PARIS IS BURNING vis-a-vis A DANCER’S WORLD
PARIS IS BURNING vis-à-vis A DANCER’S WORLD
Category is Performance Realness!
Long before drag was pillaged into pop culture, PARIS IS BURNING presented a slice of life and loss in the New York city drag community. Premiering in 1990, the same year Madonna released “Vogue”, PARIS IS BURNING still resonates as a primer on drag and the glamorous ball culture, punctuated with pressing issues of racism, poverty, homophobia, and transphobia, all of which are still redundantly common.
Martha Graham, iconic dancer and choreographer, narrates the art and methodology of performance in A DANCER’S WORLD, a 1957 public broadcast documentary that showcased Graham’s troupe and penchant for behind-the-curtain modernism.
Paired together, PARIS IS BURNING and A DANCER’S WORLD provide a kaleidoscope of costumes and characters, facades and fictions, and, above all, micro-triumphs and fundamental human truths.
VIS-À-VIS is an ongoing program curated by Brenda Contreras and Navid Sinaki that pairs narrative works to present the dialogues and deviations when seemingly disparate styles are placed side by side and face to face.
Presented with the USC Hugh M. Hefner Moving Image Archive.
Doors open at 7:30 pm
$5 suggested donation
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