aviance

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Day Glo is En Vogue

November 25, 2009 in Nightlife, Performance by hadjalexiou | 2 comments

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Day Glo is back, honey!

Once upon a time, New York was full of downtown-style “avant-garde” performance art. It was usually at clubs or divey East Village spots. The idea was that you didn’t know exactly what you were seeing, or why, but it provoked some kind of emotion in you. While the best kind of performance doesn’t require it, being on mind-altering drugs probably helped.

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But enSubtitles, a performance group consisting of club kids (and drag artists) One-hAlf NeLson, Erickatoure Aviance and Clifton Brown (sometimes known as the beautiful Nanya Bidness) fills a gap in visual performance left by the death of New York’s clubland of yesteryear (and yes, I admit to all, these guys are my friends. It’s Thanksgiving, a break please!).

Conceived after a huge response after an avant garde drag performance at a Grace Jones drag tribute at the Cock last November—Erickatoure and Nelson inhabited one voluminous costume with a bald-capped head—the aesthetic of enSubtitles (think, En Vogue, but not) is pretty much lots of Day-glo and scary-looking.

New York is Burning:
Xtravaganza Ball @ The Box

November 13, 2009 in Nightlife, Performance by hadjalexiou | 4 comments

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Before Tuesday night, I had only dared to dream about attending a New York City underground ball.

But at the Lower East Side burlesque hall and trendy lounge the Box, I lived out my fantasy. And oh, was it beyond amazing. Fingers were wagging, screams of work bitch! filled my ears. There were shows, there was drama and real life danger. And most of all, there were looks, honey.

Derived from the celebrated “Paris is Burning” (a viewing of this 1990 documentary is obligatory for understanding the magnitude of this event) the apt-named “New York is Burning,” was hosted by the House of Xtravaganza, one of the most popular and collectively talented groups on the ball circuit. It was, most simply, a high-fashion, do-it-yourself runway competition where scores of folks dressed in ways that purposefully defy written description. To use the vernacular of this queendom, before you say anything, you would want to get into the look.

Erickatoure Aviance dishes on Wendy Williams and Drag Identity Politics

August 19, 2009 in Behavior, Television by hadjalexiou | 8 comments

DRAGSCRIMINATION // Last week the Advocate released a story about a New York City drag queen who was poorly treated at a taping of the Wendy Williams Show.

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According to the article, the controversy arose when Erickatoure Aviance was informed that she could not sit in the audience due to show’s “no costume” policy. While she was eventually allowed in, she was told not to ask “Hot Topic” questions and placed in the periphery of the audience behind a tall man.

The minor gay blogosphere uproar that followed brought many questions, accusations and general shadiness to the table about Wendy Williams, but also the intentions of Ms. Aviance.

Being very familiar with this very interesting queen (FULL DISCLOSURE: we are good friends), the timing of this incident is practically serendipitous (more on that later) and opens up a dialogue on gender politics, a hot topic at the moment.

But first I think some background is warranted.

A gay man who grew up in Portsmouth, NH, Ericka came to New York in 1999 to study ballet and modern dance at the prestigious Tisch school at NYU. Entranced by NYC’s legendary nightlife scene, she “wanted to be one of the pretty people, the glitterati who don’t wait on line or pay for drinks,” as I learned in a previous interview. She went on to work at places like Tunnel, Twilo and Exit while they still existed.

But it was her love for fashion and personal expression (can you find the word “couture” in her name?) that formed Ericka’s persona of today: a New York City queen who dresses in outfits of her own styling; design that reaches for the sui generis in women’s fashion.