What: Politiks of Partying: Queerxi Dance (in partnership with KitaKits & Kundiman)
Where: Blipsy Bar, 369 N Western Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90004
When: Saturday, January 5 at 8pm (outdoor reading starts at 7:30pm)
Featured Guests:
(Readers) Rocio Carlos, Kamala Puliganda, Irene Sucio Soriano, Vickie Vértiz
(Sound pilots/deejays)
F. Douglas Brown & Santana Westbrook (of Truthseekers Radio from Pharcyde TV)
Dance party + guerilla poetry reading. You and your friends are invited to celebrate Angela Penaredondo’s 40th birthday. To honor the departure of an intense 2018 and the beginning of 2019 with hope and healing. Join us for an outdoor guerilla reading (under the “Poetry in the Streets” sign). This reading is dedicated to queer futurisms, spell-casting for 2019. Then dance and mingle with us inside. (Support your local-dive-business. And for those who don’t dance, then Blipsy’s old-skool arcade games are for you).
(Background on the title of this event) Back in the day, Filipino migrant workers (also known as Manongs) as a way to cut loose from their white oppressors, went to dancehalls (or taxi dances). In these dancehalls they swaggered, danced with white women during a time of anti-Filipino sentiment and anti-miscegenation mentality. As a queer Filipinx, I honor my ancestors, their histories but at the same time subvert, challenge a past that did not include me by incorporating my queer lens into the Now. Come celebrate a night of this re-imagination along with published, award-winning queer identified writers; and sound pilots spinning fave throwbacks, vintage tunes, Manila disco, dancehall to space-glitchy beats. Let’s implicate our brown, black, queer, diasporic and undocumented bodies in a shared reimagination of the taxi dance—it’s a queerxi (said like "quir-ky") dancehall!
Come in your own expression of retro dancehall wardrobe. Even a single accessory is fine (however, this is NOT mandatory). If you’re not feeling it, come as you are. Allow this space to be a refuge of free fun from an all-too-overrated-expensive-new year’s-eve. Allow it to be a brief refuge from all the social justice and resistance work you do. Let dance, swagger, joy also be a form of resistance too.
After your dinner, stop by Queerxi for merienda-sweet-tasties provided by Lola’s Kusina (Filipinx/a pop-up kitchen) specializing in vegetarian Filipino food.
This night aims to be an inclusive & hate-free space. Banish your phobias at the door and let them go forever.
*KitaKits is an experiment. We initiate artist-centered efforts to assemble a strong alliance of PilipinX American Artists that live and work in LA. We want to create an art pamilya movement. We have art to share and our city is brimming with Pilipinx flair, genius and relevance. We flourish within our own myriad communities, but always seek support from each other with an aim to create work that reflects the issues of the day. In the end, we see art like breathing.
*Kundiman is a national nonprofit organization dedicated to nurturing generations of writers and readers of Asian American literature.