Introducing our new commission premiering in 2025
Dominic Mitchell and Raquel Meseguer Zafe, both disabled artists, became Co-Artistic Directors of Candoco Dance Company in January 2024. Their vision for the company recognises intersectionality, aims to create liberatory spaces on and off stage, and prioritises the lived experience of disabled artists in the creation of new works.
This new collaboration with Dan Daw, a former performer at Candoco, provides the opportunity to honour the company’s legacy while embarking on the company’s new vision, through a partnership that holds shared values and principles.
Candoco is drawn to the way Dan Daw Creative Projects’ blurs the lines between dance, theatre, and activism. The new commission will explore belonging and unapologetically taking up space, told through Dan’s unique weaving of dance, narrative and iconography. Inspired by rave culture this show looks at what happens when one dares to colour outside the lines to create their own dance-floor utopia.
The new work will be choreographed by Dan Daw in co-direction with Stef O’Driscoll and will premiere in 2025.
“I deeply resonate with Dan Daw’s ability to identify preconceived notions and assumptions, and then unapologetically subvert them.”
“It’s super exciting for DDCP to have been invited by Raquel and Dominic to work with the company in this way. Our ethos feel more aligned and we’re making a piece with the company’s dancers that will be full of heart and centres joy, messiness and the sometimes unpredictable nature of the disabled lived experience. In that sense it very much feels like it’s a case of third time lucky when thinking of my history with Candoco.”
“I find Dan’s work to be starkly beautiful and am struck by how he draws us in, irresistibly, so that it’s impossible to turn away from the challenge as well as the beauty of the human experience.”
Read the Co-Artistic Directors’ full statement for more details on their vision for this work.
- For any information about the commission’s booking and production, please contact our Head of Programme, Lucie Mirkova – lucie@candoco.co.uk.
- For any other information about the company, please contact info@candoco.co.uk or visit our Who We Are page.
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