Arts & Entertainment
Best of Gay D.C. 2016: NIGHTLIFE
Blade readers voted for their nightlife favorites
Best Dance Party
Mixtape
Runner-up: BARE by LURe
DJs Shea Van Horn and Matt Bailer host Mixtape, an alternative dance party, on the second Saturday of each month. Locations vary. The fifth annual Mixtape Halloween party is on Monday, Oct. 31 at the Howard Theatre. It’s at the 9:30 Club on Saturday, Nov. 12.
Mixtape (Photo by Dave Claypool)
Best Bartender
Dito Sevilla, Dito’s Bar at Floriana
1602 17th St., N.W.
Runner-up: Dusty Martinez, Trade
Dito Sevilla (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
Best Burlesque Dancer
Bella La Blanc
Runner-up: GiGi Holliday
Bella La Blanc is a housewife and mother of three, but unlike most wives and mothers, she’s a showgirl who has found a way to play multiple roles in her life and not just on stage.
La Blanc, originally from Miami, says she was a theater kid who first fell in love with burlesque after watching “Gypsy.” She then watched “Funny Girl” and once she came of legal age decided she wanted to emulate Barbra Streisand’s Fanny Brice. Her journey led her to frequent fetish clubs, at the time the only place to find burlesque shows.
Now La Blanc regularly performs at the Bier Baron Tavern and has her own burlesque production company Glit-O-Rama Productions. She’s also become known for her cos-play of Regina Mills from “Once Upon a Time.”
La Blanc says her showgirl life is an open book for her kids who often see an evening gown and a vat of crystals strung out on the dining room table after dinner in her Northern Virginia home. Events like this make it all the more fitting that her tagline is “The Stepford Wife gone wild!”
For La Blanc, burlesque is all about pride in being who you are.
“As an exhibitionist I love being on stage and I love sparkly things,” La Blanc says. “But I find that self-empowerment, self-confidence is what burlesque is all about. I go on stage and I’m like, ‘Yeah, I’m a 30-something-year old woman. This body has popped out babies and I’m still going to wear next to nothing and shake my bacon.” (Mariah Cooper)
Bella La Blanc (Photo courtesy of La Blanc)
Best Cocktail
Lemon Squeeze
Duplex Diner
2004 18th St., N.W.
202-265-7828
(Second consecutive win in this category)
Runner-up: Watermelon Basil Slush, Logan Tavern
A bartender makes a Lemon Squeeze at Duplex Diner. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
Best DJ
Matt Bailer
Peach Pit, Mixtape
(Second consecutive win in this category)
Runner-up: DJ Tezrah
DJ Matt Bailer (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
Best Drag King
Chris Jay
Runner-up: Sebastian Katz
Chris Jay — who identifies as gender non-conforming and goes by Chris Jennings in non-drag endeavors — started drag three-and-a-half years ago, led to the craft by photography.
Interested in finding some different subjects, he happened upon the D.C. Kings four years ago and started shooting as many of their performances as he could. About six months later, he started with the Kings and continues to this day.
“I’m a lover of R&B, so you’ll find me performing that mostly,” Jay says. “My drag persona is me at a thousand, so I’m kind of full of myself and way more outgoing.”
Now with Pretty Boi Drag (the Kings folded two years ago), Jay performs twice a month — the first Sunday of each at Acre 121 and the third Sunday of each month at the Bier Baron. Jay is 36, happily partnered and lives in Baltimore. (Joey DiGuglielmo)
Chris Jay (Photo courtesy of Chris Jay)
Best Drag Queen
Tatianna
Runner-up: Ba’Naka
While Tatianna has been a drag nightlife staple in D.C., for the rest of the nation she had dropped off the radar in between her appearance on the second season of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” and her reemergence in “RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars 2.”
In her original season, Tatianna, who hails from Falls Church, Va., became a stand-out competitor when she won Snatch Game with her eerily on point imitation of Britney Spears circa 2005. Her taglines, “Thank you” and “Choices” also made her a fan favorite.
In “All Stars 2” Tatianna was booted from the show by fellow queen Alaska not once, but twice. However before leaving she yet again left an impression on the judges with her spoken word performance of “Same Parts,” an ode to men at parties who hit on her and don’t realize she also has the “same parts.”
The local queen also dressed up as T-Boz for her last runway challenge impressing both the judges and fans.
Tatianna can frequently be found performing at Town and has said her favorite celebrities to impersonate are Britney Spears, Ariana Grande and Miley Cyrus. Tatianna has mentioned on “RuPaul’s Drag Race” that she first began doing drag in middle school at age 14.
Since leaving the show, Tatianna is ready to continue working hard on her career.
“You can expect to see me everywhere because I’m traveling the world, dropping new music and saying ‘Yes!’ to any and all projects,” Tatianna told the Huffington Post following her exit from the show. (Mariah Cooper)
Tatianna (Washington Blade photo by Hugh Clarke)
Best Drag Show
Ladies of Town
Fridays and Saturdays at 10:30 p.m.
Town Danceboutique
2009 8th St., N.W.
Runner-up: Pretty Boi Drag
Ladies of Town (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
Best Gay-Friendly Straight Bar
Dacha Beer Garden
1600 7th St., N.W.
202-524-8790
(Second consecutive win in this category)
Runner-up: Black Cat
Dacha Beer Garden (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
Best Go-Go Dancer/Stripper
Dylan Knight
Runner-up: Christian Lezzil
Dylan Knight (Photo by David Claypool; courtesy Knight)
Tatianna isn’t the only star to launch from Town Danceboutique. Dylan Knight started gyrating lasciviously about 2010 after seeing other go-go dancers there.
He’s a weekly regular at Town and performs there and elsewhere, never taking himself too seriously.
“I just try to be entertaining and cute,” the 25-year-old D.C. resident says.
He’s also honored to win — “It feels good, I didn’t think I would.”
Knight dances nude sometimes and has shot more than 100 gay porn scenes since 2012 (favorite co-star? Colby Jansen).
He got his famous shamrock tattoo at Ocean City at age 18 when he was there for his senior trip. “My boyfriend and I got matching tattoos,” he says. “I’m Irish and pretty lucky, so it fits.” (Joey DiGuglielmo)
Best Happy Hour
D.C. Bear Crüe Bear Happy Hour
Every Friday at 6 p.m.
Town Danceboutique
2009 8th St., N.W.
Runner-up: Number Nine
D.C. Bear Crüe Bear Happy Hour (Washington Blade photo by Hugh Clarke)
Hottest Bar Staff
Nellie’s
900 U St., N.W.
Runner-up: Town Patio
Nellie’s Sports Bar (Washington Blade photo by Hugh Clarke)
Best Live Music
9:30 Club
815 V St., N.W.
(A perennial favorite in this category)
Runner-up: Black Cat
Troye Sivan performs at the 9:30 Club (Photo by Katherine Gaines)
Best Neighborhood Bar
JR.’s Bar & Grill
1519 17th St., N.W.
(A perennial favorite in this category)
Runner-up: Uproar
JR.’s (Washington Blade photo by Pete Exis)
Best Outside-the-District Bar
Freddie’s Beach Bar
555 S. 23rd St.
Arlington, Va.
(A winner of this award many times previously)
Runner-up: Grand Central (Baltimore)
Freddie’s Beach Bar and Grill (Washington Blade photo by Hugh Clarke)
Best Outdoor Drinking
Town Patio
Town Danceboutique
2009 8th St., N.W.
(Second consecutive win in this category)
Runner-up: Dacha Beer Garden
Town Patio (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
Best Place for Guys Night Out
Ziegfeld’s/Secrets
1824 Half St., S.W.
(Second consecutive win in this category)
Runner-up: D.C. Bear Crüe Bear Happy Hour
Ziegfeld’s-Secrets (Washington Blade file photo by Michael Key)
Best Place for Girls Night Out
BARE by LURe
Every third Saturday of the month at Cobalt
1639 R St., N.W.
(Second consecutive win in this category)
Runner-up: WhiskHER
BARE by LURe (Washington Blade photo by Damien Salas)
Best Rehoboth Bar
Blue Moon
35 Baltimore Ave.
Rehoboth Beach, Del.
(Second consecutive win in this category)
Runner-up: Aqua
Blue Moon (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
Best Rehoboth Bartender
Matt Urban, Blue Moon
35 Baltimore Ave.
Rehoboth Beach, Del.
Runner-up: Jamie Romano, Purple Parrot
Matt Urban has been behind the bar at the venerable Blue Moon for 14 years. His friendly, reserved demeanor keeps the customers coming back year after year. He says the best part of the job is “meeting so many different people and catching up with friends.” Originally from Wilmington, he lives in Rehoboth with his wife.
Matt Urban (Photo courtesy Urban)
Best Rooftop
Uproar Lounge & Restaurant
639 Florida Ave., N.W.
Runner-up: Nellie’s
UpRoar rooftop (Washington Blade photo by Hugh Clarke)
Best Singer or Band
Frankie & Betty
(Second consecutive win in this category)
Runner-up: Wicked Jezabel
Frankie & Betty (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
Best Transgender Performer
Gigi Paris Couture
Runner-up: Lady Dane
Gigi Paris Couture started performing 20 years ago. She was just hanging out in drag one night at a bar and one of the performers was a no-show.
“They asked me to perform and I liked it,” Couture, a veteran of Ziegfeld’s, Town, Freddie’s, Cobalt, Perry’s and many others, says.
She performs weekly and works by day as a stylist at the Cosset Aveda in Crystal City, Va., near where she resides in Alexandria.
Couture, who’s single, says many trans performers work right alongside drag queens. She acknowledges there is “occasional tension, but nothing major.”
“There’s always something funny at every show,” Couture says. “That’s the nature of the business. A pastie can come off, duct tape might fall off or a piece of jewelry might fall on someone’s eggs during brunch. Little funny things that make people laugh.”
She’s happy to win this new category, a Washington Blade Best of Gay D.C. first.
“It’s an honor to be acknowledged for something I have enjoyed doing for so long.” (Joey DiGuglielmo)
Gigi Paris Couture (Photo courtesy of Couture)
To see winners in other categories in the Washington Blade’s Best of Gay D.C. 2016 Awards, click here.
Theater
Round House explores serious issues related to privilege
‘A Jumping-Off Point’ is absorbing, timely, and funny
‘A Jumping-Off Point’
Through May 5
Round House Theatre
4545 East-West Highway, Bethesda, Md.
$46-$83
Roundhousetheatre.org
In Inda Craig-Galván’s new play “A Jumping-Off Point,” protagonist Leslie Wallace, a rising Black dramatist, believes strongly in writing about what you know. Clearly, Craig-Galván, a real-life successful Black playwright and television writer, adheres to the same maxim. Whether further details from the play are drawn from her life, is up for speculation.
Absorbing, timely, and often funny, the current Round House Theatre offering explores some serious issues surrounding privilege and who gets to write about what. Nimbly staged and acted by a pitch perfect cast, the play moves swiftly across what feels like familiar territory without being the least bit predictable.
After a tense wait, Leslie (Nikkole Salter) learns she’s been hired to be showrunner and head writer for a new HBO MAX prestige series. What ought to be a heady time for the ambitious young woman quickly goes sour when a white man bearing accusations shows up at her door.
The uninvited visitor is Andrew (Danny Gavigan), a fellow student from Leslie’s graduate playwriting program. The pair were never friends. In fact, he pressed all of her buttons without even trying. She views him as a lazy, advantaged guy destined to fail up, and finds his choosing to dramatize the African American Mississippi Delta experience especially annoying.
Since grad school, Leslie has had a play successfully produced in New York and now she’s on the cusp of making it big in Los Angeles while Andrew is bagging groceries at Ralph’s. (In fact, we’ll discover that he’s a held a series of wide-ranging temporary jobs, picking up a lot of information from each, a habit that will serve him later on, but I digress.)
Their conversation is awkward as Andrew’s demeanor shifts back and forth from stiltedly polite to borderline threatening. Eventually, he makes his point: Andrew claims that Leslie’s current success is entirely built on her having plagiarized his script.
This increasingly uncomfortable set-to is interrupted by Leslie’s wisecracking best friend and roommate Miriam who has a knack for making things worse before making them better. Deliciously played by Cristina Pitter (whose program bio describes them as “a queer multi-spirit Afro-indigenous artist, abolitionist, and alchemist”), Miriam is the perfect third character in Craig-Galván’s deftly balanced three-hander.
Cast members’ performances are layered. Salter’s Leslie is all charm, practicality, and controlled ambition, and Gavigan’s Andrew is an organic amalgam of vulnerable, goofy, and menacing. He’s terrific.
The 90-minute dramedy isn’t without some improbable narrative turns, but fortunately they lead to some interesting places where provoking questions are representation, entitlement, what constitutes plagiarism, etc. It’s all discussion-worthy topics, here pleasingly tempered with humor.
New York-based director Jade King Carroll skillfully helms the production. Scenes transition smoothly in large part due to a top-notch design team. Scenic designer Meghan Raham’s revolving set seamlessly goes from Leslie’s attractive apartment to smart cafes to an HBO writers’ room with the requisite long table and essential white board. Adding to the graceful storytelling are sound and lighting design by Michael Keck and Amith Chandrashaker, respectively.
The passage of time and circumstances are perceptively reflected in costume designer Moyenda Kulemeka’s sartorial choices: heels rise higher, baseball caps are doffed and jackets donned.
“A Jumping-Off Point” is the centerpiece of the third National Capital New Play Festival, an annual event celebrating new work by some of the country’s leading playwrights and newer voices.
Nightlife
Ed Bailey brings Secret Garden to Project GLOW festival
An LGBTQ-inclusive dance space at RFK this weekend
When does a garden GLOW? When it’s run by famed local gay DJ Ed Bailey.
This weekend, music festival Project GLOW at RFK Festival Grounds will feature Bailey’s brainchild the Secret Garden, a unique space just for the LGBTQ community that he launched in 2023.
While Project GLOW, running April 27-28, is a stage for massive electronic DJ sets in a large outdoor space, Secret Garden is more intimate, though no less adrenaline-forward. He’s bringing the nightclub to the festival. The garden is a dance area that complements the larger stages, but also stands on its own as a draw for festival-goers. Its focus is on DJs that have a presence and following in the LGBTQ audience world.
“The Secret Garden is a showcase for what LGBTQ nightlife, and nightclubs in general, are all about,” he says. “True club DJs playing club music for people that want to dance in a fun environment that is high energy and low stress. It’s the cool party inside the bigger party.”
Project GLOW launched in 2022. Bailey connected with the operators after the first event, and they discussed Bailey curating his own space for 2023. “They were very clear that they wanted me to lean into the vibrant LGBTQ nightlife of D.C. and allow that community to be very visibly a part of this area.”
Last year, club icon Kevin Aviance headlined the Secret Garden. The GLOW festival organizers loved the its energy from last year, and so asked Bailey to bring it back again, with an entire year to plan.
This year, Bailey says, he is “bringing in more D.C. nightlife legends.” Among those are DJ Sedrick, “a DJ and entertainer legend. He was a pivotal part of Tracks nightclub and is such a dynamic force of entertainment,” says Bailey. “I am excited for a whole new audience to be able to experience his very special brand of DJing!”
Also, this year brings in Illustrious Blacks, a worldwide DJ duo with roots in D.C.; and “house music legends” DJs Derrick Carter and DJ Spen.
Bailey is focusing on D.C.’s local talent, with a lineup including Diyanna Monet, Strikestone!, Dvonne, Baronhawk Poitier, THABLACKGOD, Get Face, Franxx, Baby Weight, and Flower Factory DJs KS, Joann Fabrixx, and PWRPUFF.
Secret Garden also brings in performers who meld music with dance, theater, and audience interactions for a multi-sensory experience.
Bailey is an owner of Trade and Number Nine, and was previously an owner of Town Danceboutique. Over the last 35 years, Bailey owned and operated more than 10 bars and clubs in D.C. He has an impressive resume, too. Since starting in 1987, he’s DJ’d across the world for parties and nightclubs large and intimate. He says that he opened “in concert for Kylie Minogue, DJed with Junior Vasquez, played giant 10,000-person events, and small underground parties.” He’s also held residencies at clubs in Atlanta, Miami, and here in D.C. at Tracks, Nation, and Town.
With Secret Garden, Bailey and GLOW aim to bring queer performers into the space not just for LGBTQ audiences, but for the entire music community to meet, learn about, and enjoy. While they might enjoy fandom among queer nightlife, this Garden is a platform for them to meet the entirety of GLOW festival goers.
Weekend-long Project GLOW brings in headliners and artists from EDM and electronic music, with big names like ILLENIUM, Zedd, and Rezz. In all, more than 50 artists will take the three stages at the third edition of Project GLOW, presented by Insomniac (Electric Daisy Carnival) and Club Glow (Echostage, Soundcheck).
Out & About
Washington Improv Theatre hosts ‘The Queeries’
Event to celebrate queer DMV talent and pop culture camp
The Washington Improv Theatre, along with the Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs and the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington DC, will team up to host “The Queeries!” on Friday, April 26 at 9:30 p.m. at Studio Theatre.
The event will celebrate Queer DMV talent and pop culture camp. With a mixture of audience-submitted nominations and blatantly undemocratically declared winners, “The Queeries!” mimics LGBTQ life itself: unfair, but far more fun than the alternative.
The event will be co-hosted by Birdie and Butchie, who have invited some of their favorite bent winos, D.C. “D-listers,” former Senate staffers, and other stars to sashay down the lavender carpet for the selfie-strewn party of the year.
Tickets are just $15 and can be purchased on WITV’s website.
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