Queer Fringe Houston Premiers After Two-Year Delay

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Queer Fringe Houston Premiers After Two-Year Delay

The Pilot Dance Project presents a new community-focused program celebrating queer performance art of all disciplines!

HOUSTON (June 20, 2022) – The Pilot Dance Project presents an all-new festival dedicated to celebrating the voices of Houston’s LGBTQIA+ performing artists: Queer Fringe Houston! Originally set to premiere in June 2020, Queer Fringe Houston comes to the MATCH in its inaugural year featuring a screening of Marcus Pontello’s Friday I’m in Love, as well as new works by jhon r. stronks, Corian Ellisor (Atlanta, GA), Jadd Tank, Urethra Burns, and Guanders the Drag Queen. Queer Fringe Houston is made possible by funding from Bunnies on the Bayou, the BIPOC Arts Netword & Fund, and a Mid-America Arts Alliance Artistic Innovations Grant.

On Friday, June 24, Filmmaker Marcus Pontello navigates the history of Numbers as a narrator, paying primary tribute to its former owners and best friends, Bruce Godwin, a flamboyant DJ extraordinaire and Robert Burtenshaw, an introverted British video artist. Throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s, Bruce and Robot exposed Houston to cutting edge music and fought to create a gathering spot of inclusivity in a historically conservative city.  Current owner Rudi Bunch, a staff member of the club since 1982, with longtime Numbers DJ, Wes Wallace, have maintained the vision set forth by Bruce and Robot and are also prominent voices in Friday I’m in Love.

The June 26 showcase will also feature a new live performance by jhon r. stronks, supported by a grant from the Mid-America Arts Alliance Artistic Innovations Grant. stronks’ new work is a reflection on the 50th Anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall Riots. Originally set to premiere in the summer of 2020, this original work was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. With two additional years of gestation, stronks has crafted a meaningful response to questions of queer identify, community, and social responsibility.

Through an experimental rehearsal process crafted from the limitations and parameters of art-making during the pandemic, stronks asked of his collaborators to define the meaning of Pride as its relates to their personal histories and individual relationships to their queer identities. The result is a moving and accessible discourse of what it means to be a queer individual in our twenty-first century, late-stage capitalist culture, one that is all too often a precarious space for the “other.”
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