Fresh Meat

This is one of those events that I would have driven up to San Francisco for if I had been living in LA at the time, and even with that insanity it would have been worth it. Fresh Meat 2005 was an excellent evening of performance by various transgender and queer performers of all sorts. The big-name people that are fairly famous (at least in the circles I travel in) were Lipstick Conspiracy, a rock group of fabulous transwomen and Katastrophe, a trans rapper. I'll admit that I mostly know Katastrophe because he's Michelle Tea's boyfriend, but now that I've seen him perform, I'm pretty impressed with him in his own right. Both of these acts totally made me want to buy their CDs, and if I were less broke and homeless at the moment, I would totally order them. So the list of queer CDs to buy in October when I get my next real paycheck now includes Lesbians on Ecstacy, Lipstick Conspiracy, and Katastrophe.

But back to Fresh Meat. The first thing I learned was that Michelle Tea was there, and was much smaller than I expected. She has such a big personality! She goes in the category with Holly Hughes as suprisingly tiny and you wouldn't suspect it until you see them live. She was totally kissing Katastrophe in the lobby, which was way cute. Awww. He's tiny, too, and they look adorable (and tough) together.

The show itself was mostly fabulous, but, of course, the highlight for me was Turner Schofield. I first saw him perform at the GQQG Conference in Santa Barbara, and he performed a much smaller exerpt of the same show, Debutant Balls. Debutante Balls (which, I'm sorry, but I don't like the title of; it makes me picture some large hairy bear man in a dress, and I don't know why. I feel like it should be the title of a performance by someone who looks more like Guillermo Gomez-Pena and less by adorable, sweet, gentlemanly Turner). He's a charming, powerful performer with so much charisma and humor that I'm always hanging off his every word. The piece is really polished and well-paced and so funny! But he deals a lot with gender and class and whiteness issues (good for him!) and actually thinks about them, which is wonderful. I really hope that I get to see the whole show performed straight through sometime.

6 Hours was a new piece by Sean Dorsey of Fresh Meat Productions. My disclaimer is that I'm really bad at talking about dance, but I find his work very entertaining. I definitely appreciate the fact that it's set to a narrative, and this time some of the narrative was even spoken live. Dorsey has a fascinating storytelling voice, and that is definitely a part of what makes his performances so beautiful. This one was a little less cute than Second Kiss, which I've seen him perform twice now, but wonderful in different ways. It's so honest about the way we fight and the way we hurt people who are close to us when it's completely different things that are bothering us. The piece was about a road trip with a girlfriend, six hours in the car to meet a father with whom the narrator is not out as trans. Some of the first movements in the piece looked very similar to some of those in Second Kiss so I was a little worried at first that this wasn't going to be particularly different or creative, but they got a way from that fairly quickly. Sean performs with a female dancer, Mair Culbreth, and there's a lot of mimicking and following one person to the other, which always makes me question the gender politics, but it's really about power in the relationship and who leads and who follows does change depending on what's going on in the story. I really appreciated the section describing the girlfriend as being supportive and understanding of the narrator's bad mood which was illustrated by some beautiful lifts where she lifted him. In my limited understanding of dance, that's a pretty powerfully gendered statement. The whole thing was lovely and very entertaining in my opinion. I wonder if swolf would go with me again if he comes to perform it again in LA.

ryka aoki de la cruz performed a piece called "Randori" that was about judo and the possibilities of pain and injury. It was beautiful and disturbing.

I would have liked to see more by Thea Hillman, spoken word artist and intersex activist. She's fascinating and mesmerizing and very intelligent. And I have every intention of buying her book, Depending on the Light one of these days.

The TransAms Babershop Quartet were also fascinating and I would have loved to see more by them. It's just such a great idea. I want to see T6 in a barbershop quartet; wouldn't that be so cute?

I'm unclear about how queer or transgender it was, but The Extra Credit is a group of all women hip hop dancers and they were wonderful and fun performers.

Other performers included a stunning aerial hoop performance by Miguel Chernus-Goldstein, and East Indian dance by Dr.Jafer, a humorous burlesque number by Harlem Shake Burlesque, and a gospel song by Jamie Armstrong-Pouncy who is also a member of Transcendence Choir. Johnnie Pratt performed with Thea Hillman and Scarletto performed with Katastrophe. Luster (Sile P. Singleton) of IDKE fame emcee'd.

All of the performances of the evening were very high quality, and if you have a chance to see any of these performers, I highly recommend them. I'm not entirely sure about the organization of the evening. I feel like it perhaps ended on a meditative note rather than a rockin' one, and that might not be the most successful plan for them. I think it would have been better to sandwich the more meditative pices (especially Jamie Armstrong Pouncey, Miguel Charnus-Goldstein and possibly Thea Hillman and Johnny Pratt) between the more energetic numbers. If there's any way to make people leave the theater dancing, they're way more prone to a standing ovation, and probably buying things and donating money as well.

Speaking of which, Saturday night they had two back-to-back performances, one at 7:30 and one at 9:30, and this was a PROFOUNDLY bad idea. They weren't spaced out enough, so at the first performance (which I attended), they had to rush people out and I believe they even cut a down some of the performances (one of the songs by the TransAms and one by Scarletto and Katastrophe, plus the Viragos didn't beform Saturday night), although Lipstick Conpiracy instead isn't much of a sacrifice. But the really bad news about this (having to keep the show to 2 hours isn't exactly a bad idea really) was after rushing us out to the street after the show meant that there wasn't much of an opportunity to talk to the performers (I'm going to actually meet Sean Dorsey one of these days, now that I've seen him peform 3 times!) or to buy things after the show. I was totally out of cash, but I would have gladly purchased Lipstick Conspiracy and Katastrophe CDs and I keep saying I'm going to buy Thea Hillman's book. But I felt so hurried (ok, and I was broke) at the end that I really didn't feel like I had an opportunity to do this. I need to be better about this, and just buy CDs and books at shows when I want them, because I always regret it later.

Also, the thing that made my evening was Turner Schofield standing out on the street in tiny leopard-print boyshorts collecting donations for next year's event after the show. He said "I feel like I'm doing sexwork." Silly boy, all theater is sexwork, and it has been from the beginning (trust me, I can tell you all about Roman actresses/prostitutes). But it was interesting coming from him, since he's so sexy onstage. I don't know what it is about him, but seriously, seeing him perform makes me want to kiss him. This boy is going to be a star (well, at least in the tiny little land of queer theater).

Despite small organizational criticisms, the show was exellent and I'm so glad things like this happen and that I got to see it. My congratulations to all the out and proud queer and trans performers that I saw last night. Good for you!