Tiara Sensation - avant-drag pageant
The 1st annual Tiara Sensation avant-drag pageant was birthed into the world by the SomeThing team of VivvyAnne ForeverMore, dj down-E, and Mr. David aka Glamamore (pictured above). It was an only-in-San Francisco, queer-freaks-do-it-better, oh-no-she-didn’t, genius night out. As co-host Mr. David stated just before the pageant winner was announced, all the queens were gorgeous and gave fabulous performances. That wasn’t just generous, it was necessary. Experimental, messy, and postmodern drag in San Francisco (since the Cockettes, since Klubstitute, since Jerome Caja and Phatima at Uranus, since Kiki and Herb, since the early days of Trannyshack…) means that almost every queen or king invents her own genre of performance. That makes pageant judging either ridiculous, impossible, or ummm intuitive...
Tiara Sensation
Dec 5, 2010
@ Temple (in San Francisco)
The 1st annual Tiara Sensation avant-drag pageant was birthed into the world by the SomeThing team of VivvyAnne ForeverMore, dj down-E, and Mr. David aka Glamamore (pictured above). It was an only-in-San Francisco, queer-freaks-do-it-better, oh-no-she-didn’t, genius night out. As co-host Mr. David stated just before the pageant winner was announced, all the queens were gorgeous and gave fabulous performances. That wasn’t just generous, it was necessary. Experimental, messy, and postmodern drag in San Francisco (since the Cockettes, since Klubstitute, since Jerome Caja and Phatima at Uranus, since Kiki and Herb, since the early days of Trannyshack…) means that almost every queen or king invents her own genre of performance. That makes pageant judging either ridiculous, impossible, or ummm intuitive. How to compare Alotta Bouté’s sophisticated and super confident Harlem renaissance approach to burlesque with Phatima’s minimalist reciting of Journey’s Don’t’ Stop Believing? Bouté is a high-femme diva with massively voluptuous and real T & A whose wig and costume owe as much to Patti Labelle, Josephine Baker and the un-named black femmes of history as to anything that drag queens (of any race) have originated. Phatima is a gender-queer life artist famous for legendary go-go dancing at Uranus in the 90s. Neither of these performers would ever be included in most drag contests, especially outside of San Francisco. Of course with today’s post/feminist queer eye, Patti is a faux queen and Baker is recognized as pioneering the re-appropriation of minstrel that contemporary SF queens now take for granted.
We’ve seen a faux queen win a major drag title in San Francisco. At Trannyshack we weren’t surprised when drag kings were included in the performance line-up, and we grew to expect all manner of queens with diversely gendered back-up dancers. But when Fauxnique won Miss Trannyshack 2003, she cleared a path not just for other women-who-dress-like-men-who-dress-like-women but she participated in a movement of RG’s (real girls to some, cisgender females to others) queering gay male spaces and stages. Female roles at the drag bar expanded from butch drag king and adoring fan fag-hag to include femme dyke fashionistas, faux queen dignitaries (incl. Scissor Sister Ana Matronic), transwomen, and the new gen of women – queer and hetero, with their boyfriends or boi friends – who feel at home in gay spaces, some who have been bff with queer boys since middle school. It feels awfully suburban to try to describe this scene or give some historical context to explain how a drag pageant in SF could have among it’s four judges, a faux-queen called Hoku Mama Swamp who said she was looking for performances that were retarded or offensive (in a good way), Gina LaDivina, an icon of late night queer San Francisco and celebrated as the $65,000 silicone wonder, and Sister Roma, a local drag celebrity, journalist and community organizer with the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. The Sisters are simultaneously a real holy order, a camp political satire and an international community.
All this attempt at context, but how to describe the performances? Co-hostess VivvyAnne ForeverMore opened the show with an insane number. She and Mona G. Hawd appeared on giant stilts extending from both arms and legs, like lady insects with massive thorax/abdomens. They looked fucking weird, or fucking great. The audience screamed. Cross-species drag. Snap. The red veil and plastic wig kept falling to obscure Vivvyanne’s face. In this kind of poor theater drag show, we expect this kind of home-made craft disaster. In fact we love it. And the only thing better is when the queen figures out how to fix or destroy the failing headdress without fucking up the lipsynch. Snap snap snap.
Contestants were judged in two categories, presentation and talent. For presentation, ‘Lil Miss Hot Mess arrived in gold lamé spandex lyotard and tights with a light bulb on her head and an 8 foot plank of lightbulbs held across her shoulders. A gold six-pointed star made of craftily painted cardboard was attached at her crotch. Nodding her head to the music, the lights came on sequentially, one for each day of Chanukah. Drag as living menorah. She was only the 2nd queen on the stage but many of us felt that we were already looking at the winner.
Political critique flourished at Tiara Sensation. Phatima’s presentation outfit involved a one-of-a-kind, DIY couture, plaid jacket. On the back was a quilted swastika of American flag stars. ‘Lil Miss Hot Mess and Monistat both cited queer protest history in their background videos. ‘Lil Miss Hot Mess took the ‘It gets better’ campaign and flipped it furiously, seizing the youtube airwaves from the insincere politicians and popstars and giving it back to the fierce actions of those who took the streets from MLK Jr to ActUp. With a gospel choir in rainbow-colored robes, ‘Lil Miss Hot Mess led the full congregation in an ecstatic church revival of revolutionary gay pride, lipsynching ecstatically “everything's gonna be all right. It's gonna be okay,” from Dolly Parton’s Light of a Clear Blue Morning. And somehow she used camp to trump irony (just like Dolly!) and we clapped along, healing ourselves and honoring the ancestors by raising energy in the queer Temple. Elijah Minnelli and two backup queens wore full drag face and long wigs with giant six-armed cockroach costumes. After a video of Minnelli crying over spilled milk, the roach queens emerged from behind giant replicas of the milk, cereal and sugar in the video. When Destiny Child’s Survivor burst from the speakers the crowd roared. The cockroach as survivor; the queer as cockroach. The adamant repetitions of “I’m a surviver, I’m not gonna give up, I’m gonna make it” speak as much to a showgirl’s efforts to triumph as to the every-queer in the audience knowing that we have to fight just to survive. Like the cockroach we have always been here and always will be. (Of course the Destiny’s Child video of this song is noted for its silly blacksploitation and sexploitation, a neo-minstrel of black female exotica so problematic that it survives as a cult classic and therefore a drag classic.) As for every queen inventing her own genre, I recognize that there were two numbers in one evening where interspecies drag resulted in glam lady insects.
I’m tired. It’s 3am. The buzz has worn off but I haven’t finished telling you about all the crazy wonderful surprising performances that happened. Mercedes Monroe performed a virtuosic lipsynch (Ella Fitzgerald perhaps?) that seemed it might be too-classic-drag-for-this-pageant. I didn’t pay attention for a couple of minutes but when I returned my gaze to the stage it was clear that something extraordinary was happening. This number was like a work of endurance art, a slow burn that grew in importance to those patient enough to focus. Try to imagine memorizing and replicating an extended vocal jazz scat improvisation of hums and oohs, growls and moans, eees and ayayays. This bitch (as in superstar diva showing us all that we don’t work hard enough) hit every note, every slurred syllable. This was cirque du soleil, you’ve never seen this before, kinda shit. The longer she endured, the closer we gathered together to focus on her mouth’s mimetic acrobatics. At about the 6 minute mark she pulled the mic from its stand and raised the energetic stakes. We went with her, twitching to every perfectly timed pelvic thrust and shoulder punctuation, continuing to marvel that she was still perfectly aligned with the vocals. When the song finished, she was triumphant, and we made a lot of noise in gratitude.
By the way, ‘Lil Miss Hot Mess was crowned Miss Tiara Sensation, and she deserved it. And yah, the whole event was near perfect thanks to the outrageous dedication and vision of all contestants, hosts, judges, and crew. People who think they need to win grants to make art (or community or revolution) really need to visit a weekly drag bar or annual pageant. The audience at Tiara Sensation was really cute and well-dressed despite their sometimes trendy conformity but they were too few in number and I blame that on the too-expensive tickets not on the rain.
PS.
The expensive tickets hopefully generated some profits that will be shared with The Offcenter, a burgeoning crew of queer artists working to establish a venue for queer performance in the wake of the demise of Mama Calizo’s Voice Factory. The Offcenter’s next project is a co-production with my own Zero Performance, a 10-hour marathon of queered performance called Too Much! Jan 23 2011 at Dance Mission, SF. Last year’s Too Much! was legendary by its 5th or 6th hour. Don’t miss it.
Photo of the SomeThing team by Cabure, retouched by Juanita MORE!
QUEER! a workshop
In late July I taught a five-day class called Queer! at Impulstanz, a big contemporary dance fest in Vienna.
Satu Herrala, one of the participants wrote about the class for Corpus a cool site that you can check out here.
http://www.corpusweb.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1263&Itemid=35
I didn't have a particular pedagogy for the class but each day I worked with an idea or a particular theorist and tried to come up with improvisation and composition exercise to explore that idea, e.g., Gloria Anzaldúa on borderlands, Trinh, T. Minh-ha on movement between margins and centers, Kate Bornstein's work on analyzing one's personal gender(s)...
Satu Herrala, one of the participants wrote about the class for Corpus a cool site that you can check out here.
http://www.corpusweb.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1263&Itemid=35
I didn't have a particular pedagogy for the class but each day I worked with an idea or a particular theorist and tried to come up with improvisation and composition exercise to explore that idea, e.g., Gloria Anzaldúa on borderlands, Trinh, T. Minh-ha on movement between margins and centers, Kate Bornstein's work on analyzing one's personal gender(s)...
Just to have that many queer-identified and queer-curious people in one dance class was excellent.
Here's the final paragraph of Satu's report:
On the last day, we were looking at each other for a long time. People suddenly had so many faces without trying to fix one. As we returned to language after this simple but powerful experience, we talked about binary thinking and how to undo those patterns of oppositions. To undo the thinking, we have to undo the language - female and queer are oppressed not only socially and politically but also in terms of signifying meaning. Keith quoted Trinh T. Minh-ha who said that: “Meaning has to retain its complexities - otherwise it will just be a pawn in the game of power.” Her writing, together with many other feminist writers, operates between theory and poetry. That borderland is a place where new meaning can occur. Our borderland is the body. If we want to challenge the norms and representations of sex, gender and race, dance and performance is a good place to be.
Featured Posts
-
Essays
- Dec 31, 2005 ONLY IN SAN FRANCISCO? Homegrown trends and traditions (2005) Dec 31, 2005
- Dec 31, 2005 KEITH HENNESSY'S TOP 10 LOCAL DANCE EVENTS OF 2005 Dec 31, 2005
- Oct 31, 2008 Tracing the Roots of Contact Improvisation in the Bay Area 1972-1982 Oct 31, 2008
- Dec 21, 2008 ANOTHER QUEER, CRITICAL OF THE EXPENSIVE AND MISGUIDED FIGHT FOR GAY MARRIAGE Dec 21, 2008
- Dec 21, 2008 DELINQUENT MUSINGS, a little about me Dec 21, 2008
- Jun 1, 2009 Joah Lowe, my first SF dance teacher Jun 1, 2009
- Sep 16, 2009 WHY I READ MY TEXTS IN PERFORMANCE Sep 16, 2009
- Sep 20, 2010 The Mission School (of Painting) Sep 20, 2010
- May 13, 2013 848: queer, sex, performance in 1990s San Francisco (article DRAFT) May 13, 2013
- May 23, 2014 Notes on the T-word Debates of 2014 May 23, 2014
- Aug 22, 2014 Cop killings in the SF Bay Area, a small list Aug 22, 2014
-
Reviews
- Jul 3, 2008 Castorf at Berlin's Volksbuhne, July 3 2008 Jul 3, 2008
- Jul 7, 2008 Friederike Plafki & Maria Francesca Scaroni in Berlin Jul 7, 2008
- Sep 3, 2008 Trannyshack Finale Sep 3, 2008
- Jan 11, 2009 DRACUL: PRINCE OF FIRE, A BALLET! Jan 11, 2009
- Jan 13, 2009 DRACUL: PRINCE OF FIRE, A BALLET! (short review) Jan 13, 2009
- Apr 19, 2009 Penny Arcade BITCH! DYKE! FAGHAG! WHORE! Apr 19, 2009
- Apr 19, 2009 Pichet Klunchun & Myself (Jerome Bêl) Apr 19, 2009
- May 18, 2009 Lizz Roman & Dancers AT PLAY May 18, 2009
- May 19, 2009 Big Art Group's S.O.S. at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts May 19, 2009
- May 20, 2009 Liz Lerman Dance Exchange, Small Dances About Big Ideas May 20, 2009
- Jun 4, 2009 Scott Wells & Dancers, Men Want To Dance Jun 4, 2009
- Oct 11, 2009 Passing Strange (The Musical / Film) Oct 11, 2009
- Mar 31, 2010 Kirk Read performance at Too Much! (Jan 2010) Mar 31, 2010
- Jul 7, 2010 Jess Curtis / Gravity • Dances for Non/Fictional Bodies Jul 7, 2010
- Sep 20, 2010 Bay Area Dance - 2008 - The West Wave Dance Festival Sep 20, 2010
- Dec 29, 2010 Tiara Sensation - avant-drag pageant Dec 29, 2010
- Jan 19, 2011 Dance.Eats.Money. - Ishmael Houston-Jones on The A.W.A.R.D. Show Jan 19, 2011
- Jan 26, 2011 Top 10 Youtubes, Jan 2011 Jan 26, 2011
- Feb 12, 2011 Deadly Disappointing Eonnagatta Feb 12, 2011
- Oct 10, 2014 This Is The Girl / Funsch Dance Experience, Sep 2014 Oct 10, 2014
- Oct 23, 2014 Hope Mohr Dance / Have we come a long way, baby? Oct 23, 2014
-
Texts
- Dec 31, 2005 The War Prayer by Mark Twain Dec 31, 2005
- Dec 31, 2005 Mark Twain Preface (2005) Dec 31, 2005
- Dec 31, 2005 Illegal Bride (2005) Dec 31, 2005
- Sep 5, 2009 PERFORM THE KEITH SCORE Sep 5, 2009
- Mar 28, 2013 10th Anniversary of the War Against Iraq (Illegal Bride) Mar 28, 2013
- Apr 1, 2013 10th Anniversary of the War & Occupation of Iraq (I Tried To Stop The War) Apr 1, 2013
- Apr 2, 2014 I wanna daughter so I can kill cops Apr 2, 2014
Archive by year
-
2019
- Aug 15, 2019 Taking to the Soil: A Reprise and Response to Spring Circle X
- Aug 15, 2019 QUEERED CARE to hear INDIGENOUS VOICES SPEAK
- Mar 20, 2019 Encounters through, around, and within Winter Circle X
- Mar 20, 2019 Unsettling Cycle (Winter Circle X)
-
2014
- Oct 23, 2014 Hope Mohr Dance / Have we come a long way, baby?
- Oct 10, 2014 This Is The Girl / Funsch Dance Experience, Sep 2014
- Aug 22, 2014 Cop killings in the SF Bay Area, a small list
- May 23, 2014 Notes on the T-word Debates of 2014
- Apr 16, 2014 Watch your mouth!
- Apr 4, 2014 Paid Jobs I've Had
- Apr 2, 2014 I wanna daughter so I can kill cops
-
2013
- Aug 28, 2013 The Lady Gaga Method Practiced by Marina Abramović
- May 13, 2013 848: queer, sex, performance in 1990s San Francisco (article DRAFT)
- Apr 1, 2013 10th Anniversary of the War & Occupation of Iraq (I Tried To Stop The War)
- Mar 28, 2013 10th Anniversary of the War Against Iraq (Illegal Bride)
-
2011
- Apr 26, 2011 Mau: Lemi Ponifasio responds to Peter Sellars
- Apr 4, 2011 Alexandra Wallace - Flashpoint - Race in USA
- Feb 12, 2011 Deadly Disappointing Eonnagatta
- Jan 26, 2011 Top 10 Youtubes, Jan 2011
- Jan 19, 2011 Dance.Eats.Money. - Ishmael Houston-Jones on The A.W.A.R.D. Show
-
2010
- Dec 29, 2010 Tiara Sensation - avant-drag pageant
- Nov 28, 2010 Keith Hennessy wins a Bessie!
- Oct 4, 2010 Beuys, Queer, Circus
- Sep 20, 2010 The Mission School (of Painting)
- Sep 20, 2010 Bay Area Dance - 2008 - The West Wave Dance Festival
- Sep 16, 2010 The Swedish Dance History (and my contribution to it)
- Jul 7, 2010 Jess Curtis / Gravity • Dances for Non/Fictional Bodies
- Mar 31, 2010 Kirk Read performance at Too Much! (Jan 2010)
- Mar 31, 2010 Dance Barter for Artist Breath - Yva Jung
-
2009
- Oct 11, 2009 Passing Strange (The Musical / Film)
- Sep 16, 2009 WHY I READ MY TEXTS IN PERFORMANCE
- Sep 5, 2009 Photos from The Keith Score
- Sep 5, 2009 PERFORM THE KEITH SCORE
- Sep 5, 2009 QUEER! a workshop
- Jul 5, 2009 Prisma Forum, Oaxaca & DF, Mexico
- Jun 4, 2009 Scott Wells & Dancers, Men Want To Dance
- Jun 1, 2009 Joah Lowe, my first SF dance teacher
- May 30, 2009 How To Die, 2006
- May 30, 2009 How To Die, 2006, Photos
- May 24, 2009 Dada Fest, Davis CA
- May 20, 2009 Liz Lerman Dance Exchange, Small Dances About Big Ideas
- May 19, 2009 Big Art Group's S.O.S. at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
- May 18, 2009 Lizz Roman & Dancers AT PLAY
- Apr 20, 2009 CROTCH - Keith Hennessy in NY
- Apr 19, 2009 Pichet Klunchun & Myself (Jerome Bêl)
- Apr 19, 2009 Penny Arcade BITCH! DYKE! FAGHAG! WHORE!
- Jan 13, 2009 DRACUL: PRINCE OF FIRE, A BALLET! (short review)
- Jan 11, 2009 DRACUL: PRINCE OF FIRE, A BALLET!
-
2008
- Dec 21, 2008 DELINQUENT MUSINGS, a little about me
- Dec 21, 2008 ANOTHER QUEER, CRITICAL OF THE EXPENSIVE AND MISGUIDED FIGHT FOR GAY MARRIAGE
- Oct 31, 2008 Tracing the Roots of Contact Improvisation in the Bay Area 1972-1982
- Sep 9, 2008 West Wave Dance Festival 2008
- Sep 5, 2008 Laugh Scream
- Sep 5, 2008 Gus Van Sant MILK trailer
- Sep 3, 2008 Trannyshack Finale
- Sep 2, 2008 Performing Improvisation / Improvising Performance
- Jul 7, 2008 Friederike Plafki & Maria Francesca Scaroni in Berlin
- Jul 3, 2008 Castorf at Berlin's Volksbuhne, July 3 2008
-
2005
- Dec 31, 2005 Illegal Bride (2005)
- Dec 31, 2005 Mark Twain Preface (2005)
- Dec 31, 2005 The War Prayer by Mark Twain
- Dec 31, 2005 KEITH HENNESSY'S TOP 10 LOCAL DANCE EVENTS OF 2005
- Dec 31, 2005 ONLY IN SAN FRANCISCO? Homegrown trends and traditions (2005)