Taking You To Church: House/Ball Culture as Spiritual Practice

a man with close cropped hair wearing a pink shirt and black suit jacket
Wednesday, Oct 6 2021, 7:00 PM - 8:00 PM, Virtual Event, Free
Contact:
Music Program

Carriage Barn Music Series | Fall 2021

OPEN TO THE PUBLIC l Taking You To Church: House/Ball Culture as Spiritual Practice with Ricky Tucker and Special Guest Michael Roberson Maison-Margiela. 

How to participate:

  • Join the conversation on Zoom: bitly.com/DCBmusic
  • Also available for streaming at www.twitch.tv/bennington_college_music. Event recording will be available on Twitch for re-streaming for 14 days.
  • Please note: Bennington students, faculty and staff are exclusively invited to gather in person in the Deane Carriage Barn to be part of this live-streamed special event. We welcome online participation from our wider community.
Going to a ball is a transcendent experience: The MC as the bombastic pastor. House music as shimmering Gospel. The children voguing like an uproarious, praise-filled congregation. For over a century, Ball Culture, or the House/Ballroom community, has been a space where displaced Black and Latinx LGBTQ youth find family, acceptance—and a spiritual practice. In this event, Ricky Tucker, author of the forthcoming, And the Category Is…: Inside New York’s Vogue, House, and Ballroom Community (Dec. 7, Beacon Press); and special guest, housefather, activist, and scholar, Michael Roberson Maison-Margiela, will delve into Ballroom’s roots in the Southern Baptist tradition, and discuss the extended metaphor of Ball Culture as hallowed space, followed by a “Five Elements of Vogue” dance workshop.
 

This special event is co-sponsored by the Bennington College Dance and CAPA programs.

About the Artists

Ricky Tucker is a writer, educator, and art critic based in Brooklyn. His work explores the imprints of art and memory on narrative and the absurdity of most fleeting moments. He has written for the Paris Review, the Tenth Magazine, and Public Seminar, among others, and has performed for reading series including the Moth Grand SLAM, Sister Spit, Born: Free, and Spark London. He was chosen as a 2017 Lambda Literary Emerging Writer Fellow for creative nonfiction, a 2021 Writer's House Pittsburgh Resident, and a 2022 Virginia Center for The Creative Arts resident. Tucker received his Writer/Teacher MA at Goldsmiths, University of London, and a B.A. in fiction at The New School where he later served as Senior Writer for marketing, and now teaches Reading for Writers at Eugene Lang, its college of liberal arts. His book And the Category Is...Inside New York's Vogue, House, and Ballroom Community, will be released by Beacon Press, December 7, 2021. 

Michael Roberson Maison-Margiela is a public health practitioner, advocate, activist, artist, curator, and leader within the LGBTQ community. He is the co-creator of the nation’s only Black Gay Research group and National Black Gay Men’s Advocacy Coalition, as well as an Adjunct Professor at The New School University/Lang College NYC, and Union Theological Seminary NYC. He is an international art and politics consultant and a member of the international sound art collective entitled “Ultra-red.” Michael scholar in residence for the Center for Race, Religion, and Economic Democracy, as well as recent TED Media Resident, where he performed a global TED talk about the underground Black/Latinx House/ball ballroom community, entitled The enduring legacy of ballroom. For Black History Month 2021, Michael co-authored an article in Time Magazine titled "Why Voguing and the Ballroom Scene Matter Now More than Ever." Michael also serves as a cultural consultant for the Pose FX television show. Additionally, he is a public health advisor and community engagement specialist for the NYC COVID-19 contract tracing initiative.

 

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