Glitter Roadshow Puts Femmes Front and Center in "Heels on Wheels"

On April 11, NYC-based queer femme art extravaganza Heels on Wheels will kick off their tour of the Northeast U.S and Canada with "The Glitter Roadshow." A combination of multimedia, literary and performing arts, music and cabaret, the show will look at the idea of queer femmes at work.

"We showcase and represent a real diversity of the feminine spectrum of queer people," said co-producer Damien Luxe. "The majority are women, but there are also genderqueer and transmasculine people who sometimes also identify as femme, which shows a greater acceptance of femininity."

The show consists of six performers, local acts and a dance party. Fearless artists rampage from hi-femme to femmedrogyny in a wild revue of visceral poetic performance, emotional escape plans, high femme drag, multimedia mermaids and rock 'n' roll.

Luxe said that Heels on Wheels created the show after realizing that, while there were burlesque and literary tours, there weren't other femme art representations out there.

"We thought something was missing in the queer arts community, so in our work we showcase interdisciplinary multimedia and live arts," said Luxe.

The 2014 Glitter Roadshow is the fifth annual tour, and features Luxe, Heather �cs, Shomi Noise, Sabina Ibarrola, Angel Nafis, Alvis Parsley, and wrangler artist Lizxnn Disaster, sharing a dazzling, diverse cabaret of performance art works and acts of resistance by queer folks of feminine spectrum genders.

"For example, my multimedia piece combines video and diverse sets of queer femmes dressed as mermaids to pull on the idea that we can create a dream together and work to lift each other up. It pushes back on the idea that working class people have to do it all by themselves."

Shomi Noise plays guitar and reads from her zine series "Building Up Emotional Muscles," the story of her journey as a Bolivian immigrant navigating U.S. culture and finding herself through alternative music scenes.

Heather �cs' "Welcome to the Waldorf Hysteria" uses multi-media high-femme drag histrionics to reach beyond language and ask, what do we gain when we lose control?

"It incorporates high femme drag with performance art, and a media component I'm working on," said �cs. "The world is full of horrible things, an there aren't words to express the feelings and ideas I have about the intersection of oppression and capitalism. So the drag is to sound effects: laughing, crying, meowing, sirens, and an ultimate onstage freakout. It's very performance arty, but in some ways very comedic as well."

Angel Nafis' poetry celebrates the everything and everywhere of her world, of love and divinity, of her black girl brilliance in its vastness and depth. Alvis Parsley's heartfelt confession draws on their experiences as a genderqueer Asian while questioning the roles of institutions, authority, and the ecosystem of the arts with both humor and tenderness. This year also includes a selection of video art by Louis Chavez, Kristin Li, Ellie Beth, Jacqueline Mary and Celeste Chan.

Sabina Ibarrola melts down and melts hearts in a pop culture performative exploration of breaking up and breaking through with the help of karaoke and Carrie Bradshaw.

"My piece is doing a lot with feelings of heartbreak and the exploration of pop culture in the extreme," said Ibarrola. "It's like, 'Sex and the City' does not represent the New York I know, so why do we even watch those shows? But there are kernels of emotional truth within, from my queer mixed-race radical brain, and hopefully the audience will find it accessible."

The folks at Heels on Wheels believe that art can change the world. They create it to build power for historically marginalized LGBTQ stories and people. The tour is working class-led and multi-racial, and performances include cisgendered and trans folks, QPOC, mixed race folks, sex workers and immigrants.

By lovingly representing femininity, dandyness, fey, femme and queer ladies, this show confronts misogyny and sexism and uses cultural works to sabotage the status quo of gender, sexuality and "feminine" appearance, replacing it with many visions and ideas of what thriving and surviving as femme folks can be.

"One of the things I most value about Heels on Wheels is the femininity," said Ibarrola. "It is not exclusively femme, because it's our mission to represent all kinds of femmes, whether they are women or not."

Funding and Class Issues

In the past, Heels on Wheels raised funds for the tour via Kickstarter and Indie Go-Go. This year, they are doing direct donations via the website, and are looking to raise $5,000 to provide an honorarium for the seven artists, who are taking time off their day jobs to go on tour.

"Part of our mission, along with representing the diversity of our identities, is also to represent class identities," said Luxe. "The model is to make sure everyone can get paid in what we call a feminist model, meaning everyone from the technicians to the drivers gets the same pay for their work."

In that same vein, admission to the show is on a sliding scale, with no one turned away for lack of funds. The troupe isn't really making money on the shows. Instead, they are professional artists who have made the choice to create accessible art for audiences.

"The level of quality we require is very high, and we are very intentional about how we curate shows to create a diversity of identities and mediums represented," said �cs. "There is a diversity of class, as well, but the majority are working class. We love that we come from a DIY and grassroots background."

Ibarrola likes to call it DIC: Do It for your Community, saying, "We intend it to be a project that invites people in and gives local artists a chance. We rely on our community, because it's for our community."

"One of our strengths is that Heels on Wheels operates from an art-ivist sensibility, where we make art and put it into the world," said Luxe. "It's important because art has the potential to shift people's perception and change the way we interact with each other. Femmes are not necessarily in a place of invisibility, but because our misogynist society devalues women, an expression of gender that doesn't bring masculinity into the forefront is seen as weak or devalued. So we showcase other expressions of femininity to show that these people's lives and experiences are important."

But that doesn't mean it isn't fun. Luxe assures us that while it does tackle deep and complex social relationships, the troupe is also focused on making a fun show, rather than lecturing the audience.

"It's a big party; it's so fun!" said �cs. "The shows are packed, and I don't know if I've ever performed in front of such a welcoming audience. There are all different kinds of places to make art, and all of that is great, but the party we're creating is so fun, why do I need to go to these other places?!"

Heels on Wheels holds a monthly Queer Artists Salon at 7:30 p.m. on First Sundays in Brooklyn at Branded Saloon on Vanderbilt Avenue. They are also planning a June 15 "Fuck You Dad" annual event to end patriarchy.

The fifth Heels on Wheels Glitter Roadshow tours through Canada and the U.S., including Detroit, Michigan, Pittsburgh, Providence and New York, from April 11-20. For more information, visit heelsonwheelsroadshow.com