Sucktion, an opera with music by Anne LeBaron and poems by Douglas Kearney, is scored for soprano, laptop player, percussionist, and vacuum cleaner outfitted with sensors, played like a musical instrument. It follows a woman’s cyber-erotic transformation from abject housewife into a self-sufficient cyborg via the subversive use of a vacuum cleaner. The narrative arc progresses through six songs: Soap Aria, Sucktion Remix, Anniversorry, Cleaning House, Rabbitroombabot’rumba, and Cyborgasm. Live processing and pre-recorded material create the sonic environment and the two unseen male characters. The first performance of Sucktion, on the 2008 New Original Works Festival at REDCAT in downtown Los Angeles, featured Nina Eidsheim and members of soNu, the ensemble for which it was developed and written. Subsequent performances have taken place at the University of York, England, with soprano Marja Liisa Kay, and at Club Babel in Malmö, Sweden, also with Marja Kay and members of the Ensemble Ars Nova.

See video excerpts of Sucktion in Sweden, November 2009.

Marja | Nina with vacuum cleaner | Nina | Phil | soNu
(Additional photos can be seen in the gallery on the media page)