God Wants Us All To Be Strippers: Last Chance Dancers & The City Reliquary

11/10/21 • 28 min

The craziness of the last few years has made for some unexpected partnerships around the city. None of these were stranger and more successful than the shotgun wedding of a tiny neighborhood history museum and a risk-taking collective of burlesque artistes known to some as a “Voltron of gay strippers”. This unlikely collaboration not only saved them both financially, but pushed them both into bold new creative directions they never would have otherwise discovered.

Featured in this Episode

Last Chance Dancers - (Insta @lastchancedancers , venmo: @lastchancedancer)

Maggie McMuffine - ( @maggie_mcmuffin) - Founder
Venuhhhtrix - (@venuhhhtrix) - Founder
Esme (@esmedavril)
Kita St. Cyr (@kitastcyr)
Queensinera (@queensinera_vdlp)
Special Guest Dancer - Jack Barrow (@mr.jackbarrow)

City Reliquary (Insta @cityreliquary, website: https://www.cityreliquary.org/)

Jacob Ford (Insta @unitof, https://jacobford.com/)

Natalia - Photographer - (Insta @natsinbrooklyn)

Special Thanks: Nightlife Documentrian Andres (Insta @legomojo

Featured in this Episode

Last Chance Dancers - (Insta @lastchancedancers , venmo: @lastchancedancer)

Maggie McMuffine - ( @maggie_mcmuffin) - Founder
Venuhhhtrix - (@venuhhhtrix) - Founder
Esme (@esmedavril)
Kita St. Cyr (@kitastcyr)
Queensinera (@queensinera_vdlp)
Special Guest Dancer - Jack Barrow (@mr.jackbarrow)

City Reliquary (Insta @cityreliquary, website: https://www.cityreliquary.org/)

Jacob Ford (Insta @unitof, https://jacobford.com/)

Natalia - Photographer - (Insta @natsinbrooklyn)

Special Thanks: Nightlife Documentrian Andres (Insta @legomojo

Previous Episode

Violins, Corpses, and Candles: PubicQuartet and Death of Classical

Like many smaller classical music ensembles, the celebrated PubliQuartet found ways to keep going during the shutdown - largely by performing outdoors in some very unorthodox settings. One of these was the catacombs of The Green-Wood Cemetery, one of the venues where Death of Classical has been presenting eclectic performances since early 2020. What’s it like to perform during a pandemic in a space where you’re literally surrounded by the dead? Remarkably transcendent, it turns out.

Featured in this Episode

PubliQuartet

(https://www.publiquartet.com/) (@publiq4tet)
Curtis Stewart (@curtis.stewart_violin)
Jannina Kara Norpoth (@janninan)
Nick Revel (@revelnick)
Hamilton Berry (@cellisthb)

Death of Classical https://www.deathofclassical.com/ (@deathofclassical)

Andrew Ousley (@andrewousley)

The Green-Wood Cemetery https://www.green-wood.com/ (@historicgreenwood)

Resources/More Info:

Next Episode

Becoming Othello at Lincoln Center

Lincoln Center is the great city on the hill of performing arts in the United States, home to arguably the most distinguished opera company, ballet company, and symphony orchestra in the country, as well as our most famous music school, the world’s largest performing arts library, and much, much more... But for all of the highbrow excellence of these institutions, none of them had much to offer a city taking its first tentative steps out of quarantine, which craved ways to come together, inclusively and outdoors.

So Lincoln Center threw open its massive and under-utilized outdoor campus to some amazing performers that normally wouldn’t have the opportunity to perform there. Among them was Debra Ann Byrd, a theater veteran who’s one-woman show “Becoming Othello: A Black Girl’s Journey” tells a tale of perseverance, perfect for this city right now.

Featured in this Episode