Arts & Entertainment

Catching up with Kristine W.

Dance diva playing blossoms, Town Saturday

Published

12 years ago

April 12, 2012

Kristine W.
Town Danceboutique
2009 8th Street, NW
Doors — 10 p.m.
Performance — midnight
Cover — $8 before 11; $12 after

Dance diva Kristine W. has two D.C. engagements slated for Saturday (Photo courtesy Project Publicity)

It’s 11 a.m. on a recent weekday in Burbank, Calif., and Kristine W. is in a happy mood — she just got measured for alterations for a dress she’s going to wear this weekend for one of her D.C. performances.

“It’s a relief,” she says en route to a rehearsal. “You have to have something great to wear in a parade. We just left the costume shop where they fitted it. Sometimes that’s the biggest challenge — finding something to wear.”

The dance diva who’s famous for having scored a whopping 16 No. 1 hits on the Billboard Hot Dance Club chart over a 20-year recording career, has two gigs slated for D.C. this weekend — she’ll perform in a cherry blossom parade then Saturday night around midnight she’ll do a 20-minute mini-set at Town. Though she’s only briefly cracked the Hot 100, she trails only Madonna and Beyonce as the top dance charter for the ‘00s and has had more consecutive dance No. 1s than any other artist.

She’s looking forward to returning to Town, she says.

“It’s an amazing club and Ed (Bailey) is a great guy. And you know, it’s a real club, it’s the real deal. Some clubs are very put on but this is Town, a real club with real chill DJs.”

The dancing queen is a bit of an enigma — she’s vague on personal details though she’s talked publicly about being a Washington state native and a cancer survivor. She admits to being “in a relationship at the moment,” but declines to elaborate. She has “a couple of very cool kids,” a girl and a boy, 11 and 12.

“They’re in school and having a great time. My girl plays the violin and my boy is a guitar player and a great golfer.” Kristine has lived in Las Vegas for about 18 years. She says it’s a great home base though she’s on the road “at least” 60 percent of the year on average.

She’s been successful at continuing her chart success despite the rampant music industry changes over the last several years. Kristine says her performances fuel her recording efforts. Her last album, a jazz project that had several remixed singles, did well and led to some cabaret gigs for her. Next up is a mostly new album — eight new songs and four hits in newly remixed versions for a project slated to drop in early June.

Despite all the high-concept photography and sonic production, Kristine says she lives a mostly low-key life when she’s not working.

“I don’t live a flashy life and I mostly put everything back into my music. My shows have subsidized my music. I put everything into promotion, pay my graphic artist, my project manager, then my livelihood comes from my live shows.”

Kristine gives mostly succinct answers during a 20-minute phone chat, but a question about her earliest gay influences inspires a story.

“The choir director at our church was gay but nobody ever talked about it,” she says. “There’s no way he would have come out but he was one of my best friends. My mom would pretend to be his girlfriend and all four of us — my dad had died when we were little, we were like 2, 3, 4 or 5 when he died — but he stepped in and because I was so crazy about music, he really had an influence on me. So he taught sixth grade and had this award-winning children’s choir, and my mom was like we totally get it that you could not say anything, it would ruin his career, but then later they were naming a school after him. He died of cancer when I was like 13. He would love it now that I have such a gay following with my music. I’m pretty sure he probably died of AIDS but back then everybody just said it was cancer.”

Later Kristine had a vocal coach who was gay. She credits him and solid operatic voice lessons in high school with her musical chops. Though she doesn’t sing classical music anymore, she says the training informed her precision.

“There was no room for anything flat or sharp,” she says. “That was not on the program. You hit the note dead on.”

Unfortunately she says there’s no trophy or plaque that comes when you get a Billboard chart topper. The magazine does, however, do an article on the single which she saves and frames.

And why is dance music so popular with gays? After all, she should know after staking out her career in the genre, no?

“Because it’s uplifting and happy,” she says. “It’s just like medicine for the soul.”

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Theater

‘Amm(i)gone’ explores family, queerness, and faith

A ‘fully autobiographical’ work from out artist Adil Mansoor

Published

4 days ago

April 20, 2024

Patrick Folliard

Adil Mansoor in ‘Amm(i)gone’ at Woolly Mammoth Theatre. (Photo by Kitoko Chargois)

‘Amm(i)gone’
Thorough May 12
Woolly Mammoth Theatre
641 D St., N.W.
$60-$70
Woollymammoth.net

“Fully and utterly autobiographical.” That’s how Adil Mansoor describes “Amm(i)gone,” his one-man work currently playing at Woolly Mammoth Theatre.

Both created and performed by out artist Mansoor, it’s his story about inviting his Pakistani mother to translate Sophocles’s Greek tragedy “Antigone” into Urdu. Throughout the journey, there’s an exploration of family, queerness, and faith,as well as references to teachings from the Quran, and audio conversations with his Muslim mother.

Mansoor, 38, grew up in the suburbs of Chicago and is now based in Pittsburgh where he’s a busy theater maker. He’s also the founding member of Pittsburgh’s Hatch Arts Collective and the former artistic director of Dreams of Hope, an LGBTQ youth arts organization.

WASHINGTON BLADE: What spurred you to create “Amm(i)gone”?

ADIL MANSOOR: I was reading a translation of “Antigone” a few years back and found myself emotionally overwhelmed. A Theban princess buries her brother knowing it will cost her, her own life. It’s about a person for whom all aspirations are in the afterlife. And what does that do to the living when all of your hopes and dreams have to be reserved for the afterlife?

I found grant funding to pay my mom to do the translation. I wanted to engage in learning. I wanted to share theater but especially this ancient tragedy. My mother appreciated the characters were struggling between loving one another and their beliefs.

BLADE: Are you more director than actor?

MANSOOR: I’m primarily a director with an MFA in directing from Carnegie Mellon. I wrote, directed, and performed in this show, and had been working on it for four years. I’ve done different versions including Zoom. Woolly’s is a new production with the same team who’ve been involved since the beginning.

I love solo performance. I’ve produced and now teach solo performance and believe in its power. And I definitely lean toward “performance” and I haven’t “acted” since I was in college. I feel good on stage. I was a tour guide and do a lot of public speaking. I enjoy the attention.

BLADE: Describe your mom.

MANSOOR: My mom is a wonderfully devout Muslim, single mother, social worker who discovered my queerness on Google. And she prays for me.

She and I are similar, the way we look at things, the way we laugh. But different too. And those are among the questions I ask in this show. Our relationship is both beautiful and complicated.

BLADE: So, you weren’t exactly hiding your sexuality?

MANSOOR: In my mid-20s, I took time to talk with friends about our being queer with relation to our careers. My sexuality is essential to the work. As the artistic director at Dreams of Hope, part of the work was to model what it means to be public. If I’m in a room with queer and trans teenagers, part of what I’m doing is modeling queer adulthood. The way they see me in the world is part of what I’m putting out there. And I want that to be expansive and full.

So much of my work involves fundraising and being a face in schools. Being out is about making safe space for queer young folks.

BLADE: Have you encountered much Islamophobia?

MANSOOR: When 9/11 happened, I was a sophomore in high school, so yes. I faced a lot then and now. I’ve been egged on the street in the last four months. I see it in the classroom. It shows up in all sorts of ways.

BLADE: What prompted you to lead your creative life in Pittsburgh?

MANSOOR: I’ve been here for 14 years. I breathe with ease in Pittsburgh. The hills and the valleys and the rust of the city do something to me. It’s beautiful, it’ affordable, and there is support for local artists. There’s a lot of opportunity.

Still, the plan was to move to New York in September of 2020 but that was cancelled. Then the pandemic showed me that I could live in Pittsburgh and still have a nationally viable career.

BLADE: What are you trying to achieve with “Amm(i)gone”?

MANSOOR: What I’m sharing in the show is so very specific but I hear people from other backgrounds say I totally see my mom in that. My partner is Catholic and we share so much in relation to this.

I hope the work is embracing the fullness of queerness and how means so many things. And I hope the show makes audiences want to call their parents or squeeze their partners.