Kink is a shorthand that sometimes occludes more than it reveals. To call The Dan Daw Show an exploration of kink isn’t inaccurate, but the layperson looking for spectacle – to gawk at deviant expressions of sexuality – may be surprised by its unadorned intimacy. Beginning his eponymously titled show by addressing the audience, Dan says: “If you’re not used to seeing a 41-year-old crip being in their power, I’ve got you.” He is a submissive with a touch of brattiness; collaborator Christopher Owen, or KrisX, is a powerfully soft-spoken dom capable of bringing the whole theatre to its knees.
The line between ‘play’ as theatre or as play session is rubbed out with the rough tumble of their bodies across stage, many times over. We move from one scene to the next – ‘scene’ here in its BDSM usage, as in a structured encounter with a start and an end – with luxurious time in between for energy and heart rates to settle, for KrisX to reverentially strap knee pads onto Dan’s legs in preparation for sealing him in a latex vac cube. There are some forms of freedom only restraint can give us – some unknown shapes the body can only make with others.
Dan reminds us that this is exactly how he wants us to see him. In this enervating declaration of sexuality as selfhood, disabled bodies are not only desirable but agential through desire, ecstatically seeking pleasure beyond fragility. Who among us does not understand that life-affirming instinct to grab someone’s wrist, against self-preservation, and wrap it tighter against your throat? An indelibly moving push and pull of bodies and spit and impact; of stretch and release, of being held and letting yourself fall.
The Dan Daw Show, The Lyceum, until 4 Aug, 8pm