About this event
When
Sat 7th Nov 2026
7:00pm
Price
£5 - £12
Duration
1 hour (no interval)
Booking Info
Age guidance: 14+, mentions of ableism and discrimination
Audio Description
All performances contain integrated Audio Description
Touch Tour
A touch tour will be available on each performance date
Book here See Multibuy OffersFabric: Multi-buy offer – Book tickets to see Graces, The Dirty Work & Anatomy of Survival, and save 30% per performance when booking. Or book any 2 of those performances and save 20% per performance when booking. The offer will be automatically applied at checkout and is applicable on standard price seats only.
The Dirty Work by Jo Bannon. Photography by Paul Samuel White
Peek behind the velvet curtain of The Dirty Work, a new solo performance by Jo Bannon.
Blending the tricks of the trade – a white rabbit, a magic wand, a puff of smoke – with her lived experience of visual impairment, Bannon invites you to glimpse a world where truth and illusion, performance and reality converge. Through delicate choreography and magician’s patter, which reveals more than it conceals, she unveils the invisible labour that shapes how we navigate the world – balancing effortlessly between what is seen and unseen.
Through a Crip lens and with a trick up her sleeve, Bannon reveals ‘the dirty work’ that often goes unnoticed on stage and in everyday life. This isn’t just a magic show; it’s a meditation on visibility, disability, and the unseen labour we all perform.
Say ‘white rabbit’ three times, and see the magic unfold before your very eyes!
credits
-
- Created and Performed by Jo Bannon
- Director Gemma Paintin
- Text by Jo Bannon & Gemma Paintin
- Producer Amanda Fawcett
- Sound Designer Dinah Mullen
- Set and Costume Designer Katherina Radeva
- Production Manager Sorcha Stott Strzala
- Lighting Designer Chris Copland
- Audio Description Consultant Charlotte Whitten
- Magician Consultant Augusto Corrieri
- Originally Produced by MAYK
- Photography by Paul Samuel White
-
Commissioners & Presenters Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts, Cambridge Junction, The Place, Tramway, Fabric, Theaterformen, NEXT Festival
Funders Supported through public funds through Arts Council England and Unlimited
about jo bannon
Jo is an artist working in performance, choreography and film. Her practice is concerned with how our specific bodies, identities and sensory perceptions impact how we 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. Her work is guided by her ongoing fascination with objects, visual perception and how strange the ordinary world really is.
Jo has presented work in the UK, Europe, South America, USA, China, South Korea and Australia including Tate Modern, Sydney Opera House, Wellcome Collection, Sadlers Wells, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Itau Cultural Sao Paulo, The Times Museum Guangzhou and HAU Berlin.
Recent work includes Sleight of Hand (2024) Passing (2024) Feeling Thing (2021) Absent Tense (2020) Kitchen Alba (2020, We Are Fucked (2018), Alba (2015), Dead Line (2013) and Exposure (2011).
This performance is presented by Fabric and Birmingham Hippodrome as part of THIS IS DANCE
THIS IS DANCE is an international season of dance in Birmingham presented in partnership with Fabric, Birmingham Hippodrome, Birmingham Rep, Fierce Festival, Midlands Arts Centre and Sampad Arts, bringing exceptional dance from both across the globe and the local community.
