Kunsty offers audiences a unique chance to explore radical new work and takes place across four days under one roof with special late-night shows in the KUNSTY cabaret lounge (Queen Elizabeth Hall Foyer).
Artists in the KUNSTY programme include Bullyache, Harry Clayton-Wright, Sung Im Her and an international guest performance from Justin Talplacido Shoulder. The series includes three shows in partnership with the innovative London-based creative team Metal & Water, who work across choreography, fashion, film, live music, nightlife, and visual arts on screen.
KUNSTY is a highlight of the Southbank Centre’s Autumn/Winter Performance and Dance programme. We’ve selected some queer content that will interest our readers.
“The Southbank Centre is an engine of creativity: a home for artists at every stage of their career to be their most adventurous and create extraordinary work. This distinctive new programme speaks to the future of how performance is being made, melding together dance, music and live art to offer unique experiences for audiences”.
Mark Ball, Artistic Director of the Southbank Centre
Jan Martens: VOICE NOISE (UK Premiere)
Wednesday 15 – Thursday 16 October 7.30pm, Queen Elizabeth Hall.
From The Raincoats to Tanya Tagaq, glorious choreography illuminates the music of singular women composers. VOICE NOISE is inspired by Anne Carson’s essay ‘The Gender of Sound’ (1992), in which she exposes how patriarchal culture has sought to silence women by ideologically associating women’s sound with monstrosity, disorder and death. Six dancers respond to recordings in which the human voice can be heard in various guises: humming, soothing, shrieking, whispering, singing. Gradually, they discover their own voice. After working with big groups in his recent productions, one of the most in demand choreographers of the moment, Jan Martens returns to a production for a small ensemble of six dancers, including some who have inspired him in the past (Steven Michel, Courtney May Robertson and Loeka 3 Willems) and new faces (Sue-Yeon Youn, Elisha Mercelina and Mamadou Wagué).
KUNSTY: Tink and Abra Flaherty: Gen X Gen Z (preview)
Wednesday 5 November, 7.45pm, Purcell Room.
Encounter a show about parenting, being parented and the ongoing process of becoming who you are, no matter what your age, with your family as your witness. Tom of Finland. Turkey Basters. Love Island. Raving at the Hacienda decades apart. Just the usual parent and child catch-up. For Tink (parent) and Abra (child), it’s just another Tuesday. This is a show about parenting when you have no blueprint and when you don’t know if you’re a mum or a dad. It’s about growing up when your politics at home are miles ahead of the outside world. Tink and Abra are at a critical point: Abra is becoming a woman, while Tink is becoming less of one. Their relationship, bodies and lives are changing, and so is society’s gaze on them both. Everything is up for grabs except their relationship.
“With our new series KUNSTY, we’re making a commitment to platforming new British work at the edges of dance, live art and cabaret – providing a space for the creators of the future and a place for audiences to discover the radical and the uncategorisable.
Aaron Wright, Head of Performance & Dance at the Southbank Centre
This Autumn/Winter season, we’re continuing to present innovative new work from international artists presenting work in London for the first time, including a shock performance piece by Brazil’s Carolina Bianchi, drawing on her own personal trauma, whilst dance from Belgium’s Jan Martens explores systemic patriarchy.”
KUNSTY: Bullyache: WHO HURT YOU?
Wednesday 5 November, 9pm, Queen Elizabeth Hall.
“Who Hurt You?” is set outside the home of a fading drag star, where she lives with her two backing dancers and two pianos. Despite her circumstances, she continues to perform her Vegas show to anyone who happens to pass by. The performers, now also directors, are lost in a state of traumatized amnesia after a long run on the Blackpool pleasure beach strip. They exploit their trauma, each vying for the spotlight. In this dystopian reality, physical spaces have broken down, theaters have closed, and there’s no money left, yet people still come out to perform, even if it’s just in a car park.The work heavily utilises autobiographical material and blurs the lines between character and self, audience and participant. The team is made up of legendary drag artist and pianist Barbs, Hofesh Schecter dancer Oscar Jinghu Li and composer/performer Magnus Westwell in partnership with Metal & Water.
KUNSTY: Jenny Moore: Wild Mix (World Premiere)
Thursday 6 November, 8.15pm, Purcell Room.
Rooted in communal singing, kickboxing, and drumming, this immersive musical embodies the daily practices of queer healing. Through a soaring six-part song cycle, multi-layered vocals, intense beats, and poignant storytelling, it asks: what does healing feel like? At its core is a unique instrument: a transparent boxing bag filled with water and equippedwith a hydrophone. Weighing 50 kilograms and towering like a human torso, the bag creates a deeply personal and physical sonic relationship, shaping our interactions to evoke sound; it’s the heartbeat of the soundscape. “Wild Mix” features a queer ensemble of five individuals: singers, drummers, and a kickboxer. They are friends, lovers, colleagues, and housemates.
KUNSTY: Cabrolé!
Thursday 6 November 9.30pm & Friday 7 November 10pm, Queen Elizabeth Hall Foyer.
A Flamenco-inspired queer cabaret from the mind of artist Patricia Langa.
Cabrolé! brings different communities together for a night of dance, song, queerness, joy, and community, with an ethos of love, acceptance, and self-expression for all. Flamenco was born in late 1800s Spain from a desire of marginalised and migrant communities to bring people together and to create a new communal language to express themselves. Embedded in the bodies, gestures, lyrics, and music of flamenco is a mix of people and their histories from India, Central America, Africa, Eastern Europe, and the Andalucian Roma community.
The name Cabrolé comes from the Spanish word ‘cabra’ for goat and the famous ‘olé’ meaning bravo. Goats are known for their rebellious souls, and olé is used to show your appreciation. ‘Cabrolé’ is a call to rebellion, on stage, and in glitter! Musical joy from the musicians of the Fin de Fiesta community invites the audience to their feet to dance and enjoy the rhythms of flamenco together after the show.
KUNSTY: Courtney May Robertson: HUNTER
Friday 7 November, 7pm, Queen Elizabeth Hall.
Inspired by horror, BDSM and melodrama, HUNTER plays with the redemptive process of a classic tragedy, in which a character comes to insight through suffering. But in this tragedy, performer and choreographer Courtney May Robertson performs ‘life-affirming monstrosities’ on herself and her life-size doppelganger. The duo – one flesh and blood, the other made of foam and silicone – portrays the internal torments and ecstasies of an individual in conflict with a society that holds purity as its moral standard. With an industrial soundscape composed by ‘Acidic Male’, HUNTER embraces self-destruction as an act of self-preservation.
KUNSTY: Justin Talplacido Shoulder: ANITO (UK Premiere)
Friday 7 November 8.45pm & Saturday 8 November 2pm, Purcell Room.
Enter a future folkloric world of dance-theatre, diasporic club cultures, projections, sound design and elaborate craft reimagining stories and myths for today. Co-created by Justin Talplacido Shoulder (The Glitter Militia, Club Ate), ANITO combines collective craft, puppetry, dance and experimental electronic music to reimagine these myths and stories for the now. It is a work rooted in Sydney’s underground queer and diasporic club scenes. The collective behind ANITO creates a ‘queer Filipino future folkloric space of storytelling’ that centres the importance of nature spirits, intuiting with them as guides towards imagining possible parallel futures.
KUNSTY: Harry Clayton-Wright: Mr Blackpool’s Seaside Spectacular (London Premiere).
Saturday 8 November at 9.30pm & 10.30pm, Queen Elizabeth Hall Foyer.
An end-of-the-pier show set at the end of the world, bringing stories from the life of a Blackpool entertainer to life in lurid technicolour and garish spectacle. Set in the not too distant future against the decimated backdrop of climate collapse or late stage capitalism – you decide, could be both – four Blackpool performers embed the history of ‘end of the pier’ entertainment, cabaret, variety, drag and dance into a series of turns inspired by conversations and autobiographical references to the performers, their lives and relationships to this iconic seaside town. Mr Blackpool’s Seaside Spectacular is created and performed in collaboration with Oliver Gregory, aka Miss Titty Kaka, an international showgirl sensation who started their performance career at Blackpool drag institution Funny Girls when they were 18 years old. Also featuring Aysh De Belle and Sam De Belle, a married dancing duo from Blackpool whose work has been seen on stage and screen.
Wet Mess: TESTO
Friday 28 – Saturday 29 November, 7.45pm, Purcell Room.
Combining movement with pre-recorded interviews, come and discover surreal spectacles, dykey desires and a choreography of guttural sexuality. Wet Mess pinches at the dull flesh of life where the magical is in the mundane and made-up shit becomes real.
