Highly acclaimed Thick & Tight bring their dazzling best-of show to Blackpool

Prepare yourselves for a night of riotous fun as Thick & Tight’s Tits & Teeth makes its way to Blackpool Grand Theatre on Friday 28th of June. With dance, drag and mime, acclaimed dance-theatre duo Thick & Tight (Daniel Hay-Gordon and Eleanor Perry) perform their dazzling best-of show to Blackpool audiences following a successful tour across the UK.

We caught up with renowned duo Daniel and Eleanor, who are “on a roll” from touring Tits & Teeth around the UK whilst undertaking a variety of other projects, to tell us about Tits & Teeth and how they’re feeling about being a part of the Queer Amusements festival.

The duo met in 2006 when they both began training at Rambert Dance School. However, it wasn’t until 2012, when Eleanor made a short solo piece and Daniel suggested turning it into a duet, that the duo was born. Taking their company name from a personal joke they’d been making at the time, Thick & Tight have become an award-winning dance theatre company mainstay - delighting audiences now for over a decade.

Their best-of show, Tits & Teeth, is a collection of work from recent years, performed as a series of portraits of famous or infamous people. Daniel and El perform the piece as a dual-head Barbara Cartland, who they describe as “a notoriously garish and unashamedly misogynist romantic novelist who dressed head to toe in pink”, and return later on in the show as “an imagined meeting between modernist composer John Cage and musical theatre legend Elaine Paige”.

Tits & Teeth also showcases other incredible performers, as Daniel and El tell us: “Oxana Panchenko performs as Rasputin, in a disco ballet with a big surprise… Vidya Patel, stars as Winston Churchill in a fiery political work. Azara Meghie embodies Grace Jones – one icon inspiring another! And Danny Smith, fabulous artist and disability activist, is prima ballerina Dame Margot Fonteyn, looking stunning in silk.”

The show is part of Queer Amusements, a programme of arts and entertainment events founded by Blackpool’s own critically-acclaimed theatre maker Harry Clayton-Wright. Queer Amusements is taking place across Blackpool until Autumn 2024.

Blackpool Grand can’t wait to have the duo play their prestigious theatre. “Excitement is building for 'Thick & Tight: Tits and Teeth' at the Blackpool Grand Theatre this June! This electrifying show that combines ballet, contemporary dance, drag, satire, mime, and lip-syncing into one of the most unique variety performance I have seen touring,” says the theatre’s Chief Executive, Adam Knight. “With dazzling portrayals of famous figures and a knockout cast, this is a must-see event. The hilarious double-headed Barbara Cartland or the imagined encounter between John Cage and Elaine Paige are not to be missed – a laugh a minute! Join us for an unforgettable evening celebrating high and low art in all its glory."

Daniel and El’s show is a celebration of LGBTQIA+ artists, with several pieces of their work being based on queer figures from the past - “we often look back to see how people dealt with being marginalised then, and think about what we need to do now to keep things progressing when there’s still so much threat to queer existence, especially for trans people at the moment”

Performing as a part of Queer Amusements will also be a special moment for Daniel and El - “We’re hugely inspired by the community of people around us who also make queer work. Lots of them are our nearest and dearest, people we’ve got to know over the years and want to be alongside for years to come”

We’re super excited to have Daniel and Eleanor in Blackpool this weekend and it seems they’re excited too. The Gazette asked them what they’re looking forward to most - “Chips, charity shops, Funny Girls and seeing Blackpool in all its pride and glory!”

Thick & Tight: Tits & Teeth comes to Blackpool Grand Theatre on 28 June, 7.30pm, £15.50/£12.50. Tickets available from www.blackpoolgrand.co.uk and www.queeramusements.com