(dis)Assembly: Eileen Myles...Jennifer Natalya Fink...Iris Cushing
2014-05-02 19:00 - 21:00 (America/New_York) | NY
Three queer women writers of various genres read from their latest, taking apart and putting together an image of the world around them.
Moving between revelry in the parts, words, objects that piece together and the ultimate looming vision of the completed puzzle, these writers play with language in a way that gets to a sense of “reality” both within and beyond the words of their respective texts.

Eileen Myles is an poet and writer who has produced more than twenty volumes of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, libretti, plays, and performance pieces over the last three decades. In 2012, she publishedSnowflake/different streets, a combination of two distinct poetry collections in one binding. Also in 2012, she received a Guggenheim Fellowship to complete Afterglow, which gives both a real and fantastic account of a dog’s life.
Jennifer Natalya Fink is a mother of a hilarious and brilliant six-year-old girl, a professor of English at Georgetown University, a literacy activist, and an all-around hell-raiser. She is the author of three award-winning novels, The MIKVAH QUEEN, BURN, and V, and a short-story collection, THIRTEEN FUGUES.

Iris Cushing is the author of Wyoming, winner of the 2013 Furniture Press Poetry Prize. She lives in New York and is an editor at Argos Books and Circumference: Poetry in Translation.

Ectoplasms
2014-05-03 20:00 - 23:00
Ectoplasm refers to a vomit-like substance produced by mediums during seances, supposedly as a manifestation of otherworldly spirits. For this performance salon and accompanying zine, we would like to use the phenomenon of ectoplasm as a way of thinking about the creation of the abject, what for Julia Kristeva constitutes that which has been discharged from the body, rendered excrement. How does the body function as a sight of transactions, of exits and entrances? In what ways is the abject haunted? What ghosts are coming out of you?
GIVE US UR BLOOD UR TEARS UR PUKE.

THE REAPPEARING ACT: BOOK PARTY
2014-05-06 19:00 - 22:00
Kate Fagan, a former Division 1 Basketball player and current ESPN writer, has written an honest and heartfelt memoir about coming out in sports. She is teaming up with two major local organizations and a few big names in sports including former NFL player, Wade Davis. Davis is the Executive Director of You Can Play Project and Nevin Caple, co-founder of Br{ache the Silence Campaign also played Division 1 Basketball.

PLEASE NOTE: THE BUREAU IS CLOSED ON TUESDAYS, BUT WE WILL OPEN AT 6 PM FOR THIS EVENT.

The Reappearing Act: Coming Out as Gay on a College Basketball Team Led by Born Again Christians
It’s hard enough coming out, but playing basketball for a nationally ranked school and trying to figure out your sexual identity in the closeted and paranoid world of big-time college sports—that’s a challenge. In The Reappearing Act (Skyhorse Publishing; May 6, 2014) Kate Fagan tells her coming-of-age story about how she discovered her true self and slowly found the courage to live authentically.
Fagan’s love for basketball and for her religious teammates at the University of Colorado was tested by the gut-wrenching realization that she could no longer ignore the feelings of otherness inside her. In trying to blend in, Kate had created a hilariously incongruous world for herself in Boulder. Her best friends were part of Colorado’s Fellowship of Christian Athletes, where they ran weekly Bible studies and attended an Evangelical Free Church. For nearly a year, Kate joined them and learned all she could about Christianity—even holding their hands as they prayed for others “living a sinful lifestyle.” Each time the issue of homosexuality arose, she felt as if a neon sign appeared over her head, with a giant arrow pointed downward. During these prayer sessions, she would often keep her eyes open, looking around the circle at the closed eyelids of her friends, listening to the earnestness of their words.
Kate didn’t have a vocabulary for discussing who she really was and what she felt when she was younger; all she knew was that she had a secret. In The Reappearing Act, she brings the reader along for the ride as she slowly accepts her new reality and takes the first steps toward embracing her true self.

Kate Fagan is a columnist and feature writer for espnW, ESPN.com and ESPN The Magazine. She is also an in-studio contributor for The Word, a digital video segment that examines hot topics in sports. Previously, Fagan spent three seasons covering the 76ers for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Her work was cited in the anthology of Best American Sports Writing 2013, and she has also been featured on Longreads, a site that curates the best in long-form journalism and fiction. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Visit Kate Fagan’s Website
Follow Kate on Twitter

Wade Davis

NEWFANGLED 2: Robert Siek Introduces Joey De Jesus, Ryan Doyle May, & Roberto Montes
2014-05-09 19:00 - 22:00
NEWFANGLED returns to the Bureau! Robert Siek introduces poets Joey De Jesus, Ryan Doyle May, & Roberto Montes for a night of poetry readings.

JOEY DE JESUS is originally from the Soundview neighborhood of the Bronx. He received his BA from Oberlin College and his MFA in Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College. His work has appeared in The Cortland Review, Devil’s Lake, Dislocate, Guernica, Kin Poetry Journal, LUMINA, Rhino, Versal, and elsewhere. He recently moved to Harlem.

RYAN DOYLE MAY’s work has appeared in various journals and performances. He is the author of the chapbook The Anatomy of Gray (Corresponding Society Press) and acted as the lead in the short film August, which was selected for the 2011 Cannes Film Festival. He has an MFA in Creative Writing from the New School and is currently finishing a novel. He lives in Brooklyn.

ROBERTO MONTES is the author of I DON’T KNOW DO YOU and “HOW TO BE SINCERE IN YOUR POETRY” WORKSHOP, which is now available in full at napuniversityonline.com. He lives in Queens.

ROBERT SIEK is a poet who lives in Brooklyn. He is the author of the chapbook Clubbed Kid, published in 2002 by the New School, and the full-length collection of poetry Purpose and Devil Piss, published by Sibling Rivalry Press in 2013.

Bear Bards Read! NYC Book Launch for Hibernation, and other poems
2014-05-10 19:00 - 22:00
Join us for a fun and fur-filled evening of hirsute literary pursuit for the premiere reading and book launch for the new bear poetry anthology, Hibernation, and other poems by bear bards. Bear down to listen up as an outstanding group of authors reads from the book as well as other poems. Time allowing, we will open the mic to anyone who wants to read their bear-themed verse. This free event will be hosted by editor Ron J. Suresha and features contributing authors Scott Hightower, Daniel Lewiston, Rocco Russo, Jordan M. Shu, Chris Vaccaro, and Emanuel Xavier.

Black and Pink Letter Writing and Screening of ‘A Kiss for Gabriela’
2014-05-11 19:30 - 23:00
Come join us in writing letters, postcards and words of encouragement to our queer and trans family incarcerated in New York state. Writing a letter, postcard, or sending a drawing is a great way to brighten someone’s week! B & P will provide pens, paper & answer all questions. At 8:30 we will be screening an amazing film called Um Beijo para Gabriela which is Portuguese for A Kiss For Gabriela. “Gabriela Leite is the first sex worker to run for Brazilian Congress. “A Kiss for Gabriela” tells the story of her 2010 campaign as she faces 822 opponents and challenges a male dominated political system to see if a sex worker, activist, wife, mother, and cultural icon since founding the clothing line, Daspu, can beat the odds and win the election.”

Black and Pink NYC is a chapter of the national queer prison abolition group Black and Pink, dedicated to supporting our queer & trans (Gender and/or Sexual Minority) comrades, friends, and loved ones currently incarcerated. We aim to provide support work, advocacy and direct action for folks in prison, as well as host and facilitate events in the NYC area.

Bureau at Second Tuesday Lecture Series for Tom Spanbauer Reading from "I Loved You More"
2014-05-13 19:00 - 21:00
The Bureau will be on hand selling copies of Tom Spanbauer‘s I Loved You More at his reading at The Second Tuesday Lecture Series at The LGBT Center in NYC.
Reserve a copy of the book in advance by contacting Greg Newton at contact@bgsqd.com.
Doors open at 6:30 pm, talk at 7:00 pm (until 9:00 pm)
Tom Spanbauer is the critically acclaimed author of four bestselling LGBTQ novels and a noted writing teacher. As a writer he has explored issues of race, sexual identity, and the new families that we create for ourselves to surmount the families that we were born into.
Tom Spanbauer’s first novel in seven years is a love triangle with a gay main character who charms both gays and straights. I Loved You More is a rich tale of love, sex, and heartbreak, covering twenty-five years in the life of a emotionally wounded writer.
In New York, Ben forms a bond of love with his macho friend and foil, Hank. Years later in Portland, a struggling and ill Ben falls for Ruth, who provides care and devotion but cannot fulfill all of his needs. The real trouble starts when Hank reappears and meets Ruth. Set against a world of struggling artists, the underground sex scene of New York in the 1980s, and the confining Idaho of Ben’s youth, I Loved You More is the author’s most breathtaking and graphic novel.
The trailer for I Loved You More is available on YouTube: www.youtu.be/D0lB7DBD6HU
Tom Spanbauer is the founder of the “Dangerous Writing” method that, like his novels, combines a fresh and lyrical prose style with solid storytelling. His students include Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club, Invisible Monsters, and Choke), Monica Drake, and Stevan Allred.
Tom Spanbauer lives in Portland, Oregon where he teaches. In addition to his new novel, his award-winning books include Faraway Places, The Man Who Fell In Love With The Moon, In The City Of Shy Hunters, and Now Is The Hour. You can find more information about Mr. Spanbauer at his personal website: www.TomSpanbauer.com.
More information and pre-registration available here.
ABOUT THE SECOND TUESDAY LECTURE SERIES
The Second Tuesday Lecture Series is the longest running program at The LGBT Center. Since 1985, more than 140 speakers have made presentations in the arts, academia, and politics. Speakers representing every major cultural award, including the Pulitzer Prize, the Grammy Award, the Academy Award (The Oscars), Broadway’s Tony Awards, the Lambda Literary Award, and the National Book Award, as well as the UK Booker Literary Award, have made presentations. Through this program, Larry Kramer spoke about the plight of the AIDS Crisis in March 1987, thus beginning ACT-UP, the largest direct action AIDS organization in the world. For more information see www.SecondTuesday.org.
ABOUT THE LESBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL & TRANSGENDER COMMUNITY CENTER
Established in 1983, the LGBT Community Center is at the heart of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community in New York City, providing quality health and wellness programs in a welcoming space that fosters connections and celebrates our cultural contributions. The Center serves the community with a full-service approach to programming, from hosting arts and entertainment events and advocacy groups to offering youth and overall wellness programs. Each year, the Center welcomes more than 300,000 visits to their building in the West Village. To learn more, visit www.GayCenter.org.
Center link: https://gaycenter.org/second-tuesday
CONTACT
Howard Williams, Second Tuesday Curator, Howard@SecondTuesday.org
Robert Woodworth, Robert@GayCenter.org, 212-620-7310

Writing Live: An Introduction to Documentary Poetics
2014-05-15 19:00 - 21:00
I let my hands become weapons…and I feel prepared for the rest of my life. – David Wojnarowicz
What happens to documentary practice when we turn our hands into weapons? What happens when we start writing history with a sense of urgency, rather than a sense of detachment? A brief introduction will be offered as we read excerpts from texts by David Wojnarowicz , Juliana Spahr, Maggie Nelson, and Muriel Rukeyser. In exploring techniques these authors use, we can understand documentary writing as “writing live,” the process where we piece together various strands of personal and community history as means of searching for possible futures. The remainder of the evening will be spent on individual projects, where we will actively cut and paste together material into larger narratives.
All writing levels are welcome, as documentary poetics encompasses a variety of different interests. Since this requires active participation, please come with some previous writing, a news story, a magazine article, or other kind of ephemera you feel comfortable repurposing.
Please email Kyle at kyle.bella@gmail.com to let him know you will be attending and what your topic might be. He wants to keep the group intimate and be aware of any possible sensitive topics in advance.

Kyle Bella currently resides in Brooklyn, where he works as a Social Media Fellow at Alternet and does freelance writing. Previous work has appeared in Jacket 2, Buzzfeed LGBT, Truthout, [wherever] magazine, and nomorepotlucks. Forthcoming work is expected in hello mr. magazine and Radioactive Moat Press. His newest book project Viral Legacies, examining HIV/AIDS histories, begins in May.

Art work by David Wojnarowicz, Fuck You Faggot Fucker, 1984, black and white photographs, acrylic, and collage on masonite, 48 x 48 inches, courtesy of PPOW Gallery.

A one-night stand with Evripidis and his Tragedies and special guests Dane Terry and Dalin
2014-05-16 19:00 - 23:00
An introduction to the world of Evripidis Sabatis AKA Evripidis and his Tragedies, where music, writing and drawing intertwine to picture a world of love, lust and loss.
Evripidis will perform an acoustic concert and present an exhibition of his original artwork and his illustrated book “El Calamor y otros mitos de la intimidad” (Spanish only).
Musicians Dane Terry and Dalin will also perform.

Photo by Nicholas Prakas
Evripidis and his Tragedies is the alter ego of Evripidis Sabatis. This classically trained Athenian pianist, visual artist and writer shares not only his name with the great tragedian Euripides of antiquity but to some extent, his eye for storytelling, painted by splashes of tragic realism but also humor, that celebrates heroes who are overwhelmed by their passions and end up burning brightly.
In Evripidis and his Tragedies´songs, lovers ride the tidal waves in vain, teeth fall out one by one, summers are long and lazy and full of song (or are utterly blue), stray dogs are irresistible and treacherous, nights are sleepless and scary, little sisters grow up to be stronger than their brothers, lights are out, hearts are not pure, weddings turn into riots, ghosts take the living for car rides, death dances in the shadows of a hospital room, nightlife takes legendary proportions, homesickness is a necessary consequence of a life on the run, Sunday mornings are haunting, funerals are celebrated as parties, the sky is red above the harbour, the worst enemy and torturer is one´s self and pain comes in healthy doses. Evripidis worships what is no longer here, what has left just a scar. His world is a melancholy love affair where romanticism never died, where harmony is created with a intelligent view on contemporary life, for winners and losers, victims and victors, heroes and villains.
One Journalist stated that in Evripidis and his Tragedies’ music there are echoes of all kinds of western popular music from the last 120 years: classical impressionism, cabaret, 20´s, 30´s and 40´s American songs, musicals, folk, soundtracks and most of all, pop from the late 50´s until now. Add to this mix some touches of baroque music, an unconditional love for the 60´s, the indie pop and some unique, maverick songwriters, and Evripidis´ own distinctive piano-playing and you have a project that escapes a clear definition. The best way to understand it is to just listen to it.
Lyrically, Evripidis lingers among hopeless romanticism, dark humor and dry cyniscism. Love, lust and loss, as well as family, friends and death. These are the recurring themes in his songs but also in his writing and his visual artwork. As he wryly puts it, “The stuff that makes my world go round”. His turn of phrase exposes his literary background and this makes his lyrics pocket dramas on their own.
Evripidis´ drawings usually consist of nightmarish chimeras, monstruous flora, dramatic landscapes and twisted allegories. Surrealism, symbolism and grotesque play a big part in his art, as well as lived experiences and traumas.
His illstrated book “El Calamor y oros mitos de la intimidad” is the perfect merging between Evripidis major artistic disciplines, featuring drawings, original texts in Spanish and lyrics in English.
Since 2007 Evripidis and his Tragedies has released two full albums and various EPs as well as music for short movies and art projects. Lately, Evripidis has been living out and about, swinging among Barcelona, Athens, London, Berlin and NYC, something that is reflected in his new material and recent collaborations. He is currently finishing his third album with some of his long-time musical partners and some new entries in this crowded, creative musical family.
He has participated in various group exhibitions and in April 2010 he presented his first solo exhibition entitled “Why do lovers break each other’s hearts?” in the gallery
6 d.o.g.s in Athens. Since then he has exhibited in Madrid, Barcelona and Berlin. This will be the first time he is exhibiting his drawings in New York.

Dane Terry is a performer and composer based in NYC. Terry’s songs act as surreal theater miniatures that range from dark to funny. Colored with Sci-Fi themes and what he terms “Frillbilly” music, his performances often take the form of bizarre vignettes of music and monologue. He has performed as part of the HOT festival of queer theater at Dixon Place 3 times, toured internationally and he continues to perform in theaters and venues all around NYC including Joes Pub, Bowery Poetry and La Mama.

DALIN is a pop music act making happy, heartfelt, danceable tunes. Singer/writer/producer Jonathan Dalin grew up in a musical family from Detroit with connections to the Jazz and classical scenes as well as soul and gospel music. This summer Dalin will be releasing the video and Single YOU LOOK GOOD, as well as a collection of sexy, high-energy pop songs. Stay tuned for YOU LOOK GOOD and Listen for DALIN songs on playlists at your next BBQ or while you’re rockin’ your boo.

SCORCHER Issue #7 Release Party
2014-05-17 19:00 - 22:00
Celebrating the release of Scorcher issue #7 (“Valedictorian”), published by Birdsong Micropress, please join Max Steele at the Bureau of General Services Queer Division for an evening of readings by: Max Steele, Tommy Pico, Anthony Thornton, Kayla Morse, and Sam McKinniss.
Cover drawing of Scorcher issue #7 (“Valedictorian”) by Julia Norton.

Tommy “Teebs” Pico is the founder and editor in chief of birdsong, an antiracist/queer-positive collective, small press, and zine that publishes art and writing, and the author of Absent Mindr—the first chapbook app published for iOS mobile/tablet devices (VERBALVISUAL, 2014). He was a Queer/Art/Mentors inaugural fellow, 2013 Lambda Literary fellow in poetry, and has been published in BOMB, [PANK], and the Best American Poetry blog. Originally from the Viejas Indian reservation of the Kumeyaay nation, he now lives in Brooklyn.

Anthony Thornton is an American poet living and working in New York. He has read at numerous venues (CULTUREfix, Envoy Enterprises, The Spectrum, the Bureau of General Services-Queer Division, Starr Space) and private salons, and is editing his forthcoming second poetry collection, New Directions.

Kayla Morse is settling into that kind of cool, level-headed maturity that women of a certain age enjoy. PSYCH.

Max Steele is a performer and writer living in Brooklyn. He has presented work at Dixon Place, the New Museum, Deitch Projects, BAM, Joe’s Pub, Envoy Enterprises, PPOW Gallery, UPenn’s Kelly Writers’ House, the Afterglow Festival and the Queens Museum of Art. He writes the psychedelic porno poetry zine Scorcher, and his writing has been featured in Dossier Journal, Spank, East Village Boys, Birdsong, Vice, Noisey, and Best Gay Stories 2014. He has been an Artist in Residence at BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange since 2012.

Sam McKinniss is an artist and writer in New York. His paintings have been on view recently at envoy enterprises and Good Work Gallery in New York as well as at Galerie Thomas Fuchs in Stuttgart. His writing has appeared in Adult Magazine, DIS Magazine, the Library at Dirty Looks NYC and Pastelegram.org.

DEADLINE: Works-in-Progress from Cutting-edge Queer Artists. featuring Ariel Speedwagon, Sabrina Chap, Anna Hovhannessian, Elizabeth Whitney and Zach Wager Scholl
2014-05-18 19:00 - 23:00
Post-Clown Disaster, Ariel Federow and Cabaret Idiot, Sabrina Chap bring you this new works-in-progress series featuring new work from cutting edge queer artists. Built on the notion that there’s no greater inspiration than a deadline, this series forces renegade artists to bring new and developing work to an audience for the first time. Part experimentation + part guaranteed failure = 100% awesomeness.
Ariel “Speedwagon” Federow will be workshopping the second two installments of “Lavender Valley,” the world’s preeminent powerpoint lesbian soap opera.

Sabrina Chap will be performing the first half of her electric guitar radio musical, ‘Postcards from Nevermore’, visually scored by a projection from Anna Hovhannessian.

Tricia Clayton Biltmore is everyone’s favorite lesbian ally and Elizabeth Whitney’s alter ego. Hailing from Bainbridge, GA, she is the woman Elizabeth might have been if she had never left Tallahassee.

“Sisters,” Zachary Wager Scholl’s newest writing, is a work-in-progress ode to the baby gay adventure of discovery and friendship. Set to the backdrop of a working class suburb, “Sisters” is part raunch/ part tender, glimmering under the light of a gas station by the highway.

Ariel “Speedwagon” Federow’s work has been seen on Broadway, Lafayette, Houston, Chrystie, Fulton, N 6th, and other streets and avenue in NYC and beyond. Her stories, slideshows and slapstick have been seen places like LaMama ETC, Dixon Place, the Hemispheric Institute for Performance and Politics, Pussy Faggot, and Hey Queen! Company member: the Ballez and Butch Burlesque.

Deemed, ‘Rousing!’ by the New Yorker, Sabrina Chap is a writer, musician, cabaret artist and all around dilettante. Her latest album, the anthemic queer bonanza ‘We Are the Parade’ was deemed, ‘Joyous’ by the Advocate. She also edited the book, ‘Live Through This- On Creativity and Self-Destruction’, now with an intro by Amanda Palmer and essays by Nan Goldin, bell hooks, Swoon, Kate Bornstein and more. sabrinachap.com

Anna Hovhannessian is a filmmaker and editor. TV credits include a lot of sensationalistic murder shows and some talk show nonsense. Her film credits include in the documentaries ‘Bully’ (Tribeca premiere), ‘She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry’ (Boston Independent Film) and the short film ‘Happy Hour’. Her performance videography was featured in the dance production of ‘Echoes and Dreams’ (NYC Fringe Festival).

Elizabeth Whitney‘s recent projects include playing a closeted New Jersey housewife in Madeleine Olnek’s The Foxy Merkins (Sundance 2014), a feminist TedX lecturer in the popular web series High Maintenance, and being a member of alt-country trio Menage A Twang (www.menageatwang.com). She teaches in the City University of New York. www.elizabethjwhitney.com

Zachary Wager Scholl is a performer and writer. He most recently performed in Angry Women Revisited, with J. Dellecave and company. Long-term projects include: his work with the Man Meat Collective; playing with the Rude Mechanical Orchestra; and creating transgressivepolitical queer Purimshpiln with the Aftselokhes Spectacle Committee.

Martin Duberman: Reading and signing for Hold Tight Gently: Michael Callen, Essex Hemphill, and the Battlefield of AIDS
2014-05-21 19:00 - 21:00
From award-winning historian and activist Martin Duberman comes a poignant dual biography of two men central to activism in the early days of the AIDS epidemic. Michael Callen and Essex Hemphill were both diagnosed with AIDS and raised awareness of the epidemic prior to the nation at large becoming aware of the disease’s existence. The year 1995 saw the release of protease inhibitors, the first effective treatment for AIDS, but it was also the year Essex Hemphill, an African American poet and performance artist, died from complications related to the disease. Michael Callen, a singer, songwriter and pioneering AIDS activist from the Midwest, had already passed away two years earlier.
Duberman documents each man’s life and work while providing readers a rare glimpse into how the United States, both at large and from within the LGBTQ community, approached the AIDS epidemic as it was unfolding. Hold Tight Gently closely examines the earlier years before U.S. culture was made more fully aware of disease; Duberman poignantly and respectfully utilizes Callen and Hemphill’s stories to explore how their disparate communities responded to the crisis in unique ways.
Hold Tight Gently is more than a moving dual biography of two unsung heroes of the pre-ACT UP period; it is essential to understanding the disease’s history and impact amidst a reality that many ignored or denied.

Photo by Raymond Adams
Martin Duberman is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History at the CUNY Graduate Center. The author of more than twenty books, including a highly acclaimed biography of Paul Robeson, Duberman has won a Bancroft Prize and been a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. He lives in New York City.

Praise for Hold Tight Gently: Michael Callen, Essex Hemphill, and the Battlefield of AIDS (The New Press, 2014)
Seldom has a biographer been able to honor the doomed courage of his subjects with such redeeming insightfulness. Martin Duberman’s Hold Tight Gently is an unflinching masterpiece.
—David Levering Lewis, university professor, emeritus, New York University, and Pulitzer Prize winner for biography
We are always in danger of forgetting the past, and the huge advances we have made against HIV/AIDS often obscure the pain and the politics of the early years of the epidemic. InHold Tight Gently, Martin Duberman has brilliantly re-created this tumultuous era. Tracing these two lives through poetry and activism, Duberman captures the pain, despair, panic, heroism, and moral bravery that defined the generation of women and men who first faced this modern plague. Daringly imagined and beautifully written, Hold Tight Gently is a major work of modern history that chills us to the bone even as it moves us to tears.
—Michael Bronski, Professor of Practice in Activism and Media Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality, Harvard University
A dynamic people’s history of AIDS that must be read, debated, critiqued, and applauded. Michael Callen, Essex Hemphill, and other visionaries are revealed as complex individuals who made change but did not benefit from it. Throughout, Duberman confronts the racism at the core of the AIDS movement that became the global crisis of access to treatment. A bold work for a community that wants to understand itself.
—Sarah Schulman, author ofIsrael/Palestine and the Queer International
Martin Duberman’s work has been a continuing rescue mission to make sure that vital, but forgotten, stories from the past remain alive in our memory. With Hold Tight Gently, he has done it again and magnificently so. Michael Callen and Essex Hemphill come back to life in these pages. Funny and moving, enlightening and thoughtful, inspiring and enraging, this dual biography reveals the heartbreaking losses caused by the epidemic as well as the many ways people fought back. It can teach those who weren’t there what that first decade of AIDS was like and remind those of us who were how intense those years were. And all this through the life stories of two compelling individuals.
—John D’Emilio, professor of gender and women’s studies and history, University of Illinois at Chicago
Hold Tight Gently is a deeply moving work of largely hidden history. Martin Duberman brilliantly chronicles not only grassroots AIDS organizing in the early days of the epidemic but also the vibrant black lesbian and gay political and cultural movement that flowered during the same period. Through the lives of two remarkable men, Hold Tight Gently illuminates how race and class are inextricably linked to the struggle for sexual freedom and that against all odds people can fight for justice every day. A wonderful and important book.
—Barbara Smith, author of The Truth That Never Hurts and co-founder of Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press
Through his probing and insightful chronicle of the lives of two very different gay men who were early voices in the fight against AIDS, Martin Duberman has again brought light to shine in a personal way on the role of progressives in LGBT struggles and the importance of addressing how race, class, and gender impact this epidemic and who survives it. Sadly, these perspectives are still urgently needed in today’s world, where those facing the devastation of AIDS are often invisible to mainstream politics. A poignant and politically potent tribute to those who have died from AIDS and who fought to make a difference even as their lives were cut short.
—Charlotte Bunch, Distinguished Professor in Women’s and Gender Studies, Rutgers University
Hold Tight Gently is an absorbing read. It’s a necessary introduction to the uninitiated and a profound challenge to the collective amnesia concerning the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, one that shimmers with insights and lessons about race, sexuality, and class. Duberman’s take on these seminal figures illuminates their singular and collective triumphs and struggles and how the pandemic profoundly impacted political and social organizing by gays in the ’80s and ’90s. The biographer renders Hemphill and Callen with respect and grace—just the way they should be.
—Steven G. Fullwood, co-editor of Black Gay Genius
Martin Duberman’s profoundly moving reconsideration of Michael Callen and Essex Hemphill is much needed now, as AIDS continues to ravage so much of our world. This marvelous book, filled with surprising connections, will be read by activists everywhere and empower the future.
—Blanche Wiesen Cook, author of Eleanor Roosevelt

cover story for A&U
starred PW review
excerpt on Advocate.com

TELL 4 WINNING
2014-05-23 19:00 - 22:00
TELL is an evening of story telling from the mouths and minds of queers in NYC hosted by Drae Campbell at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division.
Winning is the theme of the fourth installment of TELL.
Featuring special guests:
Varín Ayala
Gabriella Belfiglio
Ellie Conant
Zil Goldstein

Varín Ayala: Off Broadway: The Taming of the Shrew (TFANA with Maggie Siff; dir, Arin Arbus); NY Theater: Contigo (Signature); 365 Days/Plays (The Public); Jackson Heights 3AM (Theater 167): Las Facultades, The Beep (Pregones); Barber Surgeons (Studio 42); End of Summer, Love’s Labour’s Lost (Kaleidoscope at Cherry Lane); Numerous readings and workshops at NYTW, The Public, INTAR, The Lark, among others. Regional Theater: Pinkolandia (Two River Theater; premiere), The Motherf**er with the Hat (Hartford TheaterWorks), The Road to Washington (Mountain Playhouse), Angels in America I/II (Civic Theater of Allentown). TV: Lie to Me, Hustling. Training: The Actors Center Conservatory, Shakespeare Lab at The Public, Groundlings.

Gabriella M. Belfiglio lives in Brooklyn, NY with her partner and three cats. She teaches self-defense, conflict resolution, karate, and tai chi to people of all ages throughout the five boroughs.
Most recently, Gabriella won second place in the 2014 W.B. Yeats Poetry Contest. She earned Special Merit Recognition in the Comstock Review’s 2013 Muriel Craft Bailey Poetry Contest.
Gabriella’s work has been published in many anthologies and journals including Radius, The Centrifugal Eye, Folio, Avanti Popolo, Poetic Voices without Borders, C,C,&D, The Avocet, The Potomac Review, Eclectica, Lambda Literary Review, The Monterey Poetry Review and The Dream Catcher’s Song. She is currently compiling a full-length collection of her poetry.

Ellie Conant is a former party promoter giving her liver a rest and taking up writing again. She ran Choice Cunts, a rare party for raw queers for 6 years. Her main motivation to throw parties was to get the friendliest people she knew together, get them drunk, and watch them turn into assholes. Now almost 35, Ellie is focusing on her talents in the kitchen, the bedroom, and the hallway. She believes hallways are dreadfully neglected and they need more attention.

Zil Garner Goldstein has not been a performer for about 10 years. She can tell you what to eat and will probably tell you what to wear, and is very good at telling you.

Joan Larkin book launch: Reading from and Signing Blue Hanuman
2014-05-24 16:00 - 18:00
Please join us to celebrate the publication of Blue Hanuman, a new book of poems by Joan Larkin. There will be a reading and books hot off the press.
Joan Larkin’s sixth book of poems, Blue Hanuman, is just out from Hanging Loose Press. Her previous collections include the Lambda Award-winning Cold River, My Body, and the Argos chapbook Legs Tipped with Small Claws, among others.
“There are few poets in America who can combine Joan Larkin’s formal mastery with her emotional intensity…Unlike so many poets who lose emotional force as they get older, Larkin grows stronger as time goes on.” – David Bergman, The Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide.

Wrong Side of the River
2014-05-24 20:00 - 23:00
The Values return to set the Bureau ablaze with Why The Reckless, Matt Kastella, and Sleepyzzz.

The Values deliver sizzling dance tracks, sultry ballads, and electrifying blues. In this economy, The Values are your friends.
www.thevalues.bandcamp.com
With songs titled “Hello”, “Weeds”, and “Lighthouse, Why the Reckless performs music to remind you of a feeling you’d forgotten. sit and eat.
www.facebook.com/WhyTheReckless
A new artist with my FIRST single/music video being released this month, Matt Kastella is a Texas born singer-songwriter and spent the last 5 years in Tokyo Japan working as an entertainer, and is now pursuing a career in pop music.
www.soundcloud.com/mat-kastella
Sleepyzzz

“Intergalactic explorers riding dragons made of lazer looms animals on
acid doublewide trailers filled with black holes in the eyes of a
psychedelic child dancing to the beat of a volcano that kind of sounds
like the Doors and kind of sounds like a guitar solo in the silence of
space rock n roll rock n roll rock n roll rock n roll” – a dream that
we had.

Opening reception for Diego Vela: Delicate Identity
2014-05-29 18:00 - 21:00
Join us for the opening reception of Diego Vela‘s exhibition Delicate Identity.

The exhibition will remain on view at the Bureau through Sunday, July 6.

The Bureau has extended the exhibition through Sunday, July 27.

Artist’s statement
My work is result of my thinking of identity in relation to what is considered to be the norm and what is considered to be beautiful. It reflects on the idea of what normalcy is and how society deems what that looks like. It is represented in the the human body, from the obviously sexual to the tormented physiologically. My imagery is based on photos of myself and my friends that are open to share a private moment with me. The paintings capture a moment of identity or identity forming.

Diego Vela lives and works in Harlem. He has shown at The Center NYC, and Gotham Gallery (New York City). He studied at the University of Mary Hardin Baylor in Texas, and at the American Intercontinental University in London.

Image:
Diego Vela
Thirteen 24″ x 30″
acrylic and human hair on canvas
completed 2004
A self portrait of the artist at thirteen.

Passionate Commitments: The Lives of Anna Rochester and Grace Hutchins: Slide show, reading, and signing with Julia M. Allen
2014-05-30 19:00 - 21:00
Passionate Commitments is a dual biography of Anna Rochester and Grace Hutchins, life partners and labor journalists who were instrumental in establishing and maintaining the Labor Research Association in New York City during the mid-20th century. Julia M. Allen will present a slide show detailing their lives and will read selected passages from the book. Passionate Commitments received the 2014 Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction, presented by the Publishing Triangle.

Julia M. Allen is Professor Emerita of English at Sonoma State University in California.

Poetry Reading with D. Gilson, Aaron Smith, and Randall Mann
2014-05-31 19:00 - 22:00
Join us for a special poetry reading with D. Gilson, Aaron Smith, and Randall Mann. Hosted by Lawrence Kaplun.

D. Gilson is the author of two chapbooks; Brit-Lit (Sibling Rivalry Press) and Catch & Release (Seven Kitchens Press). His poems have appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Indiana Review, Lambda Literary Review, Los Angeles Review & his book reviews appear on The Rumpus. He’s a Ph.D. student in American Literature & Culture at George Washington University, and lives in Washington DC.

Aaron Smith is the author of two books of poems; Appetite, and Blue on Blue Ground (both published by University of Pittsburgh Press). His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Ecotone, Court Green, Gulf Coast, Witness, and other journals. He serves as Poetry Editor of Bloom, and teaches creative writing at Lesley University. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Randall Mann is the author of three books of poems; Straight Razor (Persea Books), Breakfast with Thom Gunn (University of Chicago Press), and Complaint in the Garden. Booklist Magazine said, “readers would do well to recognize Mann’s place alongside poets like D. A. Powell, Marilyn Hacker, and Anne Sexton.” His poems have appeared in many journals including The Kenyon Review, Pleiades, Literary Imagination, Subtropics, Salmagundi, and Poetry Magazine, which recently awarded him the J. Howard and Barbara M.J. Wood Prize. He lives in San Francisco.

Book signing - Friend Grief and AIDS: Thirty Years of Burying Our Friends (2nd edition)
2014-06-01 19:00 - 21:00
Brief talk and signing of the 2014 edition of the second book in Victoria Noe‘s Friend Grief series. Friend Grief and AIDS: Thirty Years of Burying Our Friends grew out of her involvement in Chicago’s AIDS community in the late 80s/early 90s. 25% of the sales (print and ebook) benefit Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS.

Victoria Noe began her career as a stage manager, director and administrator in addition to being a founding board member of the League of Chicago Theatres. She transferred her skills to raise money for arts, educational and AIDS service organizations, and later an award-winning sales consultant of children’s books. But after a concussion impacted her ability to continue in sales, she switched gears to keep a promise to a dying friend to write a book.

That book is now an award-winning series. The first three – Friend Grief and Anger: When Your Friend Dies and No One Gives A Damn; Friend Grief and AIDS: Thirty Years of Burying Our Friends and Friend Grief and 9/11: The Forgotten Mourners were published in 2013. The next book in the series, Friend Grief and the Military: Band of Friends, will be published on Memorial Day, 2014.

Noe is a member of Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLI), Chicago Writers Association and ACT UP/NY. Her freelance articles have appeared on numerous grief and writing blogs as well as Windy City Times, Chicago Tribune and Huffington Post. Her website, www.FriendGrief.com, was named one of the top ten grief support websites in 2012. You can follow her on Twitter @Victoria_Noe.

Dennis Altman Discusses His New Book The End of the Homosexual? with Christopher Bram
2014-06-05 19:00 - 21:00
Dennis Altman will discuss his new book The End of the Homosexual? and its links to his 1971 book Homosexual: Oppression and Liberation. He will be in discussion with author Christopher Bram.

Dennis Altman is the son of Jewish refugees, and a writer and academic who first came to attention with the publication of his book Homosexual: Oppression & Liberation in 1972. This book, which has often been compared to Greer’s Female Eunuch and Singer’s Animal Liberation was the first serious analysis to emerge from the gay liberation movement, and was published in seven countries, with a readership which continues today. [In 2012 University of Queensland Press issued a fortieth anniversary edition, and an anthology based on the book, After Homosexual, was published in 2014]
Since then Altman has written eleven books, exploring sexuality, politics and their inter-relationship in Australia, the United States and now globally. These include The Homosexualization of America; AIDS and the New Puritanism; Rehearsals for Change; Gore Vidal’s America and Fifty First State?, as well as a novel (The Comfort of Men) and memoirs (Defying Gravity). His book, Global Sex (Chicago U.P, 2001), has been translated into five languages, including Spanish, Turkish and Japanese. Most recently has co-edited Why Human Security Matters [Allen & Unwin] and his latest book, The End of the Homosexual? was published by UQP in August.
Altman is a Professorial Fellow in the Institute for Human Security at LaTrobe University in Melbourne. He was President of the AIDS Society of Asia and the Pacific (2001-5), and has been a member of the Governing Council of the International AIDS Society and a Board member of Oxfam Australia. In 2005 he was Visiting Professor of Australian Studies at Harvard, and has been. He was listed by The Bulletin as one of the 100 most influential Australians ever [July 4 2006], and was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia June 2008. In 2013 he was awarded the Simon and Gagnon Award for career contributions to the field of sociology of sexualities by the American Sociological Association’s Section on Sexualities.

Christopher Bram grew up in Kempsville, Virginia (outside Norfolk), where he was a paperboy and an Eagle Scout. He graduated from the College of William and Mary in 1974 (B.A. in English). He moved to New York City in 1978.
His nine novels range in subject matter from gay life in the 1970s to the career of a Victorian musical clairvoyant to the frantic world of theater people in contemporary New York. Fellow novelist Philip Gambone wrote of his work, “What is most impressive in Bram’s fiction is the psychological and emotional accuracy with which he portrays his characters. . . His novels are about ordinary gay people trying to be decent and good in a morally compromised world. He focuses on the often conflicting claims of friendship, family, love and desire; the ways good intentions can become confused and thwarted; and the ways we learn to be vulnerable and human.” Bram has written numerous articles and essays (a selection is included in Mapping the Territory). He has also written or co-written several screenplays, including two shorts directed by his partner, Draper Shreeve.
His novel Father of Frankenstein, about film director James Whale, was made into the movie Gods and Monsters starring Ian McKellen, Lynn Redgrave, and Brendan Fraser. Bill Condon adapted the screenplay and directed. (Condon won an Academy Award for his adaptation.)
Bram was a Guggenheim Fellow in 2001. In May 2003, he received the Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement. He lives in Greenwich Village and teaches at New York University.

FANCY BOOK LEARNIN'
2014-06-06 21:00 - 2014-06-07 01:00
shane shane prezentz:
——————
FANCY BOOK LEARNIN’
at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division
——————Performances by:
——————
XZX (chicago)
——————
TEENAGE STRANGLER (minneapolis)
——————
MERRIE CHERRY
——————
KAIONI
——————
ZOE LIGON
——————

with resident DJ TIMOTHY ALLEN LIVING kicking off your month of PRIDE! If you’ve been following the ignorant-assed conversations in your community happening on facebook, then you already know it’s time to LOG OFF and read a damn BOOK! And what better place to get one than the queerest book and art space in town, the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division???

9:00 Doors

10:00 Performances

$6 suggested donation

ALL AGES

Meet the Author: Kenneth M. Walsh / "Wasn't Tomorrow Wonderful? A Memoir"
2014-06-07 19:00 - 21:00
An evening with blogger and journalist Kenneth M. Walsh — aka Kenneth in the (212) — who will discuss his new memoir, Wasn’t Tomorrow Wonderful?, in a lively Q&A with Tim Teeman, author of In Bed With Gore Vidal.
Kenneth M. Walsh is a writer, editor, and blogger in New York City. His popular site — Kenneth in the (212) —has been featured on the New York Post’s famed Page Six, Gawker, Romensko, BuzzFeed, New York magazine’s Daily Intel, Advocate.com, Out.com, and VH1’s Best Week Ever. In 2012 it was nominated for About.com’s Best Gay Blog Readers’ Choice award. A graduate of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Walsh has a career in media that spans two decades, with reporting and editing gigs at The New York Times, The New York Post, The Orange County Register, and The Arizona Republic. He is a contributor to The Huffington Post and The Wall Street Journal’s Speakeasy blog. Wasn’t Tomorrow Wonderful? is his first book.

Tim Teeman is a journalist, author and broadcaster. For many years he worked as an editor, feature writer, and interviewer for The Times of London, most recently as their US Correspondent. In Bed with Gore Vidal is his first book. He lives in New York City.

What Is Queer Performance? Luke George Workshop
2014-06-11 19:00 - 21:00
Queer theory meets the queer body in these workshops. This smattering of queer artists bridges queer writing practices with queer bodybased practices. Drawing upon the varied performative interests and inspirations of the teaching artists, the workshops touch upon text, sound, witchcraft, impulse, free association, and movement.
These workshops are for folks with none to a lot of performance experience. Come see what inspirations and mini-spectacles are always-already burgeoning in your queer bodies.
Workshops are $10 each, all money goes to support the teacher and the space. Drop-in or take all of them. Space is very limited, so pre-registration strongly encouraged. Please send an email with your name and a quick tidbit about yourself to whatisqueerperformance@gmail.com. Curated by Li Cata.

LUKE GEORGE / WEDNESDAY JUNE 11TH/ 7PM – 9PM

For this workshop I am interested in exploring how we experience the unseen things in our bodies, in ourselves, that transmit between our body and others, and how this unfolds into a practice of performing and being seen, and then how being a performer is also being a maker, and being an audience.

We may or may not experience and explore:

mind
body
energy
sensing
touching
drawing
writing
talking
sounding
imaging
imagining
presence
presenting
‘reading’
perceiving
how we see body/s
how we are seen
experiencing our performing
performing our experiencing
the choreography of performing
the transmittance of information between bodies
firing into our intuition, imagination, criticality, receptivity and our playfully ferocious creativity
a field of enquiry that is about being a person, being a body, being a performer, being a watcher, being a maker, being queer.

BIO
Luke George is a graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts – Dance. He has been collaborating and performing on new works since 1999 by artists in Australia: Chunky Move, Stephanie Lake, Jo Lloyd, Shelley Lasica, and Phillip Adams BalletLab. Europe: Frances d’Ath (Berlin), Field Works (Brussels). Asia: ITOH Kim (Tokyo). United States: Miguel Gutierrez and the Powerful People, K.J. Holmes, luciana achugar, Melinda Ring, Neal Medlyn, and Deborah Hay (solo commissioning project).

Luke is an artist working in dance and performance. He grew up in Tasmania and is based between Melbourne and Brooklyn. Luke identifies as a queer cisgender man. Luke makes his own performance work, as well as collaborating and performing in the work of other artists. His practice as a maker and performer is occupied with the interplay between the embodied and conceptual. In his work he is exploring energy and presence in relation to how we perceive ourselves, each other and the world around us. He is interested in the act of performance as both a collective and individual experience for both performer and audience, and in how things transmit between the two. He aspires to access multiple modes of performance and embodied knowledges in daring and unorthodox ways.

What Is Queer Performance? Mariana Valencia Workshop
2014-06-12 11:00 - 13:00
Queer theory meets the queer body in these workshops. This smattering of queer artists bridges queer writing practices with queer bodybased practices. Drawing upon the varied performative interests and inspirations of the teaching artists, the workshops touch upon text, sound, witchcraft, impulse, free association, and movement.
These workshops are for folks with none to a lot of performance experience. Come see what inspirations and mini-spectacles are always-already burgeoning in your queer bodies.
Workshops are $10 each, all money goes to support the teacher and the space. Drop-in or take all of them. Space is very limited, so pre-registration strongly encouraged. Please send an email with your name and a quick tidbit about yourself to whatisqueerperformance@gmail.com. Curated by Li Cata.
MARIANA VALENCIA / THURS JUNE 12TH / 11A – 1P

“on the floor” is an improvisation. together we will define the space we make. i will present items in a room: bodies, objects, books, images, clothes, and sound. we will shape and arrange them and arrange ourselves among them. this is an improvisation, this is what happens when we think together; playfulness is at hand, imagination is at hand . spatio-temporal movement is at hand and on the floor.
BIO

Mariana is a dance artist who makes installations, garments and a zine called Rhinoceros Event.
Mariana travels for research, she’s been to Belize, Mexico, Guatemala and Denmark. Mariana has a BA from Hampshire College in dance and ethnography, she is based in New York since 2006 and works a day job at The Co-op School in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn.

What Is Queer Performance? Jaamil Kosoko Workshop
2014-06-12 19:00 - 21:00
Queer theory meets the queer body in these workshops. This smattering of queer artists bridges queer writing practices with queer bodybased practices. Drawing upon the varied performative interests and inspirations of the teaching artists, the workshops touch upon text, sound, witchcraft, impulse, free association, and movement.
These workshops are for folks with none to a lot of performance experience. Come see what inspirations and mini-spectacles are always-already burgeoning in your queer bodies.
Workshops are $10 each, all money goes to support the teacher and the space. Drop-in or take all of them. Space is very limited, so pre-registration strongly encouraged. Please send an email with your name and a quick tidbit about yourself to whatisqueerperformance@gmail.com. Curated by Li Cata.
JAAMIL KOSOKO / THURS JUNE 12TH / 7P – 9P

Queering Structures and Other Ways to Slant the Truth: a writing (and reading) workshop

This will be a writing/reading based workshop focusing on queer writers/artists while exploring the craft and techniques they use to rearrange normality as both a politic and creative tool for fearless self exploration.
BIO
Originally from Detroit, MI, Jaamil is a Nigerian American curator, producer, poet, choreographer, and performance artist currently based in New York City. He is a 2012 Live Arts Brewery Fellow as a part of the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival, a 2011 Fellow as a part of the DeVos Institute of Art Management at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and an inaugural graduate member of the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance (ICPP) at Wesleyan University.
His work in performance is rooted in a creative mission to push history forward through writing and socio-political art advocacy. Kosoko’s work in live performance has received support from The Pew Center for Arts and Heritage through Dance Advance, The Philadelphia Cultural Management Initiative, The Joyce Theater Foundation, and The Philadelphia Cultural Fund. His solo performance work entitled other.explicit.body. premiered at Harlem Stage in April 2012 and is currently touring nationally. As a performer, Kosoko has created original roles in the performance works of Nick Cave, Pig Iron Theatre Company, Keely Garfield Dance, Miguel Gutierrez and The Powerful People, Headlong Dance Theater among others. Kosoko’s poems have been published in The American Poetry Review, Poems Against War, The Dunes Review, and Silo, among other publications. In 2011, Kosoko published Notes on an Urban Kill-Floor: Poems for Detroit (Old City Publishing). He is a contributing correspondent for Dance Journal (PHL), the Broad Street Review (PHL), and Critical Correspondence (NYC). He has served on numerous curatorial and funding panels including the National Endowment for the Arts, MAP Fund, Movement Research at Judson Church, the Philadelphia Cultural Fund, the Baker Artists Awards, among others.

What Is Queer Performance? Tatyana Tenenbaum Workshop
2014-06-13 11:00 - 13:00
Queer theory meets the queer body in these workshops. This smattering of queer artists bridges queer writing practices with queer bodybased practices. Drawing upon the varied performative interests and inspirations of the teaching artists, the workshops touch upon text, sound, witchcraft, impulse, free association, and movement.
These workshops are for folks with none to a lot of performance experience. Come see what inspirations and mini-spectacles are always-already burgeoning in your queer bodies.
Workshops are $10 each, all money goes to support the teacher and the space. Drop-in or take all of them. Space is very limited, so pre-registration strongly encouraged. Please send an email with your name and a quick tidbit about yourself to whatisqueerperformance@gmail.com. Curated by Li Cata.

TATYANA TENENBAUM / FRI JUNE 13TH / 11A – 1P

My work is invested in the perceptual borders between sound and space, voice and body. Sound touches us and we instantly reflect its volume, as we would sense another body’s muscle tone. For the singing body, this experience is self-reflexive—from physical preparation to vibration to sound to sensing and back again. Through an embodied practice, I am working to blur the lines between the awareness of sound production and that of movement. As I reinforce the foundations of interdependency, I simultaneously define the parameters that destabilize them on their own terms. I am not looking for an absolute relationship, but a fluid state of being that embodies the space in between.

bio
Tatyana Tenenbaum is a choreographer and composer whose practice examines the perceptual, musical and kinesthetic spaces connecting the voice and body. Her work has been presented by The Chocolate Factory Theater, Dance Theater Workshop, Movement Research, Cabinet Magazine, Danspace Project, The Watermill Center, Center for Performance Research, Chez Buswhick, Pieter PASD, and AUNTS, among others. She is a co-organizer of NY-based organization CLASSCLASSCLASS and former dance curator at The Tank (2007 – 2009) where she curated and produced The Raw and the Cooked Show, a forum for interdisciplinary improvisation. She is co-curating the 2014 Movement Research Spring “fallow time” in collaboration with Elliott Maltby, Jennifer Monson and Alicia Ohs. She has engaged in creative processes with Yoshiko Chuma, Daria Fain, Jennifer Monson, Levi Gonzalez, Michele Torino Hower and Buck Wanner, among others. She received dual degrees from Oberlin College and Conservatory of Music.

What Is Queer Performance? iele paloumpis workshop
2014-06-13 19:00 - 21:00
Queer theory meets the queer body in these workshops. This smattering of queer artists bridges queer writing practices with queer bodybased practices. Drawing upon the varied performative interests and inspirations of the teaching artists, the workshops touch upon text, sound, witchcraft, impulse, free association, and movement.
These workshops are for folks with none to a lot of performance experience. Come see what inspirations and mini-spectacles are always-already burgeoning in your queer bodies.
Workshops are $10 each, all money goes to support the teacher and the space. Drop-in or take all of them. Space is very limited, so pre-registration strongly encouraged. Please send an email with your name and a quick tidbit about yourself to whatisqueerperformance@gmail.com.
iele paloumpis / FRI JUNE 13TH / 7P – 9P

Witchcraft – A Corporeal Practice
Over the past two years, changes in my health and body shifted the ways I approach dance and daily life. Without concrete answers from doctors or various bodyworkers, I began looking to witchcraft and earth-based rituals as somatic practices of integration, acceptance and healing. I’ve also been thinking a lot about how all bodies – whether elderly, disabled, or otherwise “different” – can enter into dance. For this workshop, we will look to magical herbs, astrology and the lunar calendar, as well as our own unique and defiant bodies, to generate restorative movement. Come with an awareness of something you might like to shed, heal and/or embrace.
Please contact me if you have any accessibility needs, including allergies/sensitivities to various herbs and smells. Also, if you are pregnant/breast feeding and wouldn’t mind sharing this information with me, I would like to touch base with you to make sure we’re on the same page about safer herbal usage. Email: dpaloumpis@gmail.com
This workshop is for anyone interested in connecting to their bodies. There will be time to improvise and make movement, but mostly I want to make sure folks get whatever they want out of this workshop. If dancing or improvising feels intimidating/not right in the moment, participants can engage in other equally valid ways (i.e.: through writing, drawing, observing etc). Generally, I will encourage everyone to take part in a group improvisation/movement practice (simply because I think feeling our bodies in motion is so important), but this can manifest in multiple ways and it’s totally at your discretion. Overall, the goal during this workshop is to tune into our bodies in whatever ways feel good to us as individuals.
If you’re a writer/drawer – please bring a journal/sketchbook and something to write with.

Post-script: I am SO EXCITED to offer this workshop during a Full Moon on​ ​Friday the 13th! This will not happen again for another 35 years!

With 13 Moons in a Lunar Year, the number 13 is a sacred numeral with a queer, lesser-known herstory.​ ​The superstitious roots of 13’s​ ​bad reputation are hidden deep​ ​within Western patriarchy and misogyny (surprise, surprise) so we will work to unearth​ ​her​ ​true power. In Tarot, she is represented by the​ ​Death card and in numerology 13 is the number of upheaval, so​ ​that new ground can be broken.

Additionally, this Full Moon will be in Sagittarius helping us to focus our energies on freedom, spontaneity, higher consciousness, and a return to nature. Sagittarius rules the region of the body directly surrounding the hips, so we will move from and send healing energy to the sacral region of the spine, the coccygeal vertebrae, the ileum, iliac arteries, sciatic nerves, liver, femurs, thighs, and pelvis.

bio
iele is a disabled, trans*/queer dance artist, choreographer, and teacher. Their work has been presented in New York through Movement Research, New York Live Arts, the Flea, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, and Dixon Place, in Pennsylvania at the Painted Bride Art Center, FLUXspace, Studio 34, The Community Education Center, Vox Populi, and the Philadelphia GLBT Arts Festival, in Maryland at the Lof/t, and in Connecticut at Franklin Street Works. iele has had the pleasure of dancing for niv Acosta, devynn emory, Jen McGinn, Emily Wexler and Nina Winthrop, among others. As an educator of 9 years, they’ve taught movement improvisation and composition, as well as dance theory and critique. iele has practiced various forms of neo-paganism since age 13 and is now exploring the immense healing properties of witchcraft and ritual as bodily practices. They have served on numerous panels and facilitated discussions centered on issues of identity, perception and performance. In 2010, iele was a co-recipient of The Leeway Foundation’s Art and Social Change Grant. They felt fortunate to be a 2012-13 Studio Series Resident Artist at New York Live Arts, as well as work under the mentorship of Trajal Harrell through the Queer Art Mentorship Program. This past December, they concluded a 2013 Fall Space Grant residency at Brooklyn Arts Exchange. At the center of their practice are ideas exploring body politics and artist self-empowerment. For more information visit https://about.me/iele.paloumpis.

What Is Queer Performance? Marissa Perel Workshop
2014-06-14 11:00 - 23:00
Queer theory meets the queer body in these workshops. This smattering of queer artists bridges queer writing practices with queer bodybased practices. Drawing upon the varied performative interests and inspirations of the teaching artists, the workshops touch upon text, sound, witchcraft, impulse, free association, and movement.
These workshops are for folks with none to a lot of performance experience. Come see what inspirations and mini-spectacles are always-already burgeoning in your queer bodies.
Workshops are $10 each, all money goes to support the teacher and the space. Drop-in or take all of them. Space is very limited, so pre-registration strongly encouraged. Please send an email with your name and a quick tidbit about yourself to whatisqueerperformance@gmail.com. Curated by Li Cata.
MARISSA PEREL / SAT JUNE 14TH / 11A – 1P

Touching Into Text
This class will combine somatic awareness with reading to create an embodied approach to understanding language. For each class a short selection of text will be presented for reading and discussion. Through exercises that draw from various somatic practices, and experiments made up by the instructor and participants, the class will play with ways of feeling language; bringing words and their meanings into an intimate experiential sphere. There is room in this class for contemplation, finding an individual pathway for movement and speech, and for giving space to the often daunting mind-body split. It’s possible that we will get emotional about language, that we will love or not love how some texts feel, and that we will invent radical interpretations of what we read. We will investigate who we are as bodies that are simultaneously reading and being read by others. The desired outcome of this class is that participants find possibilities for integrating language and movement in their artistic processes. Texts include selections from Judith Butler, Gregg Bordowitz, Susan Sontag, Faith Wilding, and Lucy Lippard among others

bio
Marissa Perel is an artist and writer based in New York. Her interdisciplinary work includes performance, installation, criticism and curatorial projects. She often uses collaboration as a platform for the exchange of disciplines, working methods and discourses with choreographers, composers and visual artists. She is interested in drawing from the polemics of identity and representation to create compositional models for performance and installation. She orchestrates an immersive world where text, objects, dance and video transmit experiences of personal and societal conflicts. Her materials are cathected objects, cues that connect an immediate physical and psychic state to past events. Her work has been shown at numerous galleries, theaters and performance spaces in the U.S. and abroad.
Perel asks, “How do we move across space and time with respect to our collected histories?” Her essays, reviews, experimental prose and interviews engage this question at the convergence of the fields of contemporary art and performance. She originated the column, “Gimme Shelter: Performance Now” for Art21 Magazine and edited Critical Correspondence, the on-line dance and performance journal of Movement Research. She also pursues this question in her curatorial work, seeking to bring visibility to a multitude of forms and discourses. She has curated performances, panels and talks at such venues as the New Museum, New York Live Arts and at the Aux Performance Space at Vox Populi where she recently served as Curatorial Fellow.

Book Launch for Pamela Sneed's Lincoln
2014-06-14 19:00 - 21:00
Join us for the launch of Pamela Sneed‘s latest chapbook of poetry, Lincoln. Pamela will read from Lincoln and other new work, and will sign copies following the reading.

Pamela Sneed is a New York based poet and actress, featured in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Time Out, Bomb, VIBE, and on the cover of New York Magazine. She is author of Imagine Being More Afraid of Freedom Than Slavery, published by Henry Holt in April 1998 andKONG and other works published by Vintage Entity Press 2009. She has performed original works for sold out houses at Lincoln Center, P.S. 122, Ex-Teresa in Mexico City, The ICA London, The CCA in Glasgow Scotland, The Green Room in Manchester England, and BAM cafe. She has headlined the New Work Now festival at Joe’s Pub/Public Theater. In 2013, she performed at Central Park Summer Stage, The Whitney Museum of Art, Columbia University’s, “Geographies of Mass Incarceration.” In 2011, she performed in South Africa, in collaboration with the women’s organization FEW. She is a guest faculty member at Sarah Lawrence teachingWriting for Solo Performance and Solo Performance in Production. Her work is included in The 100 Best African American Poems edited by Nikki Giovanni. Her recent publications include work in Best Monologues from Best American Short Plays, Future Perfect, and LIU Teaching Narratives.

“Pamela Sneed’s latest ode breathes history, poetry, intellection, and mystery into the mouth of the world, making us, along with her characters and sensibility, sing, and sing.”

Hilton Als, Staff Writer, The New Yorker

Can We Come to the Table? - Stories About Gender Identity, Gender Expression, & Sexual Orientation
2014-06-15 19:00 - 22:00
Please join In Our Words Project for an evening of drink and performance of real stories from real people.
Can people from disparate views on LGBTQ issues come to meaningful consensus on the subject? And if so, how? These questions are answered through stories transcribed from interviews with people In Our Words Project Founder Alan L. Bounville met when he walked across the country for gender and sexual orientation equality. Through environmentally inspired staging, our actors will share some powerful, funny, and inspirational stories.
No matter how long you stay, everyone is sure to get a sneak peek of this entertaining and impacting piece of theatre. And please, bring some friends!

This event will directly support our upcoming New York City world-premiere production of: Can We Come to the Table? – Stories about Gender Identity, Gender Expression, & Sexual Orientation. A requested donation of $10 will be collected at the door, but no one will be turned away for inability to pay.

To learn more about In Our Words Project, visit our website: inourwordsproject.org

Alan L. Bounville (Founder and Script Curator) is a progressive-minded theatre for social change solo-performer, director, educator, and collaborator. He is also a civil rights activist. Earlier in 2013, Alan completed a 6,000-mile walk across North America to raise awareness for equality based on gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation. During the walk he performed a solo interview-based play, When People Lead and now produces theatre, which is both engaging and designed to aid in social change efforts on a host of subjects.

Ron Dizon is native NYer and a graduate of the Stella Adler Studio of Acting Conservatory. Theatre credits include: Miss Saigon (Riverside Theatre); The Spanish Tragedy (Page / Genesis Repertory – Spotlight-On Awards Nominee: Best Supporting Actor); A Chorus Line (Paul/Broadhollow Regional Theater); The Choice (Charles/TNC’s Dream-Up Festival); Brecht in the Park (Elephant Run District); Glass Menagerie (Tom/ButterflyTheatre Co.). Ron has also performed at the Duplex in his sold-out one man show Transactions of Love and played Peaches in Simpatico – The Web Series. He starred in the indie film Rooftop Heist – which premiered at the 2012 Big Apple Film Festival, and can be seen next in the upcoming comedy short film, A Box Came to Brooklyn. www.rondizon.com

Adrian Gebhart (Actor) I’m a theater/film performer, as well as theater educator originally from Berkeley, CA. I’m especially interested in theater and film that is new, experimental, and/or LGBTQQIA-themed.

Ron Grimshaw (Director) is a New York based director, designer, and producer. Most recently Ron produced and directed Coffee/Evil, a new work as part of the Midtown International Theatre Festival. Ron is also a founding member and artistic director of New York based ManTown Productions.

Beth Hintze (Intern) is a master’s candidate in Educational Theater in Colleges and Communities at The Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development at New York University. Beth is a 2010 graduate of Sarah Lawrence College where she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree with a concentration in Theater Production and History. In her spare time, she enjoys reading, games, and traveling.

Beth Maria is a working art teacher, musician, and stand up comedian.

Courtney Nolan Smith is thrilled to be a part of Can We Come To The Table? Originally from Massachusetts and a graduate of the University of Miami (BFA: Musical Theatre), she has performed with: Sierra Repertory Theatre, Ocean State Theatre Company, Cape Rep Theatre, Bristol Valley Theatre, Boston Children’s Theatre, Mt. Washington Valley Theatre Company and The Theatre Barn. Favorite credits include: PICk Love at The Rochester Fringe Festival, Cats (Grizabella), Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (Jolene), The Marvelous Wonderettes (Cindy Lou), The Full Monty (Estelle) and Enchanted April (Caroline). Thanks to Alan and Ron! www.courtneynolansmith.com
