RUPTURE (from LONE DUETS)
Live performance
Material
20 minute performance with anatomical heart drawing, rainbow-coloured maggots, scalpel, and suspended platform.
The opening of the body and the colon of a conversation… Rupture is a meditation through the surface and a heartfelt desire to spill all. It is neither a visceral wasteland nor a redemptive act. It is a superficial scratching and a longed-for incursion, a cleaving of layers, the confluence of inner and outer worlds in a pellicular bleeding. With mouth and anus tightly closed the heart is breached and open. the wound and the promise of healing, Rupture is the parting of skin and the skip of a beat that posits representation as a questionable border.
Between 2005 and 2008, Richard Hancock and Traci Kelly developed Lone Duets – a game of ‘performance chess’, a viral investigation into the form and nature of collaboration. Employing contamination and infection as dramaturgical devices, Hancock and Kelly cultivated a series of 6 solo performances, each made in response to the work of the other, each grappling for the space between.
The resulting works are a series of visceral, intimate, and queer events, both moving and spectacular: Richard Hancock Dermographia (2005), Traci Kelly In Season (2006), Richard Hancock Postures A-to-M (2006), Traci Kelly The Mirror Pool (2007), Richard Hancock Open Wound (2007), Traci Kelly Rupture (2008).
Lone Duets was presented for the first time in its entirety as part of a New Moves International commission for the National Review of Live Art (UK), in 2009.
Performed
National Review of Live Art, Glasgow, UK (2009)
Bob Kayley Theatre, Reading, UK (2008)
Photo credits: Lisa Urwin