A few weeks ago, two young artists, students, from Orange, California, sent us the single striking image above. It was created during one of the many collaborations between dancer and choreographer Zak Ryan Schlegel, and photographer and filmmaker Marie Hanhnhon Nguyen. They described it as “an experiment with flour and the kind of light that exists around dusk.” We loved it, and asked them for more. This is what they came back to us with with.
We create with a focal point. Our projects never really center around dance, nor art or image - they exist as a whole. And I think that that is what you and I are about, artistically. Making the human process through image and movement, lightness and darkness, feel. We are site specific in that we seek an environment that we can change by creating in it. This little creek area will presumably never see dance and film again, and that is a project in and of itself - changing the energy of the environment in which we create.
We are not necessarily out to make a statement as much as we just want to feel. Guiding the human eye into a new experience… We create work as temporary and obscure solutions to the puzzle of existing, because the moments we create make the most sense, feel the most emotionally accurate, and visually manifest our collective imagination the closest they possibly can, given the human possibility of artistic creation. - Zak and Marie
Existing has been the biggest challenge in my life because I don’t look at existing with an average eye. I deal with existence in my work primarily because it is the one thing that incessantly oppresses and frees me. Tantalizes and dejects. Lifts and drops me. Wonderfully tumultuous. This is the spirit of my natural impetus to move. I move with all of this weight. There is no absence of intention, because the intention is that there really is no intention. My mind is incapable of bracing these thoughts and therefore they must escape the body, through the body. The process of these thoughts escaping through the body is what I do. That is what I create and that is how I create. Existing through dance. Existing through movement. - Zak Schlegel
I create because there is no present, urgent alternative for me. No consequent negative stands. For sanity, joy and any other impressed extension of human vitals, I try to make art. As for the specific motivations behind each work, each justification is unique to each idea, each concept and each thought. I believe that moments continually possess a kinetic incentive, an essential affinity for change. For me, art has no static consequence. I change every day, so therefore what I make changes every day. I can only create from the indefinite. Pieces and concepts always come to me with their own unique structure. There are times when I make things erratically, and there are times when I have a heavy process. I create whatever comes to me with turbulent imperative. I usually work with visual mediums. As of now, Zak and I have been heavily collaborating on communicating movement based imagery. - Marie Nguyen
This Wednesday, February 17th, East Village Boys is co-hosting the latest (and potentially greatest if we have any say in the matter) BLVCK AMERICA party, “BLVCK IS THE NEW BLACK”. Saheer Umar from House of House will be DJing at this traveling temple of dance, so we thought we’d introduce him to you all here first. (But first, scroll down to the bottom, pick some music, scroll back up and have a long read. He’s a talker.)
Saheer is one of those guys you always see around and about downtown. He is, I guess, a bit of a downtown face… but unlike other downtown ‘faces’, who through their branded monikers seem to be living a facsimile life, Saheer quietly, but relentlessly keeps twisting and turning, and at each twist and turn, whether it’s something he’s written or a set he’s just DJ’ed you can see and feel thats its not about him starring in his own movie, it’s simply him doing his thing.
Richard Welch: You’re not only a DJ, but you write about the arts, make music and sing under the name House of House, you’re involved in fashion… are you a slash kid?
Saheer Umar: I look at the artist as a holistic entity. So, any fruit borne from the tree of said artist falls under that umbrella of ‘art’. I feel that art surpasses categorization. Everything is art and art is everything to me.
RW: You’ve been into clubs and ‘dance’ music for years - tell us about our first experiences and about how the New York ’scene’, has changed over the years?
SU: Some of my fondest, and earliest memories of New York nightlife were sneaking out of arts camp during the summer at the ripe old age of… Jesus, I dunno, maybe 14, to go to Michael Alig’s ‘Disco 2000′ at The Limelight. I remember I was wearing too big pants and a super-duper tight striped yellow and blue polo, Dada brand platform sneakers that were altered on St. Marks and a giant pom pon winter hat. I remember some of the other kids I went with were all nerves about getting in but it all melted away once you got that knowing feeling that you looked the part and it wasn’t going to be a problem. Getting in felt like I’d stolen and gotten away with it. I also remember all of the Club Kids’ psychotic candy-colored outfits, seeing Amanda Lapore for the first time (before she started dancing the cube at Twilo) and Richie Rich working the door. And all of the ravers at ‘Kurfew’ at The Tunnel and the clubbers who went to ‘Arena’ at Palladium.
The thrill of sneaking into a club at that age was immeasurable. I’d hear the muffled thump of the beats outside while squeezing my way towards the front of the line. Sure, in retrospect the music was awful, but that didn’t matter at the time. I was there for the culture. So in I went, and I guess I never turned back, but unfortunately New York did. The post-9-11 club scene is a dismal joke comparatively, and it’s not worth the words. There were a few parties in the late ’90s that lasted through the early ’00s, like Body and Soul (which was life changing for me), but the vibe has been swallowed up by the rising tide of a fear-mongered, Bush-era New York City. The large clubs are gone, in favor of the more profitable bottle service clubs which are filled with only the worse sort of people: patrons who think they’re in a music video. And can we all put a moratorium on talking and shirt-lifting on the dance floor? Leave that for the chat rooms!
RW: Which DJ has had the greatest influence on you and your own DJ style?
SU: These “greatest” lists are tough to produce, and honestly, it’s because as a working artist you have to skate the razor thin line between appreciation and adulation. While these people may be legends, they are still technically the guys you’re trying to eventually take over from, and we’re gunning for the same audience. But, with that disclaimer in mind, I will say that a good deal of influence came from seeing DJs like Masters at Work, Danny Tenaglia, Jeff Mills, Joe Clausell, DJ Harvey, Daft Punk, Francois K, Kerri Chandler and Timmy Regisford in my personal halcyon days of the mid to late ’90s.
But the DJ who takes the prize, without question, is Larry Levan. Granted, this is the default answer from many a DJ who aspires to keep an open-minded approach to programming an evening, but when it’s undeniable, you submit. Sadly, he died in 1992, just two years shy of my first forays into New York City nightlife, so the majority of his influence came through rare interviews I found, word-of-mouth and eighth generation cassette recordings from nights of his residency at the legendary Paradise Garage. The very fact that he’s been able to be a leader to an entire generation of DJs and fans that never actually saw him, while mining and playing the full musical spectrum from rock to disco to house to new wave and to funk, is beyond my comprehension. He was fearless, reckless and understood the power of a song. Not a just a dance track, but of some truly unifying, wall-melting, orgiastic songs that could, and often would bring an audience to tears. He could work a record like Sylvester’s celebratory “Over and Over” or extend Crystal Waters “Finally” for a half-hour straight until the floor felt like it would collapse. Or so the legend goes. Alas, I was too young. That’s some kinda power. Most DJs crave it, and he got me hooked.
RW: Nightlife is traditionally about sex, drugs and rock n roll and you are a teetotaling muslim. How do you find you are received in the dance/electronic scene?
SU: My religion is never really an issue when I go out. I love being Muslim, I love Allah and I wear it proudly. I’m always open to discussion and explanation with any and all who approach the subject. Though in all of my days playing records, the majority of my questions come from the general pool of “why don’t you drink?” or “wait, you DON’T want a bump?”
The thing is I grew up playing in straight edge vegan hardcore bands, so needless to say, I’m adamantly against it. I just never felt the need to experiment with drugs or alcohol. My drug is the potent relationship between audience and artist. I need nothing more.
RW: You DJ all over the World, what is your favorite club to play?
SU: I’ve really enjoyed all of the places I’ve played with the exception of a few clubs that will remain nameless. But of the good ones, a couple stick out in my mind as favorites, and for terribly different reasons.
For sheer volume and size, it’s got to be Berghain in Berlin. It’s a warehouse style, three-tiered predominately gay club with terrifyingly powerful sound system and a fabled bottom level that’s host to several parties that sit comfortably in the scatological realm. The resident DJs (Marcel Dettmann, Ben Klock and Shed) treat music with the respect of art handlers and the audience like eager collectors, thirsty for inspiration. The city of Berlin itself is also the Wild Wild West. It’s hard not to love it just for the fact that Berlin is every young-artist-who-moved-to-New-York-City’s dream come true: a surplus of cheap or free apartments and squats, no jobs and a nightlife that rivals the best in the world. Plus the German “perverted” makes Western perverted look like an episode of Full House, and that’s always good entertainment value.
The other club is a tiny club (and I mean my bedroom is the same size) in Tokyo called Grassroots. It’s tucked away at the end of the hallway on the fourth floor of an unassuming office building. Run by a wonderful group of guys who run a record label, record store and again treat music with such importance that one could assume this a place of worship. The entire club is wooden, so the sound is warm and punchy. It fits 20 people maybe and everyone, literally EVERYone dances. I liken it to walking into a temple of music and being greeted with instant paradise.
I also would have said Fabric in London, but I want to play their main-room before putting them on that list. RW: What was the motivation behind starting the BLVCK AMERICA parties?
SU: In spring of last year, we started a discussion about our dissatisfaction with the public perception, cultural significance and artistic merit of dance music, so we started throwing our own events and gatherings at gallery spaces and lofts and restaurants around Chinatown (the last bastion of old New York City in my opinion) to try and break up the monotony and put some fire under the feet of the old guard. From our first outing, there was an audible buzz about what we were doing: real dance parties, with real dance music with a really really good looking crowd. A damn near impossibility these days. We were stunned by how fast word traveled, and not only in the New York City underground, but among our friends in Europe and Asia, yet it still remained coveted by those in the know.
It all galvanized when we took inventory of all of our friends and realized that we had diversely talented and un-jaded creative collective, sitting in our laps the whole time! We saw the potential for this collective to promote and support the under-exposed artists and designers yet to be discovered, as well as create a cultural forum where ideas can be exchanged, discussed, debated and built.
RW: Explain the name BLVCK AMERICA.
SU: It says so much, yet so little about our identities, politics and mission. It’s bold, unapologetic and slightly confusing. With information so rapidly served to inattentive audiences, we felt that it was time to re-examine what that apathy and lack of participatory spirit was doing, not only to the creative process, but the creator themselves.
Misconceptions about the name (’black’ traditionally symbolizes absence, void, mystery), questions about the use of the V (our secret) instead of the standard A and the uncouth nature of using ‘America’ in anything pertaining to subculture (very taboo don’t you know), have run amok. But this was our exact intention from the start.
We try to look at BLVCK AMERICA as a symbolic match to light the powder keg that is the complacency of our generation. The identity crises that is plaguing the American diaspora is part and parcel of what it is we’re trying to fight against and dissect. If we’re throwing a party, we want those attending to not only feel special and chosen, but that they get a new experience. BLVCK AMERICA wants to make lasting memories, indelible images and explore the void in American creativity. I think we’re well on our way.
RW: The name House of House is, I assume, a play on the vogueing scene that Madonna hijacked. Has the vogueing scene been an influence on you?
SU: Indeed! There is an allegiance to the legendary Houses of yesteryear (House of Dupree, House of Labejia, House of Ninja) in the choosing of our name House of House. It’s a play off of that subculture as much as it is a nod of gratitude to their pioneering of modern dance. But the performative aspect of ball and vogue culture has been a large influence on me since my discovery of it the early ’90s. And sad to say, it was Madonna who was instrumental in that discovery. Granted, I had caught Malcolm McClaren’s “Deep In Vogue” a few times prior to seeing Madonna’s rip-off version on MTV, but it was hers that stuck and made the connection.
At that time I also began getting more and more interested in fashion and design, so there was a crossover interest in the presentation aspects of the vogueing and fashion shows that fed off of one another and influenced my understanding of music, primarily house music, in relation to space, environment and context. Unfortunately, due to stigmas associated with the gay black and latino community - the purveyors of the vogueing scene - pop culture never fully embraced the culture, so it took artists like Madonna to yes, steal from them, but at the same time expose them to the rest of the world. I wouldn’t have known about it otherwise.
RW: Tell us who House of House is, what you’re up to, and when we’ll be able to get our hands on your tracks and see you perform?
SU: House of House is comprised of Liv Spencer (of Still Going/DFA fame) and myself. We released our first 12″ single ‘Rushing to Paradise’ on Whatever We Want Records early last year which garnered quite a bit of praise from the dance community. The fact that the record still has the impact that is has on dance floors is not entirely in our control. I think after the over-saturation of minimal coolness and the blips and beeps that it comes with, people in the dance music world were craving something that was uplifting, soulful and honest, so we tried to deliver that.
We spent a lot of last year touring and performing and/DJing overseas. But one of the highlights of this past year was opening for Grace Jones at the Hammerstein Ballroom. She’s a legend. Words couldn’t form in my mouth after she performed. I just felt honored that we could contribute in anyway.
We just saw the package of ‘Rushing to Paradise’ released with a remix by the amazing DJ Harvey, and we did some remixes for The Juan Maclean and A Mountain of One as well. When we’re not on the road, we try to lock ourselves in the studio and just make music. We’re currently putting the finishing touches on several remix projects, hammering out a few new mixes and working on our next 12″ record. So if you’d like to catch us live, it’d be beneficial to have a valid passport handy. Basically, expect more touring in Europe, South America and Asia. But fear not, we’ll be doing a few here in the states as well.
RW: Outside of “club music”, what do you listen to at home?
SU: This mix is an accurate example of what I listen to when I’m not DJing. This is, in my opinion, the sound of the seedy and sleazy side of NewYork City. The “dark side”, if you will. I feel like creativity flourishes in the wee hours of night for many artists so I’m drawn to the darkness and solitude inherent at that time. You know how when you’re leaving a club at 4AM and your energy is still running at 100 miles per hour? Well, this is how I comedown.
Blvck Nights of the East Village Mix - Saheer Umar [download]
Tuff Guys - Sonic Youth / Real Live Flesh - Tune-Yards / Title Unknown - Sympathy Nervous / I Need Somebody To Love Tonight - Sylvester / The Memories Returning - Robin Guthrie and Harold Budd / Time Scale - The Advisory Circle / My Time - Ohama / In Your Wildest Dreams - Tina Turner / Minus - Robert Hood / Nice Mover - Gina X / Hey, Volte-Face! - Mordant Music / Lonely Boy - Vincent Gallo / Otherwise My Conviction - Les Rallizes Denude / IRM - Charlotte Gainsbourg / Interlude - Michael Watford
RW: What can we expect at the upcoming BLVCK AMERICA party?
SU: As always, it will be a celebration of the spirit of Downtown New York. You’ll dance, you’ll connect and most likely you’ll leave with a smile, and you may wake the next morning with your pants around your ankles, wondering why you’ve got a headache - not that you’ll be complaining.
The music sits in a dedicated pocket of deep, dark, druggy, more party-oriented dance music. But that’s not to say we’re dogmatic about it. There are literally millions of tracks to pick from to give you a taste of the BLVCK AMERICA sound, but here are a few of my favorite early ’90s underground house treats. Some of these are bona fide classics, the others are lost gems waiting to be unearthed.
Don Carlos - Alone (Paradise version)
Rudolpho - Touch Me
Debbie Gibson - One Step Ahead (Underground Mix)
Ten City - Fantasy (Masters At Work Dub)
Classic Man - Mellow (Ambient Mix)
Mood II Swing - Ohh (feat. John Ciafone)
and my personal favorite, the last song of the night, The Orb - Little Fluffy Clouds (Cumulo Nimbus mix by Pal Joey)
We try to stay away from attaching ourselves to any of the thousand different musical trends created every day, and simply strive to keep make the night interesting, unpredictable, honest and dedicated to the dance floor. The point is to dance, so that’s what we make our parties about: DANCING!
This Wednesday, February 17th, BLVCK AMERICA presents “BLVCK IS THE NEW BLACK”. Co-hosted by East Village Boys and Solomon Chase. DJs Saheer Umar of House of House, Invisible Conga People (DJ Set), a super secret special guest DJ, and performance by $hayne.
86 Forsyth (between Grand and Hester), 5th floor. $0!
Miguel Gutierrez is a Bessie-winning dancer and choreographer whose most recent show Miguel Gutierrez and the Powerful People: Last Meadow enjoyed a critically acclaimed East Coast premiere at Dance Theater Workshop (DTW) in the Fall and returns to Abrons Arts Center for three performances beginning January 8 as part of American Realness: A Festival or Contemporary Performance. Gutierrez conceived, choreographed and performs in the piece along with long-time collaborator Michelle Boulé and Tarek Halaby. Recently he sat down at a cafe in the East Village to talk with independent curator and producer Earl Dax. Highlights of their conversation follow.
Portraits of Miguel and Last Meadow photographed for EVB by Ves Pitts
Earl Dax: The three dancer/performers in Last Meadow inhabit a cinematic world inspired by the three films of James Dean: Rebel Without a Cause, East of Eden and Giant. You’ve said that you were drawn to Dean, in part, because of the hyper-conscious awareness the actor had of his own iconography and how he intentionally played with it. Can you elaborate?
Miguel Gutierrez: I had all these ideas of working with misrepresentation… the idea of dance as an esoteric language being its strength rather than it’s curse (which is often what it’s cited as), and I was also intrigued by the way that people create mythologies around identity and nationhood. Then I went to borrow a friend’s copy of East of Eden, and it was a two disc set. The movie was missing, so I just watched the special features. They had all these wardrobe tests that were like these silent movies, and I really got sucked into that and fascinated by James Dean in all that. I kind of just went with it and watched all those movies. It seemed like an interesting thing to follow. He only made three movies. There’s three of us. The three movies are love triangles. This idea that he’s like a perpetual child. This idea that he’s this moment between a certain kind of acting and another kind of acting. This way in which he’s queer in his own kind of weird way. Super slouchy and feminine in a way. All these things were evocative of a certain interpretation I had thought about. ED: You dropped out of Brown University, moved to San Francisco and got involved with Queer Nation for a year before dancing with Joe Goode. What impact does your activist background have on your work?
MG: I think that doing all that activist stuff was really extraordinary because it instantly gave me this relationship to the idea of the body as potentially dangerous and also filled with feeling and expression and also agency. I think that whenever you’ve spent any time of your life doing work for something that’s about being on that “fringe,” and then when you realize that being put on the fringe is just a, it’s just a power dynamic that society enacts upon you. You see how everything about everything becomes questioned. To say that I work in this weird experimental form of contemporary dance… Yeah, sure, maybe some people think it’s weird, but for me I think Stomp is weird or I think Shrek, the Musical is disappointing. Or for that matter ballet, something that is often considered the avatar, the paragon of what dance is supposed to be, and I look at it and think those poor women, they’re so skinny and why do they have to be in those strange heterosexual relationships onstage? The politic is infused in so many ways, and in my own work where I feel like the politic is imbued into the body because it’s a very ferocious body. It’s a very hyper-present body. It’s a body that’s turbulent. It’s a body that both has a lot of belief and has a lot of doubt. It’s a body that’s very semaphoric and obvious at times and then it’s also a body that deals with these subtle, almost non-action actions. That to me is a total expression of politics.
ED: Given your medium is dance, it’s not surprising to find you discussing your work in terms of “the body,” yet it’s a topic that seems more central to the discussion of contemporary dance. Certainly it’s a topic that many of the other performers in American Realness are dealing with.
MG: I think that the bodies in the work that I do are unavoidable, and there’s a kind of forcefulness about that unavoidability which is a total extension of being a protest body. I think it’s a little more nuanced now, and I’m a little more… I’m not interested in creating divisions in the way that I think… There was a moment with my experience with protest “I’m on this side. You’re on that side.” I don’t want that. That’s not my interest anymore, and I think that’s why art-making is a cool place to be because it’s that weird in between or extra-rational place where things can be multiple and multiple things can be true. Unfortunately, I think when you’re doing activist stuff you kind of have to believe one thing because it’s the only way to get things done, and it’s effective. And there’s a right time for that, but I’m way too doubtful all the time and skeptical to live in that way of being.
ED: Certainly there’s a lot of questioning in your work. In Last Meadow you’re exploring - among other things - iconography, heroism, myth-making, and you’ve talked about these things in relation to your work at a dancer and choreographer. What’s the relationship here?
MG: I don’t know that I subscribe to this hero worship thing, and that’s a doubt that infuses the work that I make. That’s the thing that I think about as I make work and as I continue to make work transitioning from a person who’s not known to a person who is more known. I don’t want to fall prey to believing my own myths, but it’s hard because part of the equation of longevity in this field is the ability to be branded as something. “That’s the person that does this thing,” and everyone can say it, and it’s cool, and it’s this thing. Well what if you’re not that? What if you’re someone who makes something different each time or is unsure? [gasps] Oh, that’s so scary! I think that’s one of the gifts that I got from working with John Jaspers. He is a skeptical artist. He’s not enamored of his own ideas - almost to a fault. I thought that was really powerful, and actually an incredible gift to witness. Here’s this person who’s not sure. We have these myths of the artist being, like, “It’s this way!” Instead of it being the person pulling their hair out going, “I don’t know. Maybe this sucks.” I’m often really inspired by those kinds of people which are not the ones that history books get written about.
ED: American Realness tackles this head on with a mission to draw attention to choreographers who are making work outside of the primary traditions of American dance and performance. The festival website quotes Michael Kaiser’s “Why I Worry About Modern Dance?”
MG: Did you read that piece? It was like “Where are the Merce Cunninghams? Where are the Martha Grahams…” bemoaning the death of modernist mommies and daddies, and I’m just like, “Dude!?! Open your fucking eyes!” There are artists everywhere making work in all kinds of ways. I adore Merce Cunningham, God bless his heart, but he was not a beloved artist everywhere. I saw him perform at ADF, and people walked out because the music was too fucking loud. So where are the presenters who are willing to present work that people aren’t going to like? Like if you want to sit here and bemoan the death of modern dance, well, you know what, take a fucking risk! Cunningham Company, they drove around in a van for ten fucking years. The man did not spring from the head of Medusa crowned the modernist master. These mythologies are so powerful they’re difficult to break.
I first watched Clifton perform at the LES bar Home Sweet Home, at an after-party for one of the Envoy Gallery shows, my apologies for not remembering which one it was, but it was a fun night, I remember that much. He entered the bar to a host of screaming and wailing friends and suddenly snapped into his performance. In a matter of a few seconds the whole bar stopped their chatter, enthralled by his enigmatic vocals and his tight choreography. His performance at one of our EVB parties a few weeks later was, as promised, both strange and wonderful.
RW: Tell us a little about where you grew up, your family background..
C: I’m from small town called Lusby, Maryland. There’s a sign as you leave that reads “God Bless Y’all Real Good”. That’s pretty much all you need to know about that place. I grew up in the same house my grandfather and mother grew up in. Hated it, always needed to leave, so I did. I’m sure a lot of people are familiar with this story.
RW: Have you always wanted to be a performer? When did you first start performing?
C: Pretty much. I have been doing theater since elementary school. I moved here to New York to go to school for it. But I’ve also been playing the saxophone since the fourth grade. I have always, I guess, wanted to produce something for others to enjoy. I often wish I could draw or paint but I can’t. I’m envious of that skill. That draws on that not-so-nice side of my personality that wants to be the best at everything.
RW: Besides performing, what are you the best at?
C: Giving my opinion [laughs]. I talk a lot - mostly because I have a lot to say. I do believe that people should be opinionated. I also believe people should be adequately informed about what they are talking about. More often people are not. Sad really.
RW: What needs work?
C: I have no patience. I really need some. Life would be much easier if I had it.
RW: Describe your sound and style of performance?
C: I’d like to think my sound is just like everything you’ve heard and like nothing you’ve heard before. In the song “Shine”, for example, I went for a very catchy pop tune but by the end of it the three main instrumental melody lines are done by ragtime piano, harpsichord, and sitar. American black, European classical, and Indian sounds all together and it doesn’t sound strange. It’s my musical manifesto. When The Beatles made pop songs, and that’s what a lot of them were, they stretched the idea of what a pop song could sound like. That is what I’m trying to do. Too much pop music today sounds just alike. It seems like they give it no thought. They give you songs where the chorus is just one word like “Womanizer”. I don’t know about you but I feel like my intelligence is being insulted when I listen to the radio these days.
As far as Performance goes I have a theater background and I use it. I want the people who see my shows to see that I care enough about their time as to not waste it. If I’m going to perform for you, I’m going to be prepared because I respect you. I feel disrespected often when I go to shows and they just stand there or jump up and down with that “I’m so awesome I don’t even have to try” attitude. It’s been done, and usually they should be trying.
RW: Your performance for EVB at our party last fall was fantastic, and thoroughly thought through. I know you’re a perfectionist as you spent the entire day setting up the stage and rehearsing. Can you tell us a little about your creative process. Do you create the songs and performances together or otherwise?
C: I always create the songs first. Concept, music, then lyrics. I work with Adam Joseph on the songs and it works really well because he understands that there is a concept to each of the songs. They are each their own entity. The performance is informed by the songs, but again, it’s all about a concept. I have to try to figure out what can bring these songs together and what story can I tell through them. I could perform the same three songs over and over again and as long as I changed the concept you could get a completely different show each time.
RW: In terms of pure performance who do you think is worth paying attention to right now?
C: Grace Jones, still. There is an example of someone who wears a look but doesn’t have a look wear her. She is artistically crushing performers much younger than her. Also, Kanye West. The glow in the dark tour was a major piece. It was on the scale of an opera. Everytime he does a show there is a lot of thought in it. His VH1 Storytellers, was gorgeous.
RW: Introduce us to your group, there are three of you - do you each have specific roles? Tell us about the group dynamic?
C: Well we’re not really a group. My group of friends and I are essentially an art collective. Everyone is spearheading their own thing while being involved with everyone else’s thing. The two that were in the EVB show were my friend Linwood and I’m sure a lot of you know Xander, though in future shows there will be more people.
Xander and I work on the theatrical throughline and concepts of the shows. He knows how to pull ideas out of me and add to them in a great way. That’s something you don’t find everyday. My friend Linwood is a trained dancer which is also a great perk of our friendship. I also work with DJ Nita on music, who did an amazing remix of the song “Ice Creaks” for me. Our friend Troy does graphic design, and some of the clothes I wear when I’m performing are designed by my friend Ben Copperwheat, who just launched the COPPERWHEAT fashion line. Everyone has something to add and a purpose in our group. I’m lucky to have found them.
Clifton - Ice Creaks
RW: Your music is intimate yet energizes the whole audience, how do you build this interesting energy?
C: Like I said I’m there for the listener and the audience. I guess the music is different enough that it makes you want to listen but you still want to dance.
RW: Who would you like to collaborate with? Who would you like to see influence your performances?C: Honestly, I would love to work with Kanye. He’s taken his genre of music to a new place. I would also love to work with TV on the Radio. They are geniuses. Of course David Bowie - he’s the bar as far as I’m concerned.
RW: I hear you’re amazing in drag. When did you start doing it? Have you performed or is it just for personal pleasure?
C: Oh yes, that! I guess drag was also a way for me to be out performing. Not in shows necessarily, as I only did two, but as a character. Being someone else for the evening. My drag name is Nanya Bidness. I do occasionally do shows as part of a trio with One-Half Nelson and Erickatoure Aviance called “En Subtitles”. It is a performance art side venture for all of us. It’s drag if you consider three giant cupcake people murdering, and cannibalizing themselves to Marilyn Manson’s “The Beautiful People” a drag show. We have no boundaries as to what that project can and will be.
RW: Do you think traditional drag is still relevant to young audiences?
C: Yes. Drag queens will always be relevant. I think the success of RuPaul’s Drag Race, has proven that. Everyone loves a good queen!
RW: What do you think of the New York gay scene at the moment?
C: Honestly I think it’s tired! Before anyone notices we’re going to be like Paris - a museum city. A pretty shell. When friends come from Europe you have to really look for fun things to do that are only in New York. It used to be that you could do something great every night of the week. Sadly that’s not the case anymore. There is no gay scene. Really it’s just a bunch of small groups identifying themselves as something like bear, twink, jock, leather daddy, art fag, etc, and having parties for just themselves and people like them. That exclusivity is not how a community works or thrives. I noticed that the best parties are the ones where everyone is represented. I’m including heterosexuals as well.
Also, I think that the gays tend to be too easily amused. It’s disconcerting to me when I see 40 year-old men with the same taste level of a 12 year old girl. I’m not judging, I’m just stating a fact. If, out of all the music that has ever been made in the world, you think Lady Gaga is the pinnacle, there’s something wrong. I think even she would agree with me there. OK, now I’m judging [laughs].
Justin Bond and The Abrons Arts Center are putting out for EVB, in the form of discounted tickets to Justin Bond’s Christmas Spells show. Read on…
This year it’s Christmas in the brothel with Justin Bond and The Pixie Harlots as they return to the Abrons Arts Center in Justin Bond’s Christmas Spells, a trans-voodoo extravaganza featuring original songs, Christmas ditties, dances and more - a phantasmagorical blend of Christmas camp and seasonal sorcery. Adapted from the short story Dixie Belle, by playwright, author and gender theorist Kate Bornstein, Justin will be playing the beloved Mark Twain character, Huckleberry Finn, who is now hard at work in a New Orleans bordello as Sassy Sarah. It’s Christmas Eve 1865 and Miss Sarah and the Ladies of Miss Violette’s Parlour of Elysian Delights are throwing a Christmas Eve hullabaloo in the Frenchy Quarter. After all the party guests have been sloshed, sluiced and sated, Sassy Sarah sits down to write a letter to her old friend Tom Sawyer, and boy does she have some surprises in store for him!
Sets and costumes by Machine Dazzle (The Lily’s Revenge), lighting by Ben Kato, and directed by Justin Bond.
The show runs December 9-12, 8pm. Get tickets from here, and enter the code EVB466 for $5 off of the $25 ticket price.
If anyone could take an art school studio, plop seven near-naked, tattoo-speckled boys in front of blank canvases, give them blank paint brushes and have them “perform” the act of “blank painting”, and actually make it work, (i.e. not bore the shit out of us), it’s gotta be Terence Koh.
This past Friday, EVB fought torrential wind and drizzle and trekked over to New York City’s Cooper Union to catch a glimpse of the Terence Koh for Converse 1HUND(RED) Artists Chuck Taylor All Star launch. In typical Koh fashion, the event was exclusive, contextually odd and rather intimate (I think we knew everyone in the room… some of them, well, quite intimately). A select group of Downtown NYC so-and-so’s and who’s-who’s mixed, mingled and marveled at the spectacle that was Koh’s presentation of his vision of the iconic Converse Chuck Taylor.
Of course we staked out a spot equidistant between the booze and the boys and had perfect viewing of the arriving guests facial expressions. Ranging somewhere between befuddlement and childlike wonder, guests greeted friends and friends-for-the-night with kisses, bee-lining to the bar to prime their pumps for a night of possibility. While a few brave souls shed their inhibitions and danced to selector A-ron Bondaroff and his gang’s bizarre, albeit hilarious mix of early-90s house hits and chopped up opera records, most played voyeur on the sidelines.
Finally, after an hour of sizing up eye-candy and awaiting the evenings honoree to arrive, in walks the Koh Bunny, draped of course in a festive fur vest, stretch pants and his (now) signature shoes (everything white, natch). Cameras rushed to Terence, quickly snapping pics as he played the coy centerpiece - it was like that scene in La Dolce Vita when Anita Ekberg and Marcello Mastroianni arrive at the tea party in her honor, battling off reporters and photographers with effortless style and grace, except whiter and whole lot weirder.
As a contributor to the 1HUND(RED) project, which donates a percentage of the net sales towards helping fight AIDS in Africa, Koh took a decidedly reductive approach to his shoe design. “I wanted to keep the DNA of the Chuck Taylor intact, while reducing the seams, and smoothing out the shoe’s surfaces as much as possible”.
As with the design, the stock list is also quite minimal. Available Saturday November 21 at select stores worldwide. So, if you’ve got $150 bucks rattling around your pockets, are between a size 7 and a 13 (that’s SHOE size) and you’re gagging for a pair, we’d suggest getting your pretty little asses down to Opening Ceremony in New York or Los Angeles because these will be gone like bunnies in winter.
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