THE ‘BIG, queer fairytale nightmare party’ really gets going after midnight. Lights dim and the music is cranked up to full velocity with 80s and 90s jukebox jams. A woman dripping in enormous sweat beads removes her vest and starts to head bob, entirely topless. A man in leather crotchless pants crawls onto all fours onto the raised catwalk and begins to prowl panther-like. The festival pavilion crowd cheers. This wasn’t even part of the show.
..the silver lining, like Alice in Wonderland,is to fall down the rabbit hole ‘and find the freaks’.
One of Manchester International Festival’s blockbuster Festival Square line-ups, ‘We Only Happen At Night’, was a celebration of two of Manchester’s most notorious drag club nights; ‘Drunk At Vogue’ and ‘Cha Cha Boudoir’. For one night, they would go head-to-head, combining the best in drag talent for what they themed ‘A Mancunian Fairytale.’
It proved to be a rather twisted fairytale.
Lights dim again and a voice beckons from the ether:
“You alone. Queer. Life on pause. Scared of being different. Just scared,” says the voice. The dancers and the topless woman stand to attention as the narrator begins to unravel the universal LGBT tale of fear and forgoing acceptance; the pressure of not fitting into binary gender roles, or relating to childhood stories of princes and princesses. Here, the silver lining, like Alice in the great tale of Wonderland, is to fall down the rabbit hole ‘and find the freaks’.
The moments of poignancy are shaken away with high velocity drags acts. Elaborate costumes that shock, bemuse and dazzle. And a lot of sass and dancing under the chaotic zig-zag of kaleidoscopic disco lights.
It feels as if the Gay Village has purged itself onto Albert Square. All the hedonism and wonder unleashed from the borders of Canal Street.
The Drag Queens have an artist’s soul. Truly. Unafraid and daring. One Queen performs as an enchanted tree with an artfully decorated bark covered penis (dangerously close to falling off). Shocking, yes. Yet we’re reminded there’s a point to their controversy. In their words, mainly to ‘gender-fuck’.
This is where, regardless of all the best intent and purposes, personal ignorance can emerge. Today gender feels as tricky to define as it becomes blurred and reimagined as ‘gender neutral’. After a raging punk performance (complete with pink bejewelled rifle) the audience and drag queens wave banners screaming ‘fuck gender' with collective liberation. It’s empowering to witness. Yet the very idea of sexuality - boys liking boys, girls liking girls, boys becoming girls and vice-versa - feels very dependent on defined gender roles. As the disco gets going and the banners wave, I wonder whether binary gender roles are the problem or rather the society that created them.
Heavy thoughts to mull over while you’re having a voguing dance-off.
This party felt more fringe than the other shows in the MIF line-up. With lots of unsynchronised miming to Bjork songs there was a playful tease of the festival. It worked. Last night Manchester's glorious drag scene came balling out of the dark and into the light.
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