Arts & Entertainment
Fetishes and festivities
This weekend’s Mid-Atlantic Leather convention has new location
Mid-Atlantic Leather Weekend 2011
Hyatt Regency Hotel Capitol Hill
400 New Jersey Ave. NW
Friday
* Registration — Ballroom level foyer — 4-10:30 p.m.
* Leather Exhibit Hall — exhibit area, Ballroom Level 5-11 p.m.
* Opening Reception (cash bar) — Yorktown Ballroom — 9-11 p.m.
* MAL Bar Crawl Bus — 10 p.m.-2 a.m.
Saturday Jan. 15
* Registration continues — 10 a.m.-5 p.m.
* Leather Exhibit Hall continues — noon-8 p.m.
* Leather Cocktails — Regency Ballroom — 6:30-9 p.m.
* CODE Party — The Crucible — 9 p.m.-2 a.m.
* MAL partner event — discounted admission
for MAL 2001 Full Weekend package holders
* MAL Bar Crawl Bus -—10 p.m.-2 a.m.
Sunday
* MAL Brunch — main lobby — 10 a.m.-noon
* Leather exhibit hall continues
* Mr. Mid-Atlantic Leather Contest — Regency Ballroom — 1 p.m.-5 p.m. (separate tickets are available for this event)
* Reaction — 9:30 Club — 10 p.m.-5 a.m. (separate tickets are available for this event)
The Bootblack Brigade hosts a bar night Saturday starting 10 p.m. at Green Lantern, 13335 Green Court, N.W. — no admission fee
And at D.C. Eagle, 639 New York Ave. N.W., the MAL Weekend welcome begins 7 p.m. Friday and continues through Monday starting at 8 p.m.
More details are here.
Richard Legg, left, and Matt Bamford, last year's Mr. MAL. (Blade file photo by Michael Key)
It’s back for another year — Mid-Atlantic Leather Weekend.
Once again, Washington becomes this weekend a fantasy scene of leather chaps and cigars, slave collars and chains — with hankie-flagging people seeking the endorphin rush of erotic heat as they cruise hotel lobbies and prowl upstairs corridors for private play parties or hunt exotic thrills at live demos of kink at the Code party. But it’s also the chance to meet old friends and make new ones within the special brotherhood (and sisterhood) of the men and women who embrace leather.
And this year’s gathering happening this weekend, this time at a new hotel, promises once again, according to the sponsoring organization, the Centaur Motorcycle Club of D.C., on its website, to be “one of the hottest leather/fetish events in North America and the world’s largest leather club run.”
“Thousands of leathermen, gearheads, kinksters, rubber freaks and even curious novices from all over the world,” says the promo material, will “come to the nation’s capitol for a weekend of hot, horny fun.”
“We’re literally looking for thousands of people to come for the weekend,” says a confident Larry Barat, the Centaur M.C. promotions chair for the weekend. About 600 or 700 people are expected to register for the full, three-day package, he says, “but we anticipate 2,000 or 3,000 or possibly more to participate in side events organized around the weekend and at the bars,” especially, he said, at the D.C. Eagle and Green Lantern.
The three-day package is $180 in advance or $200 at the door, a package including access to all events and exhibits, said Barat, who also pointed out that “an important new change for MAL 2011” is that entry into the weekend area at the hotel, including for the Leather Exhibit Hall but not the special events, will now require a “Weekend Admission Pass.” The cost for such a three-day pass is $25 if purchased on Friday, $20 on Saturday, or $10 on Sunday or alternatively $10 for any one of those days only.
The D.C.-based Centaur club, now in its 41st year, according to Barat currently consists of about 30 active members. It has sponsored MAL, now in its 31st year, from the beginning. After more than a decade of being housed at the Washington Plaza Hotel at Thomas Circle, it moves this year to the Hyatt Regency on Capitol Hill, because “we simply outgrew that hotel,” Barat says. The Washington Plaza has only 360 rooms, while the Hyatt has about 800.
“Obviously with a new home for MAL, we’re excited about that, but also a little nervous,” he adds, but he has been meeting with Hyatt staff, along with other Centaur event planners, and believes everybody feels that the weekend will be a success.
Another MAL Weekend coordinator, its chairman and fellow Centaur member Patrick Grady met Monday for another meeting “with about 30 hotel managers in the room,” and Grady says “everybody at the Hyatt is very enthusiastic indeed.”
This year, they have booked only about three-quarters of the Hyatt’s rooms because, says Barat, “we were trying to be a bit conservative this year and not over-extend ourselves.” Even so, weekend registration has spilled over into rooms reserved at the Liaison Hotel across the street.
All MAL attendees will be on the same floors. Organizers hope next year to fill the entire hotel.
Grady says his first MAL Weekend began when he joined the Washington Plaza Hotel as its director of catering in 1997 and a month later hundreds of MAL Weekend participants thronged the hotel, the second year at that venue, and he got his first real look close-up at the leather community.
“I was a newbie in ’97,” he says, “and I didn’t know their community even existed.”
He was taken in by the friendly vibes and soon, he says, he began to frequent the Eagle and then to hang out with the Centaurs. By 1999 he had sunk his own roots deep into the leather world.
Grady says that after that first weekend, “I couldn’t wait to see everybody back in ’98,” and he was drawn to the sense of community that he found, especially in the Centaur MC. Yes, he knows that some LGBT people are uncomfortable with the more taboo aspects of the leather world — the BDSM sexuality — but he says the reality is that the leather world — and the Centaur club — is “very diverse.”
“We have members who have motorcycles and those who don’t, who are large and skinny, tall and short, and the only real common denominator is that we like one another,” he says. “Some are hard-core leather folk and others are just out for a good time.” But he admits that “when we gather together sometimes we are a little much for some people — we tend to be very gregarious.”
His objective this year is simple: “to make new friends and renew old acquaintances,” a goal echoed by Barat, who says “our aim is to have fun and make sure everybody who comes has fun, so they can meet new people and explore new things.”
The signature events, says Barat, are the Leather Cocktails reception Saturday evening, the buses for the MAL bar-crawl, the CODE party at the Crucible S&M club Saturday night into the wee hours of Sunday morning, the Mr. Mid-Atlantic Leather Contest Sunday afternoon, and the finale event, the Reaction dance at the 9:30 Club from 10 p.m. Sunday until 5 a.m. Monday. Throughout the entire weekend also, another big draw is the Leather Exhibit Hall located on the hotel’s Ballroom level, with dozens of vendors of gear, books and other paraphernalia.
The MAL Weekend in 1998 was “the first big leather event” he ever attended, though he had lived a leather lifestyle “on and off” since he was 19. Now 50 and a U Street resident for the past seven years, by day Barat works on international public health issues for the U.S. Government.
For him, owning a bike is important to the leather lifestyle, and though he recently sold his own Harley Davidson “Fat Boy,” now he says he can’t wait until the weather gets warm again to get his next new bike. Though he says another D.C.-based club, the Spartans, “are more into motorcycles,” the Cenatur M.C. still sponsors runs two or three times a year, usually to Skyline Drive and into West Virginia and back.
Like Grady, Barat was won over by the welcoming vibes of community he felt at his first MAL Weekend: “I was really kind of shocked at how friendly everyone was,” and how eager people were to teach him about the things he didn’t know, and he also began to understand the wide variety of lifestyles subsumed under the leather label.
The gay male leather subculture has existed, according to most accounts, since the late 1940s, when it grew out of gay men who had typically worn uniforms during World War II and mustered out and were looking for a way to sustain the homosocial world and its rituals and rules of masculine identity they had experienced during wartime. Soon these men found their way into the culture of biker clubs, and for them the lure of leather signified a code of dress rooted for most — though not all — in sexual activities, often defined by the sexual practices loosely grouped under the label of BDSM.
“Leather is a term that includes dressing up and getting into sexual scenes when dressed up, acting out certain sexual fantasies like getting flogged, at one end of the spectrum, but you don’t need to dress for BD events,” Barat says.
At the other end of the spectrum, he says, people just like the feel of leather and the thrill of the road and the ride.
“And it’s everything in between,” he says,”plus, it’s not just leather alone anymore – there’s rubber, there’s sports-gear, there’s uniforms. And now there’s also a lot of young guys into dressing up as super heroes and comic book heroes.”
“It’s a whole range of of people and the nice thing about the community is that it’s very accepting,” Barat says. “You see a guy in full leather gear talking to a guy dressed up like Batman talking to a guy dressed up in full rubber.”
For many, participation is a chance to distinguish themselves from mainstream sexual activities. For some it can mean immersion in sexual kink. For others, just wearing the trappings of black leather is the main point, an erotic fashion statement expressing heightened masculinity.
The pioneering gay motorcycle clubs — the Satyrs of Los Angeles, established in 1954, and others like the Warlocks of San Francisco — reflected that same sense of disaffection with the postwar mainstream. It also provided an archetype for gay men who resisted effeminate stereotypes. For years, Larry Townsend’s “Leatherman’s Handbook” was the guide by which rank in the leather community — slave, boy, sir and master — was determined.
But by the 1980s, and perhaps even earlier, a rebellion arose against old guard role rigidity, and instead there was a new emphasis upon choices and personal self-identity, in which a person might consent to begin and end as either slave or master or switch back and forth. In this new world of greater flexibility, leather practitioners defined themselves as “new guard,” and an increasing number of pan-sexual clubs evolved as well.
“There’s a generational aspect to it,” Barat says. “The old guard has to do with fixed attitudes concerning dominance and submissiveness, and in the old guard ‘D’ and ‘s’ is not just something that one does in sexual play, but something one lives 24/7.”
He says it’s now more flexible and all a matter of self-identification, not following rules.
Barat says he is a good example of this transition.
“I began as old guard and in the past I identified as a boy and more recently as a sir, but now as I get older I’ve stopped labeling myself, and now I see myself as a new guard kind of guy.”
As for the Centaurs, he says that some are into BDSM and others are not, but it’s not a primary focus of the club.
“Some of us wear leather and are into gear and not so kinky, and there others who are kinky and don’t necessarily wear a lot of leather.
Meanwhile, pop culture itself has absorbed the look of leather and the feel of erotic alternatives. Witness the numerous popular images of Elvis from the 1960s fully clothed in black leather and then 1970s heavy-metal bands such as Kiss, Black Sabbath and Judas Priest who were cloaked in leather. The latter’s lead singer Rob Halford, himself openly gay, wore a leather costume on stage as early as 1978. Soon codpieces and even harnesses proliferated on metal-rock costumes, as such gear became appropriated by internationally successful bands like the L.A. metal band Motley Crue.
Now numerous lesbians also identify as leatherwomen and a leather pride sticker adorns the guitar of singer Joan Jett. San Francisco leather and lesbian activist Pat Califa co-founded one of the first lesbian S&M groups, Samois, and became a prolific contributor to lesbian BDSM literary erotica and sex handbooks. Leather and Lace, an “old guard” woman’s BDSM social group, was founded in Los Angeles in 1980, and in New York City there was LSM – the Lesbian Sex Mafia.
Another demographic shift in leather, says Barat, has come as younger leathermen and leatherwomen enter the worlds of leather kink, fetish and gear. It used to be mostly men over 40 graduating into the leather lifestyle, he says, “but now guys get into this lifestyle at a very young age and we’re seeing guys at our events in their early twenties.”
Barat admits, however, that leather “was once so taboo and is still not fully accepted within the larger gay community.” He hopes these attitudes are changing, but that “large parts of the gay community are still very intolerant of leather folk.” He says “there are very conservative gay people, who think we should all be monogamous, live in the suburbs, have children and go to church.”
Several entertainment guests will perform. Comedy duo Dick and Duane (Richie Cohen and Duane Tragis) are slated along with the traditional Mr. MAL 2011 contest Sunday afternoon and the Reaction party at which DJ Susan Morabito will spin.
Movies
A Sondheim masterpiece ‘Merrily’ rolls onto Netflix
Embracing raw truth lurking just under the clever lyrics
It’s been long lamented by fans of the late Stephen Sondheim – and they are legion – that Hollywood has hardly ever been successful in transposing his musicals onto the big screen.
Sure, his first Broadway show – “West Side Story,” on which he collaborated with the then-superstar composer Leonard Bernstein – was made into an Oscar-winning triumph in 1961, but after that, despite repeated attempts, even the most starry-eyed Sondheim aficionados would admit that the mainstream movie industry has mostly offered only watered-down versions of his works that were too popular to ignore: “A Little Night Music” was muddled into an ill-fitted star vehicle for Liz Taylor, “Sweeney Todd” became a middling entry in the Tim Burton/Johnny Depp canon, “Into the Woods” mutated into a too-literal all-star fantasy with most of its wolf-ish teeth removed, and we’re still waiting for a film version of “Company” – not that we would have high hopes for it anyway, given the track record.
Of course, most of those aficionados would also be able to tell you exactly why this has always been the case: erudite, sophisticated, and driven by an experimental boldness that would come to redefine American musical theater, Sondheim’s musicals were never about escapism; rather, they deconstructed the romanticized tropes and presentational glamour, turning them upside down to explore a more intellectual realm which favored psychological nuance and moral ambiguity over feel-good fantasy. Instead of pretty lovers and obvious villains, they showcased flawed, complicated, and uncomfortably relatable people who were just as messed-up as the people in the audience. Any attempt to bring them to the screen inevitably depended on changes to make them more appealing to the mainstream, because they were, at heart, the antithesis of what the Hollywood entertainment machine considers to be marketable.
To be fair, this often proved true on the stage as well as the screen. Few of Sondheim’s shows, even the most acclaimed ones, were bona fide “hits,” and at least half of them might be considered “failures” from a strictly commercial point of view – which makes it all the more ironic that perhaps the most purely “Sondheim” of the stage-to-screen Sondheim efforts stems from one of his most notorious “flops.”
“Merrily We Roll Along” was originally conceived and created more than 40 years ago, a reunion of Sondheim with “Company” book-writer George Furth and director Harold Prince, based on a 1934 play by George Kaufman and Moss Hart. Telling the 20-year story of three college friends who grow apart and become estranged as their lives and their goals diverge, it wasn’t ever going to be a feel-good musical; what made it even more of a “downer” was that it told that story in reverse, beginning with the unhappy ending and then going backward in time, step by step, to the youthful idealism and deep bonds of camaraderie that they shared in their first meeting. On one hand, getting the “bad news” first keeps the ending from becoming a crushing disappointment; but on the other hand, the irony that results from knowing how things play out becomes more and more painful with each and every scene.
The original production, mounted in 1981, compounded its challenging format with the additional conceit of casting mostly teen and young adult actors in roles that required them to age – backwards – across two decades; though the cast included future success stories (Jason Alexander and Giancarlo Esposito, among them), few young actors could be expected to convey the layered maturity required of such a task, and few audiences were capable of suspending their disbelief while watching a teenager play a disillusioned 40-year old. This, coupled with a minimalist presentation that left audiences feeling like they were watching their nephew’s high school play, turned “Merrily We Roll Along” into Sondheim’s most notorious Broadway flop – despite raves reviews for the show’s intricately woven score and the xtinging candor of its lyrics.
Fast forward to 2022, when renowned UK theater director Maria Friedman staged a new revival of the show in New York. In the interim, “Merrily” had undergone multiple rewrites and conceptual changes in an effort to “fix” its problems, abandoning the concept of using young performers and opting for a more “fleshed-out” approach to production design, and the show’s reputation, fueled by a love for its quintessentially “Sondheim-esque” score, had grown to the level of “underappreciated masterpiece.” Inspired by an earlier production she had helmed at home a decade earlier, Friedman mounted an Off-Broadway version of the show starring Jonathan Groff, Daniel Radcliffe, and Lindsay Mendez – and suddenly, as one critic observed, Sondheim’s biggest failure became “the flop that finally flew.” The production transferred to Broadway, winning Tony Awards for Groff and Radcliffe’s performances, as well as the prize for Best Revival of a Musical, in 2024.
Sondheim, who died at 91 in 2021, participated in the remount, though he did not live to see its premiere, nor the success that officially validated his most “problematic” work.
Fortunately, we DO get the chance to see it, thanks to a filmed record of the stage performance, directed by Friedman herself, which was released in limited theaters for a brief run last year, but which is now streaming on Netflix – allowing Sondheim fans to finally experience the show in the way it was designed to be seen: as a live performance.
Embracing the conventions of live theatre into its own cinematic ethos, this record of the show gives viewers the kind of up-close access to its performances that is impossible to experience even from the front-row of the theatre. The performances it gives us are impeccable: Groff’s raw and deeply deluded Frank Shepard, the ambitious composer who sells out his values and alienates his friends on the road to success and wealth; Radcliffe’s mawkishly loyal Charlie Kringas, who remains loyal to the dream he shared with his best friend until he can’t anymore; and Mendez’ heartbreaking perfection as Mary Flynn, the wisecracking good-time girl who rounds out their trio while concealing a secret passion of her own – each of them bring the kind of raw and vulnerable honesty to their roles that can, at last, reveal both the deep insights of Sondheim’s intricate lyrics and the discomforting emotional conflicts of Furth’s mercilessly brutal script.
Yes, it’s true that any filmed record of a live performance loses something in the translation; there’s a visceral connection to the players and a feeling of real-time experience that doesn’t quite come through; but thanks to unified vision that Friedman shepherded and instilled into her cast – including each and every one of the brilliant ensemble, who undertake the show’s supporting characters and embody “the blob” of show-biz hangers-on who are central to its cynical theme.
Honestly, we can’t think of another Sondheim screen adaptation that comes close to this one for embracing the raw truth that was always lurking just under the clever lyrics and creative rhyme schemes. For that reason alone, it’s essential viewing for any Sondheim fan – because it’s probably the closest we’ll ever get to having a “real” Sondheim film that lives up to the genius behind it.
a&e features
New book celebrates 1970s dance music icons
‘A Night at the Disco’ features interviews with Donna Summer, Debbie Harry, more
If you’re a fan of 1970s-era dance music, don’t miss the irresistible new book by Christian John Wikane and Alice Harris, “A Night at the Disco,” which revisits more than 90 interviews conducted with some of the biggest names in pop culture.
“A Night at the Disco” (ACC Art Books) was published on March 24, and distributed by Simon & Schuster. It celebrates more than 100 artists who sparked a phenomenon in dance music from 1970-1979 and features excerpts from interviews with everyone from Donna Summer to Debbie Harry.
Lost City Books (2467 18th St., N.W.) will welcome author Christian John Wikane for a book signing and conversation about “A Night at the Disco” on Thursday, April 16 at 6 p.m. Details at lostcitybookstore.com. Bird in Hand Coffee & Books in Baltimore (11 E. 33rd St.) )will also host a Q&A with the author on Wednesday, April 15 at 6 p.m. Details at theivybookshop.com.
Below is an excerpt from “A Night at the Disco.”
“I’ll let in anyone who looks like they’ll make things fun.” Steve Rubell is guiding a New York Times reporter through Studio 54 as resident DJ Richie Kaczor dazzles the crowd with records by CHIC, Odyssey, and T-Connection. “Disco, that’s where the happy people go,” The Trammps sing as dancers spin and twirl underneath tubes of flashing lights. Seven months since Rubell and co-owner Ian Schrager opened Studio 54 in April 1977, it’s welcomed untold numbers of “happy people” … at least those lucky enough to pass through the doors.
“We were part of the chosen few,” says André De Shields, who immortalized the title role in The Wiz on Broadway at the time. “We could show up at Studio 54 and the doorman at the velvet stanchion would look over everyone and point to us from The Wiz to come in, that kind of thing.” As the lead vocalist in the GRAMMY-nominated Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band, whose debut modernized big band sophistication for the discothèques, Cory Daye had carte blanche in the club. “The energy was like a New Year’s Eve party every night,” she says. “I would go up to the mezzanine and watch the mechanical light pillars go up and down, metallic confetti falling from the ceiling, the spoon and the moon. I was so fascinated and enamored by it.
“When a certain song came on, the people would just rush to the dance floor. There was no contact dancing — the hustle was pretty much on its way out — but it was just an amazing experience to see all the cultures together. It was a fusion of cultures, which described my life and my band, so I was right at home there.”
“Studio 54 was the place,” adds Linda Clifford. “Crazy parties. If you could think it, you would see it. It was like a circus. Just an amazing place to be. I worked 54 so many times. It was like a second home to me. The people there treated me so well. The crowd always seemed to enjoy my show. I always had a good time with them. That was the most important thing: making sure that they had fun.”
Well before Studio 54 opened, disco had become a business juggernaut. “A four billion dollar market and still growing,” Billboard announced in February 1977, with dance music offering more variety than ever. “There is no longer a single, readily identifiable disco beat, but a kaleidoscope of sounds that are melodic and danceable,” Tom Moulton told the magazine. In the clubs, records by veteran artists like Stevie Wonder and the Bee Gees were mixed in with a range of new acts like Grace Jones, Boney M., and The Ritchie Family, while everyone from ABBA to Marvin Gaye scored number one pop hits with songs that had club-centric storylines.
Beyond the charts, disco itself remained as idiosyncratic as ever, especially on several productions by Laurin Rinder and W. Michael Lewis, whose studio creations, El Coco (“Let’s Get It Together,” “Cocomotion”) and Le Pamplemousse (“Le Spank”), joined their own “Lust” from Seven Deadly Sins (1977) among the most tantalizing releases on AVI Records. Rinder & Lewis also produced acts for the newly hatched Butterfly Records in Los Angeles, where Saint Tropez (“On a Rien à Perdre”) and Tuxedo Junction (“Moonlight Serenade”) reflected the duo’s high gloss sound, spanning everything from European sophistication to a more literal translation of the ’40s sensibilities popularized by Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band.
12-inch singles had also grown as the preferred format to approximate the club music experience at home. Nearly a year after Atlantic Records introduced its series of promotional 12-inch singles for DJs, New York-based Salsoul Records released the industry’s first commercially available 12-inch single, “Ten Percent” by Double Exposure, in May 1976. A year later, T.K. Records was the first label to certify a gold record for a 12-inch single when Peter Brown’s “Do You Wanna Get Funky With Me” tallied one million sales.— Christian John Wikane
(From “A Night at the Disco” by Alice Harris & Christian John Wikane. Published by ACC Art Books.)
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The Bonnet Ball was held at JR.’s Bar (1519 17th St., N.W.) on Sunday.
(Washington Blade photos and video by Michael Key)
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