In 2023 Dance Base will partner with Imaginate to support dance artist Dan Brown to take part in their Launchpad programme.
Launchpad is a project to support early career theatre and dance artists interested in making performance for young audiences. The aim of the project is to create routes into the sector, offer paid research and development time and support the development of new scratch ideas.
THIS IS MY SPACE, MY VERSION OF SPACE, JUST LIKE THE SPACE MOVIES – ALONE AND ISOLATED” A lone Astronaut stands masked in the darkness, a film of astronauts on the moon are projected behind them and the Astronaut begins to dance a zero gravity dance to a hyper pop soundtrack.
During his Launchpad Placement, Dan will be exploring a new dance piece that follows a lone astronaut lost in deep bubblegum space trying desperately to find their own space – a place to call home, to feel like they belong.
Drawing from his own autobiography as a young queer, working class person who has had to maneuver different spaces in order to survive/pass. The work is a space exposé of the patriarchal constraints placed on young queer working class people and how that shapes a person into finding their space.
“I applied for Launchpad because I wanted to use my experience and inspirations from working with young people to create something that I think is challenging, joyous and also completely necessary in regards to the world young people are growing up in now. I am super excited to get started and have the support of Imaginate to help bring this voyage to life!” —Dan Brown
Find out more about Launchpad & Imaginate
About Dan Brown:
Photo by Niall Walker from Common Is As Common Does by 21Common
Dan Brown (not the author!) is a queer, working class dance artist and practitioner based in Blackburn West Lothian. His work exists in dance, contemporary performance and film and utilises persona and popular iconography to contextualise meaning and mediate his own autobiography, opening up the micro to relate to the macro. His work is campy, queer and guaranteed to have a banging soundtrack.
Dan uses film and video art within his practice as he is interested in how the content of his work can be mediated through digital technology and how video art projection can blend the worlds of film and performance together. Dan has made a variety of short films through Primary School residencies with 21Common and Reconnect Regal, which places the young people at the heart of the creation of the film and allowing them to become autonomous collaborators.
Dan has just recently been part of the creative team on 21Commons new work ‘Common Is As Common Does: A memoir’ that premiered at Johnstone Town Hall in April. The work is a dance piece using western tropes to explore how the experience of violence and poverty can shape a man.
