FIGURE SKATING ALTERNATE UNIVERSE FANDOM PERFORMANCES!!
My obsession with figure skating has led me to make a series of performances using tropes and elements from figure skating to explore neurodivergent ways of experiencing. So far, I have made three performances that exist in my (fan)fictional trans neurodivergent alternate universe version of figure skating:
the online performance kiss&cry (2020), commissioned by CLAY and performed as part of the 2020 CHASM festival
kiss&cry:irl (2024), a performance installation commissioned by CLAY and performed as part of their final season in April 2024
self insert outside fan spiral (on ice), a live art performance on amplified synthetic ice premiering in autumn 2025.
SELF INSERT OUTSIDE FAN SPIRAL (ON ICE)
Self insert outside fan spiral (on ice) is a live action figure skating fan fiction / a heaving wet totally real figure skating event made up of lots of bits of slippery, pleasurable neurodivergent overwhelm.
Here are some facts about figure skating: there are no facts in figure skating only very strong opinions. A spiral is when you glide on one blade for a long time either forwards or backwards with the other foot raised. A fan spiral is a back outside edge spiral where the legs look like the edges of a fan if it was a really dangerous fan made from legs.
(on ice) takes place on an amplified piece of real fake ice and like any real figure skating event includes a six minute warm-up, Carmens, Boleros, Swan Lakes, Phantoms, lifts, quadruple Axels, alien mpreg, crystals, illusion mesh, bears, short programmes, medium programmes, long programmes, and several ice resurfacing breaks. The ice resurfacing machine is probably the best figure skater of all time. His name is Zamboni and he makes the ice with his teeth and his liquids and he’s sooooo sexy.
(on ice) is a live performance situated within the same alternate universe version of figure skating as kiss&cry and kiss&cry:irl, exploring the on-ice aspects of figure skating: music performed to over and over by different skaters, the costumes, gestures and rules. This performance takes my (fan)fictional version of figure skating onto a piece of synthetic, mic-ed up ice, which amplifies the sound of my movements as I skate over hot dogs, transform into an ice resurfacing machine, and lay eggs. This project has received support from Creative Scotland, Unlimited, Tramway, Take Me Somewhere and National Theatre of Scotland.
KISS&CRY: IRL
You are invited to come into the kiss&cry with us. This kiss&cry is a live action fanfiction and also kind of like a haunted house, except figure skating themed and sexy not scary. You’re in the kiss&cry with me and Nicol and coach and the teddies and the bear with the tissues inside and tvs and pink lights and noises and eggs and slime and smoke. It feels good.
kiss&cry (2020) was an online performance about figure skating and fanfiction and loneliness. kiss&cry irl (2024) is not a sequel or a live version of that, but a secret third thing. Durational performance installation / video, co-created with Nicol Parkinson, commissioned and supported by CLAY.
Video of the performance shot and edited by Sophie Okonkwo, 26th of April 2024. Images below are from the our residency time at CLAY and the Open Studios sharing we did in April 2023, also by Sophie Okonkwo.
https://www.clayleeds.co.uk/jo-nicol-digital
KISS&CRY
The kiss&cry is the name of the area where figure skaters sit and receive their scores after completing their programmes, a livestreamed designated ‘emotion zone’. During lockdown I made my own kiss&cry, complete with a terrifying dummy acting as my coach (a shirt and suit I’ve stuffed with bedding and with a mannequin head). kiss&cry, which was commissioned by CLAY for the CHASM festival, was a participatory online performance exploring escapism, neurodivergence and online intimacy through a mixture of live elements and pre–recorded footage, a customisable and overwhelming soundscape by Nicol Parkinson, and “self”-insert fanfiction written to each audience member’s specifications.
Jo Hauge’s ‘kiss&cry’, is an intimate space for bodies to meet under the sombre lights of deep blues, electric pinks and the sharp glow of the projection screen. This hybrid web performance to camera, devised and performed by the artist, includes live scrolling subtitles and intermittent videos cutting into the performer’s rendition of various encounters that a character named @torvil&dean69 navigates. Borrowing from the surnames of celebrated British ice skaters Jane Torvill and Christopher Dean, @torvil&dean69 becomes a device through which an imagined sense of embodied experience, vacating the flesh and ‘entwined bodies’ are shared with the audience. (…) Hauge’s use of rolling and tangential delivery is the kind that puts me in a haze or a pile. - Samra Mayanja
https://corridor8.co.uk/article/a-reflection-on-chasm-live-art-in-isolation/