Ballroom with a difference: Freedman's "Hot to Trot"

Ernesto Palma and Nikolai Shpakov,
ballroom competition dancers,
appear in Gail Freedman's Hot to Trot.
(photo: Curt Worden)

Emily Coles and Kieren Jameson
(photo: Robert Cortlandt)

The international ballroom dance competition scene was largely unfamiliar to me when I sat down to watch Gail Freedman's documentary Hot to Trot. If you asked what I thought of same-sex competitive ballroom dancing, I would have cheered because hooray, I'm a lesbian! There was no way to anticipate that, by the end of nearly 90 minutes, I'd find tears pooling in my eyes and realize I cared deeply about the people Freedman had so gently, carefully introduced to me. A lesson in a niche of a niche of the dance world offers a space to think about what it means to be human.

The film follows the twists, turns, dips and changing partnerships in the lives of same-sex ballroom dancers--like the charismatic, creatively ambitious Ernesto Palma, raised in poverty in Costa Rica, a former meth addict for whom dancing is emotional self-care; the Russian Nikolais Shpakov who blossoms as a performer as he grows more confident in his gay identity; and Emily Coles, battling diabetes as she strives to create beauty. "It's Fred and Fred and Ginger and Ginger," quips a judge at California's annual April Follies competition. But it's more than that: It's people you might know. The personal is political, as we used to say, and the intimacy--enhanced by Freedman's team of cinematographers and her editor--makes for compelling viewing.

Cinematography: Joel Shapiro, Diana Wilmar, John Cummings, Vanessa Carr
Editing: Dina Potocki

Opens Friday, August 24 at Quad Cinema (New York) and Friday, September 14 at Laemmle Music Hall Theater (Los Angeles)

Quad Cinema
34 West 13th Street (between 5th and 6th Avenues), Manhattan
(map/directions)

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Debra Chasnoff, 60

Debra Chasnoff, Whose Films Redefined Gay Families, Dies at 60
by Sam Roberts, The New York Times, November 14, 2017

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Queer NY presents Mamela Nyamza's "HATCHED"

South African dance artist Mamela Nyamza
in her solo, HATCHED, at Abrons Arts Center
 (photos: John Hogg)

Did I hear right?

It took several years of effort for Shay Wafer's 651 Arts--now co-presenting with Queer New York International Arts Festival--to finally bring South African dancer Mamela Nyamza to New York?

And for only one night?

Curated by Marýa Wethers, Nyamza's HATCHED introduced an artist I wish more New Yorkers could have experienced. Attendance was sparse. Every seat in Abrons Arts Center's Playhouse theater should have been claimed.

(photo: John Hogg)

Abrons has smaller, less formal and more flexible spaces well-suited to alternative dance and performance. But Nyamza pointedly mixed the classically formal (tutu, pointe work, port de bras, Saint-Saëns) with the unexpected (blood-red laundry, looking, for all the world, like flayed flesh or butcher cuts, that she hung to dry on a line strung between the wings). She needed honest-to-god proscenium space for the razzle dazzle of her visual imagery and lighting. She created a jarring, split-awareness for audience members first to take their seats before the show began. We listened to The Dying Swan and gazed out on Nyamza's bare back, shaved head, waves of crimson fabric engulfing her white tulle as, beyond the hall's flung-open doors, stragglers continued their loud chatter.

From the outset, HATCHED announces itself as both forbidding and irresistible--and sacred--very much in its own space, which we must focus to approach.

And it was no surprise when, during the post-show Q&A with Wethers, Nyamza revealed that, in performance, she goes into her "zone," communing with her deceased mother and other ancestors, and that she aims to welcome us into the work while maintaining an unbreachable distance.

Dramatically reflecting the tension between Nyamza's ballet training--with which she maintains a complicated relationship--and her Xhosa heritage and artistry, the solo suggests a search for her true self beyond all external structures, expectations, appearances. Her work is sourced in her life. Married and a mother, Nyamza left her husband for a woman and now exults in her life as an out lesbian. The personal is the political is the poetic.

Let's hope for more chances to see what Nyamza, an artist of arresting skill and a woman of much charm, might have to offer. I hope it will not take long for her to return to New York's venues.

HATCHED is closed, but for other events in the 2016 Queer New York International Arts Festival--running through October 2 at various venues--click here.

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Elizabeth Swados, 64

Elizabeth Swados, Creator of Socially Conscious Musicals, Is Dead at 64
by William Grimes, The New York Times, January 5, 2016

Closing tomorrow: "Hildegard (vision)" at La MaMa

Multi-talented Marina Celander is the elegance central to Hildegard (vision), a curious interdisciplinary work running now through Sunday at La MaMa. Directed by Gian Marco Lo Forte with writing by Abby Felder and music by John Sully (Pioneers Go East Collective), the hour-long piece aims to offer insight into the physiological and emotional experiences of medieval German composer, scientist and mystic Hildegard von Bingen whose migraines triggered futuristic visions.

The immediacy of setting--a row of audience seats surround performers on three sides of the narrow, rectangular, brick-lined theater--provides the sensation of a dream externalized. Colors and textures feel intimate to viewers; the attractive, live green of the abbess's plants, the gleaming clear or dark amber glass of science beakers and bottles, are particularly striking visual elements. The space contains, all at once, everything it needs, collapsing the separation between one point in history and another era. We watch Hildegard, with assistant and same-sex lover Richardis von Stade, potting and tending the plants as they converse just as we clearly see centuries ahead to the commonplace of men and women side by side in their labs.

"We are vessels. We are women. How can we transcend so many barriers?" Celander asks shortly before von Stade (Nehprii Amenii) pulls out a videocam from out of somewhere and trains it on her abbess's face. The subtle interactions between these two--the dynamics of Celander's faint but detectable withdrawal, her self-containment, and Amenii's confused, quiet discomfort--drew me into the work. Regrettably, the text--in it plainness and in telling us what we likely already know--lacks the poetic vision to soar with Hildegard's celestial artistry.

Hildegard (vision) has two more performances: tonight at 7:30pm and Sunday at 2pm. Seating is limited. For information and tickets, click here.

La MaMa: First Floor Theatre
74a East 4th Street (between 2nd and 3rd Avenue), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Out on the Fringe: Shamamian shakes the earth she loves

Louisine Shamamian
(photo: Kyle MaKrauer)

Courage can take many different forms. Comic Louisine Shamamian binds together distinct forms of true courage in her new monologue, Shake the Earth (FringeNYC), directed by Misti B. Wills. But don't expect one of her standup routines or her offbeat "lesbian matchmaker to the straights" videos.

While Shake the Earth has sweetly amusing moments, its Armenia-born writer-performer earnestly imparts two stories--her immigrant youth and coming out in Brooklyn and the Turkish oppression and slaughter of its Armenian population, including members of her family. This year marks the centenary of the Armenian genocide, a crime still denied by the Turkish government. In fact, in today's Turkey, it's criminal to even breathe the words "Armenian genocide." Shamamian breaks all silence--personal and political.

First, she charms us with family portraits and vignettes. As a kid, her red shock of hair and her size made her stand out; her kin called her "a red round tomato." There were enormous, festive gatherings with "women cooking for days." She recites a litany of food and its flavorful ingredients, the music, the dancing. You know how it goes--familial and, even to this Bajan-American, instantly familiar, the same sort of memories for many in an audience hailing from around the American melting pot.

Curious about the odd eating habits of one relative, the young Shamamian began asking questions and eventually researching the genocide with a "passion for a mythical place," her Armenia. At the same time, another life-altering passion stirred--a crush on a beautiful Black butch who returned her interest. Her sweetheart "didn't entertain shame." They became the first openly queer couple in their high school.

Shamamian took a big step in coming out to her mother. I don't know if the comic is aware of this, but her mom's initial reaction ("There are no gay people in Armenia!") syncs up perfectly with the words of comedian Margaret Cho's mom ("There are no gays in Korea!") in Cho's I'm The One That I Want performance. Some day, these two mothers--both of whom came around because they love their daughters--should really get together.

On occasion, Shamamian falls into a didactic tone that feels arid and artificial. There must be more efficient ways to impart facts than these flat, inserted teachings. (Expand the brief notes on genocide in your program? Project some text on the curtain behind you?) But she hits her high point with a recounting of one man's amazing escape from a Turkish work camp near Aleppo, Syria. We learn the source of her dedication to accurate history and honesty about the continued threat to Armenians and Kurds.

"Hold this information with me today," she says. "It is all I ask."

In accordance, each audience member receives a forget-me-not pin--the centennial symbol not only of past suffering but also the hoped-for unity, futurity and eternity of the Armenian people.

Remaining performances of Shake the Earth:

Saturday, August 22 (7pm)

Monday, August 24 (2pm)

Saturday, August 29 (8:45 pm)

For information and tickets, click here or here.

Read an interview with Shamamian here.

For information on all programming of the 2015 New York International Fringe Festival (FringeNYC), continuing through August 30, click here.

Spectrum

121 Ludlow Street (between Delancey and Rivington Streets), 2nd floor,  Manhattan

(map/directions)

Publisher Lisa C. Moore lists most influential Black lesbian writers

I wouldn’t be the editor — or the person — I am today if I hadn’t read the work of these extraordinary women.

 --Lisa C. Moore, publisher, Redbone Press

Read more at:

The Black Lesbian Writers You Need To Be Reading
by Lisa C. Moore, Buzzfeed LGBT, July 28, 2015

Marga Gomez has a big problem--and shares it in POUND!

Marga Gomez
(photo: Kent Taylor)

Now that Pride weekend is done and gone, and the USA women's soccer team has its way through New York's Canyon of (She)roes, what's left to do, people?

Opening night's standing ovation made the answer clear. The Dixon Place to be is at POUND, a presentation of the 2015 HOT! Festival and the latest one-lesbian show from Marga Gomez, directed by David Schweizer. You'll need some stamina; the monologue feels much longer than its advertised 75-minutes and could use a few scissor snips. But if you find Hollywood movies involving lesbians in any way absurd and surreal--and why wouldn't you?--you'll laugh your head off.

Gomez whip-blends encyclopedic knowledge of movies and culture, rambunctious physicality, and tireless ability to zip from character to character, decade to decade and gentrified coast to gentrified coast without much mussing her lumberjack flannel. If Bound is on your Favorites list, try POUND. If you agree with Gomez that Basic Instinct made America "a little afraid of lesbians," and that's a really good thing, try POUND. If, like Gomez back in the day, you relied upon the National Legion of Decency to actually be your dyke-flick recommender, try POUND.

POUND continues Fridays and Saturdays, July 11, 17, 18, 24 and 25 at 7:30pm. Click here for information and tickets.

Comic monologist Reno
performs free shows at Dixon Place
during the 2015 HOT! Festival.

Another HOT! tip: Also see Ignorance Is No Excuse, Reno, an hour with the matchless comic provocateuse at Dixon Place--free!--Mondays, now through August 3, at 7:30pm. Click here.

For more HOT! Festival events, click here.

Dixon Place
161A Chrystie Street (between Rivington and Delancey Streets), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Your witness wanted: Attend Fire & Ink this fall.

Author Randall Kenan
will be the keynote speaker
at Fire & Ink, IV in Detroit.

Fire & Ink IV: Witness

October 8-11, Detroit, MI

REGISTER NOW!

"Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have."

—James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

Keynote speaker Randall Kenan is the author of a novel, A Visitation of Spirits; two works of non-fiction, Walking on Water: Black American Lives at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century and The Fire This Time; and a collection of stories, Let the Dead Bury Their Dead. He edited and wrote the introduction for The Cross of Redemption: The Uncollected Writings of James Baldwin. Among his awards are a Guggenheim Fellowship, the North Carolina Award, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Rome Prize. He is a Professor of English and Comparative Literature at UNC-Chapel Hill.

Fire & Ink IV: Witness is a writers festival that will address the urgent question of what it means to bear witness as LGBTQ and SGL writers of African descent and heritage in the 21st century. Merriam-Webster offers these definitions of "witness": One that gives evidence. One who is present at an event and can say that it happened. One who testifies in a cause. An attestation of fact. One who has personal knowledge of something. Public affirmation by word or example of usually religious faith or conviction. We invite Black LGBTQ and SGL writers and artists to assay their own definitions of witness.

Fire & Ink is a nonprofit organization devoted to increasing the understanding, visibility and awareness of the works of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender writers of African descent and heritage.

Wanda Sykes interviewed by Judy Gold at 92Y

Wanda Sykes
(photo: Malcolm Jason Low)

If the delightful, Emmy-winning Wanda Sykes were to be offered Jon Stewart's Daily Show, would she take it?

After all, wouldn't it be great to have a woman--and, way better still, an out, activist lesbian of color--running with the late-night wolves?

Wanda Sykes
(photo: Eva Yaa Asantewaa)

With Judy Gold at right, Wanda Sykes greets fans at 92Y.
(photo: Malcolm Jason Low)

The Daily Show correspondent Jessica Williams, touted all over social media as a top choice, has recently asserted that she does not want this challenge. A nation--well, a nation of women of color--might well turn their lonely eyes to Sykes who, for a short time, did host her own late-night talk show on Fox.

She's not saying yes. But she's not exactly saying no. At least, during her 92Y conversation last night with Emmy-winning colleague Judy Gold, she seemed to keep a fan's hope alive.

"How can you follow Jon Stewart? He was so good," Sykes first responded to the question. "Who knows?"

After citing family priorities, though, she added, "But if they asked me, how could you not?"

Pay attention to that last sentence. "But If they asked me" is far from a casual line with this particular talent. As Sykes outlined her pathway in the entertainment business--as multifaceted comedy writer and performer--it became clear that she's consistently approached and invited by folks like Chris Rock and Larry David who know she's right for their projects. Listening carefully to Sykes's history, Gold noted, with a flicker of envy and shade, that Sykes seems to never have had to audition for a part. The industry knows her worth. Even the Obamas know her worth, tapping her in 2009 to be the featured entertainer at the annual White House Correspondents' Association dinner--a first for a Black woman or anyone queer.

Gratitude is a big operating principle for Sykes, as it should be, given the blossoming of her career, love life and family life as wife to Alex and co-mom to their twins. If truth be told here, Sykes has got to be one of the luckiest people in showbiz.

Although it might be inscribed "in the US Constitution," as the two comics joked, that late-night talk shows have to hosted by white men, surely it's time for a new amendment to that constitution.

Visit Wanda Sykes's Web site here, and Gold's site here.

Keep up with happenings at 92Y by clicking here.

Lesley Gore, 68

Lesley Gore, ‘It’s My Party’ Singer-Songwriter, Dies at 68
The Associated Press, February 16, 2015

Free screening: Dee Rees's acclaimed "Pariah" at BAAD!

Friday, February 6

at BAAD!

5pm -- screening of Pariah

6:30pm -- open mic

8:30 -- dance contest

This free event begins with the powerful coming out/coming-of-age film about a 17-year-old African-American woman quietly but firmly embracing her identity as a lesbian and living with her parents and younger sister in Brooklyn's Fort Greene neighborhood. She strives to love, be loved and get through adolescence with grace, humor, and tenacity. Directed by Dee Rees and executive produced by Spike Lee.

The screening will be followed by an open mic/open stage for youth and all to express themselves and a dance contest with a $50 cash prize.

Click here to view Pariah's trailer.

BAAD!
2474 Westchester Avenue, Bronx (map/directions)
718-918-2110
BAADBronx@gmail.com

Leslie Feinberg, 65

Transgender Pioneer and Stone Butch Blues Author Leslie Feinberg Has Died
by Minnie Bruce Pratt, The Advocate, November 17, 2014

Nancy Garden, 76

Nancy Garden Dies at 76; Wrote Young Adult Novel of Lesbians
by Margalit Fox, The New York Times, June 30, 2014

Stormé DeLarverie, 93 [UPDATE]

Iconic treasure of the LGBT Community Stormé DeLarverie passed away peacefully early Saturday morning, May 25th
Henrietta Hudson blog, May 25, 2014

Storme: The Lady of the Jewel Box (1987), a film by Michelle Parkerson

Storme DeLarverie, Early Leader in the Gay Rights Movement, Dies at 93
by William Yardley, The New York Times, May 29, 2014

Programming a lesbian play? Well, we'll just shut you down!

USC Upstate closes gender studies center that booked lesbian play
by Alison Piepmeier, Charleston City Paper, May 13, 2014

Creatively angry: J Dellecave at HERE

Scenes from J Dellacave's Angry Women REvisited
(photos by Benjamin Lundberg)

In Angry Women REvisted, J Dellecave (director/sound designer) and a host of collaborator/performers create a fantasia from an illustrious source text, Angry Women, Andrea Juno's 1991 book of interviews with Diamanda Galás, Holly Hughes, Annie Sprinkle, Lydia Lunch and twelve other radical women performance artists.

The theater piece, now at HERE Arts Center through Sunday evening, seems deliberate and idealistic in its nostalgic, unsophisticated roughness--picking up tools and trying out a palette of styles out of the past. It can feel draggy, longer than its 70-minute running time, but it's a pleasure whenever a coherent, communal energy radiates from it, mainly through an effective and affecting use of music (Röyksopp's catchy, if eerie, "What Else Is There?" animating each performer in increasingly intense, individual ways while uniting them all across a range of cultures and genders) and a poetic imagery of movement (a solemn procession of people, some of whom turn out of line like pages in a volume; a Shiva-like stack of dancers with snaking arms and wine tumblers). If nothing else, I'm motivated to pick up the book. Reason for anger remains; reason for questioning what community is, who it includes or empowers, excludes and silences, and how it does or does not move forward remains, too.

With performers Avi-Rose, Angela Beallor, Joshua Bastian Cole, Kate Conroy, Gaby Cryan, lizxnn disaster, Roo Khan, daniel rosza lang/levitsky, Sloan Lesbowitz, zavé martohardjono, niknaz, Azure D. Osborne-Lee, Jenny Romaine, Zachary Wager Scholl and Alma Sheppard-Matsuo

Performances at 7pm through Sunday with an additional 2pm matinee on Saturday

For ticket information, click here.

HERE Arts Center
145 Sixth Avenue, Manhattan
(entrance on Dominick Street, one block south of Spring Street)
(map/directions)

26th Annual Lambda Literary Award Finalists Announced

26th Annual Lambda Literary Award Finalists Announced
Lambda Literary, March 6, 2014

2014 marks the debut of the Graphic Novel category. The awards ceremony will be held on Monday, June 2, at The Great Hall at Cooper Union, New York City.

For complete information and tickets, click here.

All you sinners and saints, come to a staged reading of INDIGO

SINNERS AND SAINTS FESTIVAL

curated by

Imani Uzuri

presents a special musical staged reading of

INDIGO, A BLUES OPERA 

by Karma Mayet Johnson

at Jack

Thursday, February 27, 7:30pm

At the intersection of ancestral conjure, herstorical fact, and raw ritual, INDIGO, A BLUES OPERA investigates the lesbian roots of the Blues through the lens of two lovers who refused to remain enslaved. Take the journey back to 1853 and remember...ONE NIGHT ONLY!!!

Followed by artist talk with playwright, composer and performer Karma Mayet Johnson moderated by composer, vocalist, cultural worker Toshi Reagon

Advance purchase strongly recommended. For ticket information, click here.

Jack
505 1/2 Waverly Avenue, Clinton Hill, Brooklyn
(map/directions)

Uzuri's Sinners and Saints Festival (February 26-March 1) celebrates "Black American vernacular culture (Ring Shouts, Spirituals, Blues, early Gospel, Line Singing, Praise Houses, Jazz) and their contemporary counterparts" and "improv as an ecstatic tradition and the ways in the ways in which secular and sacred often intertwine in these cultural systems."

For complete information about the Sinners and Saints Festival, click here.

For LA poet Eloise Klein Healy, a time to heal and reconnect

Eloise Klein Healy finds poetry in her recovery from encephalitis
by Patt Morrison, Los Angeles Times, January 8, 2014