancer at Akram Khan Company, followed by an interview with Juliet Burnett who dances with Belgium's premier dance company, Ballet Vlaanderen.

You can find a transcript to this interview here.

---

Delving into Dance is supported by the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria and the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body. If you enjoy Delving into Dance please consider leaving a contribution. Contribute here.