I love you Raja Feather Kelly

Raja Feather Kelly
has been doing some more thinking
about Andy "Drella" Warhol.
(photos by Andy Toad)

The name of this winning and humorous ensemble piece from dance artist Raja Feather Kelly might be The Feath3r Theory Presents: Andy Warhol's DRELLA (I Love You Faye Driscoll), as it appears in promotional materials, or The Feath3r Theory Presents: Andy Warhol's DRELLA (I Love You Faye Driscoll) Black by Popular Demand, as it appears in the black-on-pink program notes. Either way, you get the picture: a mashup of race, gender, the cult of personality, runway models in white face, drag and house culture, karaoke, mad juggling of archetypes and stereotypes and ebullient ballet steps performed in dirty ankle socks. Let's call this craftily messy beauty Drella for short--that name itself a shortening of Dracula and Cinderella and an invocation of Warhol.



For a few additional clues, I snipped this passage from the artist's statement on the beloved Faye Driscoll's Web site:

I am obsessed with the basic problem of being "somebody" in a world of other "somebodies," and in my work I attempt to pull apart this daily performance of self. I do this by enacting it in excess, blowing it up to the extreme in order to reveal its edges and create more space, more possibility for who we can be.

Likewise, Raja Feather Kelly is about creating more space and, from the looks of things, he knows exactly what to do with it.

Last call to see The Feath3r Theory in Drella at The Invisible Dog in Brooklyn is tonight, 7:30pm. The show runs 70 minutes, and there's not a dull minute among them.

Seating is very limited. Check here for possibilities or, if you can't get in, do as some neighbors did last night: Catch it all through the center's storefront window!

Drella afterparty tonight at 9pm (free and open to the public). Information here.

The Invisible Dog
51 Bergen Street (between Smith and Court Streets), Brooklyn
(map/directions)