Thank You
Very Much

Serious with a humorous undertone 

Claire Cunningham is considered one of Great Britain’s most exciting choreographers. Her intense and ambitious work has a rare quality of honesty and humorous wit. In Thank You Very Much, she personally performs on stage, together with a large international group of dancers with various types of disabilities. 

This time, she uses the phenomenon ‘tribute artists’ – impersonators of world-famous performers – as a springboard for exploring such themes as impersonation, identity and acceptance. 

What is it like to be a spectacle for the rest of the world – whether you like it or not?  What does it mean to stage yourself? Where do you draw the line between an impersonation and a tribute? And when can you really be yourself? 

Impersonates ‘The King’ 

“I loved Elvis as a singer, but I began to sort of rediscover him as a choreographer and be interested in how he’d moved,” explains Cunningham in an interview with the National Theatre of Scotland.  

The more Cunningham immersed herself in the performer’s movement patterns that are perhaps imitated most often, the more it reverberated with her. 

“The way that he moved had a bit of – what I would call a kind of ‘crip’* aesthetic and resonated with the way disabled bodies are perceived to move, what is perceived as uncontrolled movement, movement that is different, movement that isn’t acceptable, even, or controversial,” she explains. 

The stage has been set for a rare dance performance. 

*‘Crip’: From the originally derogatory word ‘crippled’, but which has been appropriated and is used as a way to challenge ability normativity.