Our mission is to create opportunities for people to engage with dance as audience members and participants, centering queerness and countering the many ways LGBTQIA+ people are underserved in traditional dance spaces.
Dancing Queerly provides queer-centric dance events for students, professionals, audience members, and enthusiasts. Dancing Queerly gives LGBTQIA+ dancers and dancemakers the opportunity to create and perform for an LGBTQIA+ centered audience.
ABOUT DANCING QUEERLY
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Dancing Queerly and Pride 4 The People have partnered to produce “We’re Queer All Year,” a digital artist showcase. This spring, we put out an open call for “New England based dancers, movers, drag performers, poets & spoken word artists,” to submit work samples for a virtual event, in boycott of Boston Pride’s 2021 virtual events (more information about the boycott can be found at pride4thepeople.org). In addition to 5-10 minute video samples, we invited artists to share their stories, offering the following prompts: “Background in your art and/or what drew you to it, your expression of queerness through your creative expression, why you’re in support of our boycott event, ways in which folx can support you!”
We were excited to receive submissions from artists of various disciplines: burlesque, cabaret, contemporary/modern dance, drag, music composition, performance art, and vogue. We were also grateful to read and hear their stories and perspectives, including but not limited to: wanting to put pressure on Boston Pride to better serve and represent the Boston LGBTQIA+ community, disillusionment with the hyper-corporatization of Pride and a desire to celebrate more intentionally, calls for greater representation in the Boston performing arts community.
The performance is free and available to watch by clicking on the button below. Please consider following and tipping the featured artists. Their handles are listed in the description below the video.
6/19/2020 STATEMENT
We, the co-producers of Dancing Queerly, wholeheartedly and without reservation, support the members of the Boston Pride Committee and Black & Latinx Pride Committee who are calling for the resignation of the Boston Pride Board and real, proactive change to serve the Boston LGBTQIA+ community. https://docs.google.com/…/1eLBM08-TnCT1GwoTkhto…/mobilebasic
We cannot stand by while an organization that claims to be “listening” to Black activists and community members betrays our trust by announcing a meeting with police. Black and POC organizers have been asking for change from Pride since (at least) 2015.
At this moment, LGBTQ organizations need to be amplifying the demands of local organizers of color who are calling for major redistribution of our city budget away from racist policing & control. LGBTQ organizations need to use our voices and platforms to support these BIPOC-led organizations in organizing to get Boston to shift money to instead invest in what most-impacted communities of color have been requesting for years: funding for housing, health care, mental health support, schools, and jobs with dignity. We support the urgent call to defund the police and encourage you to learn about work by local organizations like Families for Justice as Healing.
Today we are removing Boston Pride’s logo from this weekend’s videos. As planned, all the money we received from the Boston Pride Community Foundation is going directly to artists appearing in this weekends’ programming.
As white organizers we recognize the ways our complacency and silence has allowed Pride to continue brushing the real concerns of Black and POC organizers aside. We apologize. At one time, accepting grants from the Boston Pride Community Foundation and using their funds to pay artists for our scrappy little festival felt like a redistribution of resources that was aligned with our values. In mid-April, offering Boston Pride co-sponsorship of our 2020 virtual events in exchange for publicity and a spot on the official pride calendar seemed like a win-win, furthering our mission by spreading the word about Dancing Queerly further than we ever could on our own. The Boston Pride Board’s actions & continued ignorance make it clear that we can no longer be affiliated with their organization without radical change that centers BIPOC LGBTQ people’s self-identified needs & demands.
We vow to continue our work towards centering Black voices in queer dance. If you join us for any of our events, we hope they nurture your spirit and fuel your sense of justice. Our programming is free and available for the next week. If you want to spend your Friday night at a protest or vigil, or if you want to celebrate Juneteenth with a different live program, you can register for free and watch the live recordings later*.
*Instructions: you can register on eventbrite for both events until June 28 at 11:30 PM.The programs will be visible to view until 9:00 AM on Monday, June 29.