Mardi

by Mary-Devon Dupuy

Ladies, gentlemen, and those who fall somewhere outside of those narrow definitions, get ready for a weekend of fun in your honor. It’s Nola Pride in the Big Easy, and if the official pride parade isn’t queer enough for you, the Allways Lounge will be hosting Pride All-Stars: The Queerest of the Queer in honor of the proudest weekend of the year.

The two shows at the Allways, Pride All-Stars at 9 and "Queer Late Night," at midnight, are a collaboration between three production companies in New Orleans. One of the producers this year is “Queerlesque!” founder Ace Falcor. NoDef spoke to Ms. Falcor about what her two distinct shows have in store.

“It’s the same cast, in both shows but I told them all to do their “best of” work in their first show and their super sexy work in their next show,” she said.

Falcor promises, or warns depending on your personal kink preference, that the second show will be “their raunchiest one yet.”

READ: Moxie Sazerac on summertime burlesque in NOLA

“I put a really high value on making things interesting," she said. "Every act is different from any other act. You never know what’s going to come next, and I think that’s saying a lot when it’s a sub genre.”

The subgenre is queer burlesque, or “queerlesque,” which is also the name of Falcor’s production company. Although she recognizes that some aspects of her particular brand of performance art don’t follow classic burlesque standards, Falcor believes that queerlesque embodies the meaning of the art form.

“I think it’s burlesque, because it’s historically a form of satire that was used to parody the upper class," she said. "The whole burlesque look of the corset,  that actually came out of women making fun of the upper class. The working class women didn’t wear them, they thought they were really ridiculous.”

However, there will be some classical burlesque performers. In fact, there will be a little bit of everything, and every body. Falcor expressed concerns that many members of the LGBTQ community forget about the last two letters of the acronym, and she was sure to include queer-loving heterosexual performers as well as transgendered performers. They even have a performer whose transition falls way outside of the gender binary.

“We have someone who identifies as “f to c”-fag to clown,” she said. Falcor also believes that the queer community needs to embrace its heterosexual members, including Nola Defender’s very own burlesque writer Moxie Sazerac. Ms. Sazerac is performing a queer act tomorrow night with Lady Lucerne.

“Moxie and Lady Lucerne are doing an act to ‘I touch myself’ and they’re doing an act as teenage lesbians that are just coming out. It’s really great because they aren’t doing it to titillate straight audiences,” Falcor said.  

The show is a co production between two other queer-oriented performance groups, La Familia and Vanity. 

Falcor also stressed that while she encourages guests to drink and be merry, Pride is not just an excuse to get drunk. Community organizations will be tabling to remind the audience of the severity of the issues facing the queer community and hopefully to raise some money. The LGBT Community Center, Louisiana Trans Community Advocates, Breakout, and the Iron Rail will have tables set up with information. Breakout is an organization geared towards LGBT youth in detention facilities, and the Iron Rail is the city’s anarchist bookstore.

Queerlesque starts taking it off at 9 p.m. Saturday at Allways Lounge (2240 St. Claude Ave.).