It was 9 a.m. at the Yard’s rustic Chilmark campus when drag queen Betty Bootleg turned on the Rihanna.
“I’ve been up since 5 a.m. putting my face on. I’ve had one cup of coffee. So we’re going to have a great time today,” she told a group of about a dozen dancers gathered for the morning contemporary high heels dance class.
After warming up, Betty zipped up a pair of thigh-high patent leather high-heeled boots and instructed the dancers to line up in a corner of the open air barn studio. They would take turns walking across to the other side, Grown Woman by Beyoncé pumping through the speakers.
Betty demonstrated, her presence completely arresting as she moved through the space. “This is when you’re going to show me — and yourself — what you feel like,” she told the class.
This week, for the sixth year, the Yard has been celebrating LGBTQ+ people and art with a week of talks, family bowling, performances, dance classes, and a highly anticipated public dance hall. It is called Pride, Not Prejudice, and this year it coincides with the 50th anniversary of the riots against police at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village that are now known as a catalyst in the gay rights movement.
As part of the celebration, renowned New York playwright Ain Gordon brings his play Radicals in Miniature to the main stage at the Yard on Thursday and Saturday nights. The play is a collaboration with composer Josh Quillen and a involves 13 video monitors stacked on stage. Mr. Gordon said Radicals in Miniature seeks to uncover the legacies of people who have been forgotten, many of whom contributed to the gay rights movement.
“It began because a bunch of people who are a little older than me who were influential to me and the field, in terms of how to be an artist or how to be a queer person, began to die kind of unnoticed,” Mr. Gordon said. “And I thought maybe I could make a theatrical tribute to them.”
As the list of people began to grow, Mr. Gordon limited himself only to people for whom a Google search resulted in 10 or fewer results. The first person the play honors is a New York club performer named John Sex. He died of complications from AIDs in the early 1990s.
“We refer to him as an un-famous legend,” Mr. Gordon said. “I first met him when I was 16 at the Mudd Club. He had bleach blonde hair in a 10-inch high pompadour.”
He said the show feels like an intervention, like a last minute rescue from anonymity.
“It feels good to keep giving these figures another outing, another moment of visibility,” he said.
Much of Mr. Gordon’s work has to do with reconsidering history. He said he is pleased the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots is bringing some nuance to the understanding of what happened over the course of those three days, and all the work and activism that led up to that point. He mentioned the participation of trans women of color Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Ray Rivera in particular.
“If we accept a reductive history then we do not see precedent in all its shape and form, and that’s what leads people to feel like they are alien, and there has been no one like them before and no place for them before,” Mr. Gordon said. “But if we can get all the shapes and colors of history we will see that there has always been a place for each of us.”
On the Island, the Yard’s pride celebration has become the central one. Artistic director David White said in the field of arts and dance, celebrating diverse identities and sexualities is a matter of course.
“We looked around and there weren’t any at least overt celebrations of pride that we could find [six years ago], so it seemed like something that would be a good thing not only for the Yard but for the Island,” he said.
This year, the Yard looked to welcome more people into its pride celebration by moving out of Chilmark, co-producer Jessie Keller Jason said. There was a lecture at the Hebrew Center in Vineyard Haven on Tuesday and family bowling at the Barn Bowl and Bistro on Wednesday.
“That was kind of a big goal. We wanted to explore making more of a community-involved festival,” Ms. Keller Jason said.
The annual pride dance party takes place Friday, June 28, at Nomans (formerly Lola’s) in Oak Bluffs. DJ Frida Calor and dancer choreographer TruDee will perform.
At the Yard Wednesday morning, sunlight filtered down through the leaves and a breeze passed through the open barn. A bug flew in and landed on Betty Bootleg’s thigh, and a dancer came over and brushed it off. Betty cheered as her dancers made their way across the floor. They ranged in age and experience levels, but with Betty’s guidance they all exhibited the same fearlessness, boldness, pride.
“Oh my God that was so much fun to watch you guys,” Betty said. “It’s blossoming.”
Comments
Comment policy »