he/him

Dan Brown (not the author!) is a queer, working class dance artist and practitioner from Blackburn, West Lothian, now based in Glasgow. 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.

He 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 allows them to become autonomous collaborators.

Dan has most recently completed his Launchpad placement with Imaginate to explore a new dance piece for young audiences called 'NOHOMO' 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. As part of Launchpad, Dan also led an R&D week at Dance Base and ran some workshops with pupils at Tynecastle High School culminating in a sharing of a scratch as part of Ideas Exchange.

Last year, Dan was also part of the creative team on 21Commons new work 'Common Is As Common Does: A Memoir' that premiered at Johnstone Town Hall in April 2023. The work is a dance piece using western tropes to explore how the experience of violence and poverty can shape a man.