Saturdays Live: Bones Tan Jones, Parasites of Pangu
Bones Tan Jones presents Parasites of Pangu, a dystopian opera exploring the world through the story of an archeologist of the future, based on a Chinese creation myth. Through apocalyptic veils and decaying soils, a hopeful future is envisioned. Expect lamenting arias, J-pop dance routines, spirits summoned from the Anthropocene and shapeshifting herbal deities. Part of the General Ecology project.
Written and Directed by
Bones Tan Jones
Performed with Monique Etienne (Flame of Perpetual Darkness), Chantel Foo (Swamp Witch), Chiyo Gomes (Prinx of the Underground) and Yodea Marquel Williams (Last Breath)
Choreography by
Monique Etienne
Chantel Foo
Sound Mix and Master
Alex Melysma
Bones Tan Jones is an artist and musician whose spiritual practice seeks to fuse activism and art to present an alternative, queer, optimistic dystopia. Approaching activism through art, creating diverse, eco-conscious narratives that aim to connect, their practice traverses pop music, sculpture, alter-egos, digital image and video, encouraging audiences to think more sustainably and ethically. Tan Jones is the founder of Shadow Sistxrs Fight Club, a physical and meta-physical self-defence class for women, non-binary people and QTIPoC. In 2016, Tan Jones was awarded the Yorkshire Sculpture Park’s graduate residency award.
Chiyo Gomes, AKA The Prinx of Provocation, is the unorthodox embodiment of Drag Royalty navigating the UK cabaret scene. Chiyo performs regularly alongside platforms like The Cocoa Butter Club, and produces “WOOF: Redefining Sexy”, their own smut night. Their work constantly dismantles gate-keeping and the unnecessary, yet ever-so-present, barriers QTPOC face when navigating the queer community. They strip, they host, they dance, they lip sync, and they deliver raw spoken word.
Growing up in gritty gyms and sweaty studios, Monique Etienne has been practicing martial arts since childhood. Earning a black belt in karate by the age of 13, she found Brazilian jiu-jitsu at 17 and has been practicing ever since. She facilitates physical self defence at Shadow Sistxrs Fight Club with Bones Tan Jones. With a background in ballet and Afro-Caribbean dance, she sees movement as kinetic healing and a way of connecting spirits.
Chantel Foo is an artist whose work encompasses movement, gesture and performance amongst other mediums. Trained in traditional Chinese dance, Foo’s practise currently explores glitching, unlearning formal notions of (gendered) beauty and the body as a script. Foo’s works are processual, exploring intimacy and departure. Her practice questions selfhood through role-playing and world building, producing and participating in alternate realities. Taking on personas to explore the limits of her own reality Foo has produced the choreography for Parasites of Pangu under the persona Cha-woon, an idol pop star.
Yodea Marquel Williams’ work explores queer futures informed by their spirituality in an open dialogue with their diasporic community and inherited histories. On a journey to connect to Black Indigenous ancestors YODEA unearths the migrations of these communities, kept hidden from us. YODEA’S first handmade collection RUSH debuted at London Queer Fashion Show 2018. The self-taught designer translates Black Indigenous memory by stretching the ways we learn and share knowledge.
Dedicated to our mother, and all the plants that have healed us along the way.
