Horsemeat
Bold, brash and brutally honest, HORSEMEAT confronts the gritty realities surrounding love, life, sexuality and growing up. Set against a backdrop of music which mixes the camp disco beats of Erasure with the serene beauty of Chopin via the glam rock sounds of T-REX, esteemed performer Janusz Orlik plunges head first into Gary’s nightmarish playground of frantic movement and thriving gestures in this all singing, all dancing autobiographical solo. Created in collaboration with dance mavericks Javier De Frutos and the late Nigel Charnock, HORSEMEAT presents a series of episodes that are thought provoking, deeply intimate and powerfully engaging.
‘Quirky, dark and comic’
Dancing Times
Horsemeat has been performed at: British Dance Edition 2006, Sheffield Independent Film Studios, Stage@Leeds, Daghdha Dance Space in Ireland, The Lamproom Theatre, The Bonnie Bird Theatre at LABAN, Pulse Fringe Festival, Homotopia, The Unity Theatre, Doncaster Hot House Festival, Yorkshire Dance, DEDA, LPAC and The Place as part of Spring Loaded 2011.
Choreographed by: Gary Clarke
Directed by: Nigel Charnock & Javier De Frutos
Performed by: Janusz Orlik, Gary Clarke
Lighting Design: Mark Webber
Film Design: Siobhan Mckeown
Costume Design: Kevin Muscat
Music: Mogwai, Erasure, Chopin, Nine Inch Nails, T-REX
Music Engineer: Clive Wilkinson
Length: 45 minutes
Horsemeat was co-produced by Danceworks UK, Yorkshire Dance Centre, Laban and Barnsley Theatre Trust Ltd with additional support from Arts Council England, Yorkshire through a Grants for the Arts Award.
COAL
Marking the 25th Anniversary of the 1984 Miners Strike, award-winning choreographer Gary Clarke proudly presents COAL; a compelling and riveting piece of dance theatre, which takes a nostalgic look at the hard-hitting realities of life in the pits. COAL explores the darker underbelly of the mining industry through a day’s journey above and below ground, unearthing the true nature and body wrecking demands of an industry now almost forgotten. Hacking their way through a sound-scape of traditional brass band classics and thunderous machinery, 4 miners (both men and women) are pushed to their physical extremes in a relentless and moving demonstration of unity and survival.
‘COAL is a gritty, gutsy, visceral re-enaction of toil that is part of living memory‘
Metro
COAL has been performed at: The Lamproom Theatre, Yorkshire Dance Centre, The Bonnie Bird Theatre at LABAN, Touchwood 2007, The Place as part of Spring Loaded 2008, Eastwood View Working Mens Club, National Coal Mining Museum for England, Hull Dance Feival 2009, Arts Forum Festival and at The Kingstone School for Arts.
Choreographed by: Gary Clarke
Performed by: Gavin Coward, David Lloyd, Shona Roberts, Emma Hyndman
Artistic Advisor: Wendy Houstoun
Costume Design: Kevin Muscat
Head Dress Designer: Nasir Mazhar
Lighting Design: Mark Webber and Damien Jackson
Composer: Daniel Thomas
Production Manager: Damien Jackson
Length: 45 minutes
Coal was co-produced by Danceworks UK, Yorkshire Dance Centre, Laban and Barnsley Theatre Trust Ltd with additional support from Arts Council England, Yorkshire through a Grants for the Arts Award.
2 Men & a Michael
2 Men & a Michael is a typically British, dead pan send up of stand up via the antics of Gilbert and George and Morecambe & Wise. Dressed to KILL, 2 idiots are locked in a constant loop of foolish shenanigans and thoughtless nonsense where something means nothing and nothing is anything. Quirky, sharp and incredibly funny, 2 Men & a Michael is crammed to the brim with genuine mistakes, snap shot moments and unfinished efforts. 2 Men & a Michael has got a constantly changing cast where a new pair of performers re-create the work in just 2 days. New sections are added, taken away and rearranged leaving the ‘2 Men’ to sink or swim under an intense spot light and watchful audience. 2 Men & a Michael has been performed by a collection of some of the UK’s leading dance artists including New Art Club (Tom Roden and Pete Shenton), Rachel Krische, TC Howard and Kath Duggan.
‘A clever use of simple actions and gestures made us laugh out loud’
londondance.com
2 Men & a Michael has been performed at: Touchwood, Leeds Light Night, British Dance Edition 2010, GDA Cabaret, LEAP Festival, The Sheffield Crucible as part of a Danceworks UK Double Bill with Wendy Houtstoun, The Riley Theatre Autumn Season, City to City Cabaret in Bulgaria, The Place as part of Spring Loaded, stage@leeds, The Royal Opera House London as part of Exposure 2012, DEDA, LPAC, The Lamproom Theatre, Doncaster Hothouse Festival and GDA 20th Anniversary Cabaret.
Choreographed by: Gary Clarke
Music: Rolfe Kent, Bert Kaempfurt
Costume Design: Gary Clarke
Sound Arrangement: Daniel Thomas
Light Design: The Place
Length: 20 minutes
Supported by The Civic Barnsley, Danceworks UK and Yorkshire Dance.
Bagofti
Choreographer Gary Clarke and acclaimed performer Gavin Coward have joined forces to create a dark and captivating world of beauty and the grotesque. Bagofti is a one man solo show that delves deep into the bold, austere and highly expressive art work of iconic figurative painter Francis Bacon. Part dance, part sculpture, this short and powerful work is a mesmerising display of sheer physicality in response to the personal life and art works of one of the world’s greatest 20th century artists.
‘Clarke delivers some wrenchingly strong stuff’
The Herald
Bagofti has been performed at: Leeds City Art Gallery, Live Bites, Public Announcement, LEAP Festival, The Place as part of Spring Loaded 2011, The Edinburgh Fringe Festival, stage@leeds Autumn Season, Sheffield Galleries as part of Danceworks UK Autumn Season and Homotopia.
Choreographed by: Gary Clarke and Gavin Coward
Performed by: Gavin Coward, Adam Blanche
Music: The Michael Garrick Trio, Vincent Gallo, Jim Reeves
Musical Arrangement: Daniel Thomas
Light and Set Design: Gary Clarke
Length: 20 minutes
Bagofti was supported by Yorkshire Dance Centre, Barnsley Theatre Trust Ltd with additional support from Arts Council England, Yorkshire through a Grants for the Arts Award.
Cameo Cookie
British choreographer Gary Clarke brings to the stage a camp and courageous new one woman show. Cameo Cookie is the story of Anita Bryant, the honey-voiced American singer and hard-boiled beauty queen who campaigned in the 1970’s to crush the gay rights movement and in her words, ‘to do away with the homosexuals’. A scintillating mix of movement and gesture, music, spoken word, props, gimmicks and a splash of irony, Cameo Cookie is a series of strikingly visual vignettes of a woman who led a homophobic crusade and yet ended up as the name of a popular cocktail in gay bars all over America.
‘Cameo Cookie offered visual stimulation and plenty of vim and vigour’
Liverpool Daily Post
Cameo Cookie has been performed at: The Pink Fringe / Brighton Gay Pride, Touchwood, Live Bites, The Place as part of Spring Loaded, DEDA, LPAC, Doncaster Hothouse Festival, The Lamproom Theatre and Homotopia.
Choreographed by: Gary Clarke
Performer: Eleanor Perry
Music Design: Daniel Thomas
Music: David Bowie, Candi Staton, 1010 Orchestra and Wisby
Design: Gary Clarke
Length: 25 minutes
Cameo Cookie was co-produced by The Pink Fringe, The Place, Yorkshire Dance Centre, and Barnsley Theatre Trust Ltd with additional support from Arts Council England, Yorkshire through a Grants for the Arts Award.
Ménage a Trois
Gary Clarke invites you to join him for a Ménage a Trois: A tantalising and lip smacking triple bill of striking contemporary dance works. Ménage a Trois proudly presents 3 distinct works which comment on British life, art and culture in an exciting and captivating evening that will surely be one to remember. The triple bill brings together the dark yet beautiful Bagofti, the highly acclaimed rib tickling 2 Men & a Michael and the riotous and raunchy Horsemeat. Your hosts for the evening are Juicy Jo and Luscious Lydia: A couple of eccentric lounge lizards and wanna-be drag queens that will light up and transform your intervals and pre-show frolics into a glittery cavalcade of performance, participation and partying! Menage a Trois is ‘a night out on the town’ that shatters the boundaries between dance, theatre, cabaret and good old British entertainment.
‘Menage a Trois is a a triple bill of socially engaged works with a sense of humour’!
Time Out ‘It’s great fun, and there isn’t a person in the theatre without a large grin on their face!’
Dust Till Dawn
Choreographed by: Gary Clarke
Performed by: Janusz Orlik, TC Howard, Eleanor Perry, Adam Blanche
Hosts: Lydia Cotrell, Joe Paris Snook
Length: 75 minutes
MÉNAGE A TROIS 2011 was co-produced by Yorkshire Dance Centre, Danceworks UK and Stage@Leeds with additional support from Arts Council England through a Grants for the Arts award.
A Beautiful Hell
Neatly clad in boxer shorts and pyjamas, a company of 9 young men take to the stage to present an intricate landscape of dreams and desires that explores the notion of exclusion and what it’s like to be an outsider. Bringing together a vivid combination of daring physical theatre, sophisticated gesture and improvised spoken word and a soundtrack that mixes the gritty sounds of Scottish post-rock band Mogwai with the mellow riffs of American country singer Roy Orbison, we follow one man’s touching and darkly humorous journey in search of love, acceptance and freedom.
‘The choreography has bite and depth, and the dancing just crackles with class and conviction’
The Herald ****
A Beautiful Hell has been performed as a curtain raiser for Matthew Bourne’s ‘Nutcracker’ and 2 Faced Dance Company’s ‘In the Dust’ as well as a 2 week sell out run at Dance Base as part of The Edinburgh Festival 2012. A Beautiful Hell has also been performed at : Homotopia, Live Bites, LEAP Festival and The Actors Church, Covent Garden.
Performed by: – Edge FWD
Music – The Film Score Orchestra, Mogwai, Kronos Quartet and Roy Orbison
Gary CLARKE 