Queer Theatre | Gay London | LGBTQ+ Queer London Gui

Contents:

• MAYOR OF LAMBETH CELEBRAT GAY TIM TANGO
• LONDON'S LANDMARK BUILDG DOTTED WH STRIP CLUBS, GAY VENU TO TURN TO MOSQUE

MAYOR OF LAMBETH CELEBRAT GAY TIM TANGO

Wh his lleagu, Carolyn, Rob Summerhill and Ray Batchelor he ran weekly práctis (spac where tango is practiced) at Bar Co, a gay bar Vxhall, London om September 2011..

In 2014, Queer Tango London moved to the Two Brewers, a gay pub south London bt known for s popular drag shows.

That branch of the sex dtry supported s quota of gay men who also danced together, but same sex dancg was not nfed to those we might thk of as queer.

LONDON'S LANDMARK BUILDG DOTTED WH STRIP CLUBS, GAY VENU TO TURN TO MOSQUE

Yet this mythology is a touch too nvenient and a paper I gave 2016, “Queer Tango’s ‘Image Problem’: Men, Intimacy and Pictur om the Past” (Batchelor, 2016) I suggted men might also have danced together bee was cheap fun, for reasons of social hn, that some of them were gay, and that some of them may simply have craved physil timacy wh another human beg, when such timacy was short supply. Did lbians and gay men dance tango same sex upl?

Usg the medil and crimal rerds of the time, Je Salsi (1997) and Magali Saik (2004) argue that for as a long as tango was chiefly danced by those on the margs of society, the poor, crimals, pimps and prostut, was routely and openly danced by lbians and homosexual men, ee to dance wh whomsoever they chose, bee they had ltle social stat to lose. In both s – and ways of tert to those dancg queer tango the 21st century – tango’s overtly homoerotic ntent was thlsly eradited, a procs which paralleled that of the black dimensns of tango history, which were siarly eradited (Thompson 2005).

Some of n be intified as occurrg among lbian or homosexual muni – Weimar Germany sprgs to md – but such dancg was more often than not perfectly rpectable, and not thought to imply that the dancers’ sexualy was anythg other than nventnally nsted. Perhaps, terms of a queer sensibily, the broast sense; perhaps when the dancers were lbians or gay men; but lookg at the check list which opened this acunt, nowhere any practil sense, is there the social and polil awarens which distguish the 21st century queer tango movement.

Balizano went on to open La Marshall, named after film actrs and mp in, Ni Marshal 2002, to date – spse a hiccup 2017, when looked as if might close – Buenos Air’ olst tablished gay onga.

In a semal paper livered by Mariana Dompo at The Queer Tango Salon 2017, the Argentian dancer teacher activist and drivg force behd Tango Queer, Buenos Air’ olst queer, as opposed to gay onga, exprsed her irratn that untls, thoughtls “histori of queer tango”, is often said that queer tango was created Europe and then spread to the rt of the world, cludg Buenos Air.

Vio (3:02): Tim Flynn, founr of Queer Tango London (followg) dancg wh Ray Batchelor at Bar, a gay bar Vxhall, south London 2012.

Collected om the 19th century, the archive — curated by the imable Stef Dickers — brims wh prs cuttgs, lbian pulp fictn, 90s gay mags, necsary documentatn of the HIV/AIDS crisis and Sectn 28 — and everythg between.

Gay's the word. Bookshop extraordaire: Gay's The Word.