JO BANNON

The Dirty Work

The Dirty Work is a live performance currently in development.

Jo has always had a thing for white rabbits. As a child it was a picture book of a bunny that helped her understand what albinism was, as a teenager it was one of the insults yelled at her in the street, and later in her thirties the owner of a pet shop thrust a live white rabbit into her arms and said with a wild grin, “Look, it’s just like you!”

The Dirty Work is a duet between Jo and a white rabbit. Its a live performance work deeply inspired by the work of magicians and stage magic. Exploring the showmanship, crip expertise and everyday performativity of living as a disabled person navigating the world with visual impairment.

The Dirty Work is part of BLIND MAGIC: A triptych of artworks exploring the performativity of visual impairment. A film Passing, an installation Sleight of Hand and live performance The Dirty Work.

About Jo Bannon

Jo Bannon is a UK based artist working in performance, choreography and live art. Her work is concerned with identity, sensory perception, and human encounter and explores how our physical bodies experience the world around us and how this sensory experience can or cannot be conveyed. Her work is informed by her identity as a disabled woman with albinism and attempts to unpick the ways we look, hear and sense our immediate environment in order to rethink or make unfamiliar these intrinsic human behaviours. Bannon’s work is led by form and so manifests in various mediums including intimate encounters designed for single or small audiences, staged performance, dance, film and installation.

Jo has presented work in the UK, Europe, South America, USA, China, South Korea and Australia. Jo also works as a dramaturg, educator and writer and is a founder member of artist collective Residence. Recent work includes Feeling Thing (2021), Kitchen Alba (2021), Absent Tense (2020), We Are Fucked (2018), Alba (2015), Dead Line (2013) and Exposure (2011).

Credits

Created and Performed by Jo Bannon

Produced by MAYK

Commissioned by Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts, Cambridge Junction, The Place & Tramway. With additional support from Fabric and Horizon. Supported using public funds through Arts Council England.

In Development

The performance will premiere in May 2025.

Check out more of Jo’s work, and the BLIND MAGIC triptych, here.

For more information on the project and presenting it, email the Lead Producer Josephine Gyasi: josephine@mayk.org.uk.

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Passing