Jack Doroshow, 78

Jack Doroshow, 78, Drag Pageant Impresario, Dies
by Neil Genzlinger, The New York Times, November 30, 2017

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Those rebellious Trocks, now on film!

REBELS ON POINTE

(2017, 90 minutes)

A film by Bobbi Jo Hart

An Icarus Films Release

This month, Icarus Films and director Bobbi Jo Hart will celebrate the US theatrical release of Hart's Rebels on Pointe, the first documentary devoted to the all-male Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo. For more than four decades, the New York-based Trocks have strapped on pointe shoes, delighting world-wide audiences with irreverent, accessible interpretations of ballet's classics. While the gender-bending is all in fun, their dancing also demonstrates serious technical capability and attention to detail.Artistic director Tory Dobrin sees no reason, he says, to choose between joke or no joke. The Trocks, says ABT's James Whiteside, an ardent admirer, strike "an incredible balance between high art and clever camp."

Generous with samples of the troupe on stage, Hart's film is also lavish with clips of interviews with and about the dancers. We come to appreciate their work ethic, their drive to perform and the joys and challenges of day-to-day life within and outside of dance.

I only wish Hart had delved a little deeper, seizing an opportunity to contextualize the Trocks's achievements. Dance fans can now explore an exciting landscape in which openly queer, trans and gender non-conforming artists expand how we see, read and respond to dance, both classical and contemporary. It would have been interesting to hear from out-lesbian dance artist and educator Katy Pyle whose Ballez--a philosophy, practice and company--is designed to re-write "the narratives of Story Ballets to tell the history of our lineage, as dancers, and as queers" and re-imagine "Archetypal characters to reflect multiplicity: of identity, desire and expression." And Pyle is only one of many artists upending conventional roles and affirming more gender fluidity in dance today.

Rebels on Pointe leans more personal than political, though, of course, these things glide along a spectrum. It's more of a glance behind the scenes and the dressing room door but, if you love people, love dancers, love the Trocks, that might be enough.

See Rebels on Pointe 

in the following theaters:

New York City: opening November 15 at Quad Cinema

Los Angeles: opening November 24 at Laemmle Music Hall

Chicago: opening November 24 at Gene Siskel Film Center

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Diane Torr, 68

Obituary: Diane Torr, artist who challenged notions of gender
by David Pollock, The Scotsman, June 27, 2017

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Drag for a good cause: Homecoming Queens light up Gibney

Homecoming Queens,
a benefit for New York's Harvey Milk High School,
featured drag performers
such as members of Haus of Umpteen Corpses
with Ragamuffin (second from right)
(photo: Eric Berey)

Kalandra Bankhead
(photo: Chris Barley)

Homecoming Queens--a drag showcase presented at Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center this past Wednesday--was a first for Gibney and fantastic fun. The brisk-paced program was hosted by Gibney Dance's 2016 boo-koo Artist in Residence, Ashley R.T. Yergens, who knows how to introduce just the right degree of looseness and absurdity. And it was supported by an excellent technical team, directed by Asami Morita, particularly nifty with lighting the intimate studio setting. We could almost imagine we were in a cabaret.

Highlights included Vic Sin, preternaturally limber and definitively regal in beard and mien; Ragamuffin (Jesse Forte White), powerful in energy and gaze, surprising us with Anne Carson's words on tragedy, rage and grief; the ebullient and warped lady bedbug (Kelindah Schuster) and her...er...was that a crocodile puppet?; transmasculine K.James in his perfect, smoking-hot tribute to the late George Michael, and lots of imaginative extra-extra from The Dauphine of Bushwick (Tyler Ashley), The Haus of Umpteen Corpses (Angelica Sundae, MEGABABE and Mini Horrorwitz) and Kalandra Bankhead.

A good time was had by all, and I certainly hope it raised a good amount of cash for its beneficiary, New York's Harvey Milk High School, founded in 1985 and dedicated to respect, safety, nurturance and excellence for all students.

Homecoming Queens is closed. For information on future events at Gibney Dance, click here.


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Jim Bailey, 77

Jim Bailey, Character Actor in Drag, Dies at 77
by Bruce Weber, The New York Times, June 2, 2015

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)

She Gone Tarot: Flawless Sabrina reads Whitney Biennial artist

2014 Whitney Biennial artists Zackary Drucker and Rhys Ernst visit the apartment of drag performance icon Flawless Sabrina, who features in Drucker and Ernst’s video She Gone Rogue. Flawless Sabrina performs a Tarot reading for Drucker and the two discuss the pitfalls of success.

Watch video (2:36)