Fri, Mar 15, 2024
7:00pm–10:00pm
Feel Good Friday: Queer Night at UMMA
It’s Finally Friday and You Deserve to Feel Good!
This year, Queer Night at UMMA is a Queer Cabaret! Join us for a celebration of the local LGBTQIA2S+ community and the opening of Machine Dazzle: Ouroboros. Step into an evening of enchantment and artistry. Performers Machine Dazzle, Jezebel, Miss Faguette, Anarad, Lavender, PRISM, and Thee Plastic Dollz rule the night, with our DJs BLKshine and Corey TuT as your guides.
Release the ties that bind you and immerse yourself in the world that awaits.
- Experience Ouroboros the newly commissioned work by artist and costume designer Machine Dazzle. For nearly two decades, Machine Dazzle has been producing spectacular costumes, sets, installations, and performances that transfix audiences with a queer maximalist kaleidoscope. Machine will be on site, hosting in the Stenn Gallery.
- Feeling like dressing up? Wear your best Queer Maximalist outfit to be entered in a raffle! Or make an outfit on site in our cabaret dressing room with UMMA’s Student Advisory Board. UMICHFits will be documenting the night’s best looks.
- 18+ Afterparty at Necto with Ru Paul’s Drag Race performer Saphhira Cristál. Discounted cover from 11PM-MIDNIGHT with an UMMA wristband. Necto is 18+ with government ID and cannot guarantee cover entry if at max capacity.
Free and open to the public. All galleries open.
Machine Dazzle is the 2023-2024 Roman J. Witt Artist-in-Residence. Ouroboros is a collaboration of UMMA and the Penny Stamps School of Art & Design.
Special thanks to Detroit-based artist, Jay Orellana aka Jezebel for their partnership in curating performances for this night.
Related Exhibition
Schedule for Queer Night:
- 7:00-10:00pm – Machine Hosting in the Ouroboros Gallery
Location: Ouroboros Gallery - 7:00-8:00pm – Get your Queer Maximalist outfit photographed by @UMichFits
Location: UMMA Main Entrance - 7:00-10:00pm – Queer Maximalist Dressing Room with the UMMA Student Advisory Board
- 7:00-7:30 – DJ Corey TuT
- 7:15-7:35 – Song Performance with PRISM: Men of Note
Location: Vertical Gallery - 8:00-10:00pm – DJ Blkshine
- 8:00-8:15pm – Puppeteer Performance by Lavender
- 8:20-8:30pm – Visual Performance by Anarad
- 8:45-8:55pm – Dance Performance by Derrick and Thee Plastic Dollz
- 9:15-9:25pm – Drag Performance by Miss Faguette
- 9:30-9:40pm – Drag Performance by Jezebel
Performers & Event Partners
A Detroit-based performance artist, hailing from the Garden State. Their work utilizes movement, somatic-transformation and vocal performance to facilitate spaces of mutual healing for audience and artist, through humor, narrative and shared participation. Jezebel explores how this work can question ideas of community care, collaboration and preserve queer storytelling for future generations.
Jay Orellana, aka Jezebel
Instagram: @jezebelsinferno
(they/them)
Michigan-born drag artist who transforms thrifted materials and unconventional objects into wearable art. Their garments are made using an antique hand-crank sewing machine from 1894, so all of their creations are a true labor of love! They enjoy finding new and intriguing ways to use and reveal the human body through performance and dance.
Miss Faguette
Instagram: @msfaguette
(they/she)
A lifelong lover of all things Dance! Derrick discovered his passion for dance at an early age by watching his favorite artists on MTV. In the summer of 2020 Derrick founded his very own Dance Crew, “Thee Plastic Dollz”! Since founding the dance crew Derrick has gone on to choreograph and tour with DJ/Recording Artist, Wreckno. They have spent the the year filming music videos, and performing across the country. Derrick is very excited to be apart of UMMA.
Derrick
Instagram: @ponytailderrick
(he/they/she)
Detroit based weaver working the narrative threads of costume, artifact, ritual and installation into stories about possible worlds and potential futures. Treating woven cloth as portals into these other worlds, Kafafian generates texts infused with future ancestral practice, hybridity and magic. Their current work channels the world of Azadistan out of the Armenian diasporic imaginary toward the forthcoming graphic novel Portal Fire.
Levon Kafafian, aka Anarad
Instagram: @visionsoftransition
(they/them)
Lavender is a transgender playwright and theatre artist creating work which conjures community, catharsis, and celebration. They graduated from Wayne State University, where they won the Thompkins Award for Drama and served as Artistic Director on the board of student operated theatre company The Underground. They served as Artistic Director of Planet Ant Theatre, where they wrote and produced multiple productions. They produced, hosted, and performed in the long running drag show Gender Bender.
Lavender Morin
Instagram: @the_lavender_scare
(they/she)
A first generation Chaldean and Assyrian queer artist. She has deep love for drag and music performance, and now… puppets! She is working on learning and developing her creative skills through her artistic explorations both alone and with her friends.
Helana Georgis
(she/her)
A Detroit born, Brooklyn based artist, curated, writer, and DJ. As a Dj, BLKshine they prioritizes a space for queer, femme and black people to get lost in the music, to find a temporary moment of freedom from the groove, and bass of House, funk, soul, disco and techno music.
Darryl DeAngelo Terrell, aka BLKshine
Instagram: @blkboyshine
(they/them)
A Detroit, MI based musician, visual artist and DJ. TuT has fronted bands, been a solo artist and written, produced and performed with musicians as diverse as Ad Rock from Beastie Boys, NYC techno/ house sensations The Ones, Peppermint, Bob The Drag Queen, Ultra Nate, and legendary producers Super Buddha. His songs have been used in several independent films, and in network programs on ABC, The CW, NBC Sports and The NFL. TuT's voice can also be heard in commercials for Toyota, Diet Pepsi, Ford and more.
Corey TuT
Instagram: @coreytut
(he/him)
More About This Event Series
Photo by Mark Gjukich