DANIEL HAY-GORDON

Daniel Hay-Gordon is a choreographer, dancer, and filmmaker.​

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As a choreographer and movement director, Daniel has worked acorss dance, opera, theatre, film and music videos. Major credits include Shakespeare's Globe Theatre (Troilus & Cressida), Regents Park Open Air Theatre (Twelfth Night), Staats Opera Berlin (Hippolyte et Aricie), The Royal Ballet (Blue Moon), The Hollywood Bowl & Blind Summit (Peter and the Wolf), Landestheater Passau (Beethoven Sonatas & Chopin Ballades), Nevill Holt Opera (La Cenerentola), Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama (Die Fledermaus, Orpheus in the Underworld), Aldeburgh Music Festival (Britten's Les Illuminations), The Print Rooms (Jealousy), Tanzkompagnie Theater St. Gallen (LIEBES-WIRREN), Akademi (The Troth).

In 2012, Daniel co-founded Thick & Tight Company with El Perry. This acclaimed company merges dance with mime, drag, lip-syncing, and satire, gracing stages at prominent UK venues such as Sadler’s Wells, the London International Mime Festival, The Place, Royal Festival Hall, Wilton’s Music Hall, Barbican and Battersea Arts Centre. Thick & Tight have been commissioned to make works on companies such as Zfin Malta (National Dance Company of Malta) and the BalletBoyz as well as touring their work internationally to Materia Prima (Poland), Stockholm Fringe (Sweden), Klovnbuf International Festival (Slovenia) and Sydney Fringe (Australia). They currently hold the positions of Associate Artists at The Lowry and are Artists in Residence with the Philharmonia Orchestra. Recently, they received the award for Achievement in Dance at the 2025 UK Theatre Awards and were nominated for Best Independent Dance Company by the Critics Circle Award.

Daniel trained originally at Meads Dance Studio, then onto Legat and finally graduate from Rambert in 2009. Daniel’s performance repertoire includes collaborations with notable choreographers, companies and performers such as Aletta Collins, Lea Anderson, Kim Brandstrup, Deborah Warner, Gary Clarke, Rambert, Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, Fiona Shaw, English National Ballet, NDCWales, Live Arts New York, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music. 

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Daniel also works as a teacher and lecturer in ballet, choreography, improvisation and accessibility in dance. He has worked with companies such as English National Ballet, Corali Dance Company, Zfin Malta, the BalletBoyz and Gary Clarke Company. He has also taught at most of the major dance institutions in the UK.

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Link to reviews for work with Thick & Tight: https://www.thickandtight.com/press

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Selection of two reviews of Daniel's dancing...

The Observer: “I can think of no other performer for whom movement is a more naturally expressive state. There is no other-dimensionality to Hay-Gordon, no barrier of self-consciousness or artifice. All is weight and heft and flow.”

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The Guardian: "Hay-Gordon is one of most natural dancers you’ll ever see; dancing is absolutely innate for him, and it’s transfixing to watch him deeply inside the music."

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