I was feeling quite calm about seeing this show by the self-described “38-year-old crip” Dan Daw until I got the email warning me that it was “about kink and power play”. Then as I walked into the venue, I was told that if I found anything triggering, I could walk out and be taken to a calm space.
By the time I took my seat, I had no idea what to expect. By the time I left it 90 minutes later, I still didn’t quite know what I had seen. But I hadn’t been alarmed or upset – the overriding emotion I had witnessed was tenderness.
Certainly, Daw’s show – nominated for the 2021 National Dance awards – is unlike anything else you are likely to see. The Australian dancer, playing himself, invites the non-disabled dancer Christopher Owen, playing KrisX and “here so those of you who are like KrisX can see yourselves represented on stage”, to perform a series of consensual semi-sexual acts.
These range from Daw being treated as a footstool to being encased in a latex box in which the air is vacuumed out. Throughout, his commentary, at once wry and impassioned, emphasises the fact that this domination is what he needs and wants. Its argument is that society fucks the disabled; now, in showing how he wants to be loved, Daw is exercising his power.
The dance that develops is intense and fascinating, characterised by moments of interdependence as Daw lies backwards across Owen, asking him to support his limbs, or to whirl him around like a human wheelbarrow. It’s full of gestures of care. At the close, when Daw’s protective tattoo of a Japanese oni seems to come to life, surrounding his body with shining silk and plastic limbs, you witness a man who is absolutely assured of his right to be who he is and want what he wants. It’s not an easy show, but it is an uplifting one.
