The candyfloss confessional of a queer Aboriginal man falling between the cracks part of House of Oz’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe season.
One of the most electric figures in Australian contemporary dance, choreographer and dancer Joel Bray is making his UK debut with his autobiographical sugar-coated confessional, Daddy. Daddy has toured the major Australian Festivals to critical and audience acclaim and now comes to the Main Hall at Summerhall for this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Resplendent in satin hotpants and reclining like Michelangelo’s David on a pink fluffy cloud, Joel flirtatiously tells his story directly to the audience, moving among them in the promenade staging. Provocative contortions give way to contemporary dance, movements from traditional Wiradjuri dance, and relentless sequences of nightclub
dancing exposing the exhausting search for love.
Daddy is a sweet feast of a show. Bray mixes conversation, performance, audience participation and skilful changes of mood and atmosphere, making for a powerful depiction of identity, trauma and recovery. He mines his own personal experiences as a queer First Nations man brought up in a fiercely working-class environment,
someone who is neither white nor black enough, someone who falls between the cracks, someone who has Daddy issues…
Joel’s cravings for father and home leave him always wanting more. The short-lived sugar highs of childhood reminiscence and the excesses of queer adulthood and party hook-ups give way to the inevitable comedowns – before the cycle begins all over again. He is known for creating intimate encounters in unorthodox spaces where audience members are invited in as co-storytellers.
From Daddy’s opening moments, he strikes up a relationship with his crowd – asking for volunteers and drawing them into the action as prop holders, protagonists, performers and wielders of whipped cream, fairy bread and hundreds and thousands. Hilarious, provocative and heartfelt, DADDY in the Main Hall at Summerhall is the
perfect late-night Edinburgh Festival show.
Images Top (c) James Henry Below (c) Bryony Jackson
Company: Joel Bray Dance
Show: Daddy
Venue: Main Hall, Summerhall, 1 Summerhall, Edinburgh EH9 1PL
Dates: Thursday 6 to Monday 31 August (no show on Tuesday 19 August)
Time: 22.40
Tickets: 0131 560 1580 / https://festival.summerhallarts.co.uk/events/daddy/
https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/daddy
https://www.joelbraydance.com/works/2019/1/16/daddy
