The month of June is called the ‘Pride Month’. LGBTQIA+ Pride Month is
a month, dedicated to celebration and commemoration
of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender pride. Pride Month began
after the Stonewall riots, a series of gay liberation protests in 1969, and
has since spread outside of The United States of America. Modern-day
Pride Month both honors the movement for LGBTQIA+ rights and
celebrates LGBTQIA+ culture. Following the Stonewall riots and the first
pride marches, the number of LGBTQAI+ groups rapidly increased, and
so did the pride movement spread across the world.
Hyderabad too celebrates the Pride month with utmost Pride. They
recently held a festival called “Dragvati – a Queer Dance Festival’ which
had dancers and other artists, all dressed in drag from the LGBTQIA+
community descend on stage and celebrate their identity through
Dragvanti. I spoke with Patruni Chidananda Sastry, founder of Dragvanti
about the unique festival that celebrated people’s personalities through
dance, excerpts from the interview:
What made you start a drag dance festival?
I had very intimate relationship with dance, since the age of 5 I only
knew the expression of dancing. Been trained in classical art forms such
as Bharatanatyam, Kuchipudi and Odissi and inspired by the German
expressions and Butoh dance. My dancing journey helped me learn
many languages however in 2019, drag attracted me to a space where I
could use all the learnings of movement practice and apply it as a
different pedagogy. When I started drag, people rarely noticed it. Today,
drag artists are not seen as an essential skin of dance fraternity cause
there is a distinction between how both art form are presented and
perceived, the gap was something which helped me get an idea and
think as to, why can't we bring the idea of queer dance? Why not a place
where dance in its all genre and forms be celebrated and presented by
queer artists which would give a new and an unexplored meaning? That
is how the idea of having a queer dance festival was born.
Why the name ‘Dragvanti’?
Dragvanti is a website portal created for exclusively for drag artists in
India. It was definitely inspired by Narthaki.com one similar for dancers
across the globe. I created Dragvanti to have databases, performance
listings, articles and other details about drag in entirety. I wanted to give
it an Indianized name so called ‘Dragvanti’. Word ‘Vant’ in Sanskrit
means masculine and ‘Vanti’ means feminine so the word Dragvanti was
ideal isn’t it?
How has the response of Dragvanti been so far?
We started curating festivals since 2019, in 2020 we did Indian drag
conference which was an academy discussion on drag as an art, with 10
renowned drag artists across India. We also did Hyderabad drag con
and Hyderabad drag fest, we dwelled into annual Bi-Pan fest for the past
two years too. Hyderabad queer dance festival is a new addition. All of
our events were packed with hundreds of people wanting to catch the
glimpse of drag and their art of dance. For our festivals and events, we
usually cater to multiple intersectionality, hence people bring their
curiosity and interest to be a part of the dance festival.
Who performed in this year’s festival and how did you choose the
dancers / performers?
The agenda is to bring professional dancers from intersectional queer
community. It was always the intent to look for someone with a unique
identity of a dancer. We often believe to start with local artists, as a city
Hyderabad has a huge variety of potential.
We have south India's first male belly dancer Sravan Telu, who’s craft is
often acclaimed to be with authentic raqs. Queer artists Gautam aka
Mystic flames are a Goan artists traveling to Hyderabad presenting three
different pieces of dance such as Lavani, Kathak and musical
performances. Khemaya a trans drag artists is presenting Odissi. We
have Preem Leela Garu, a senior trans activity and a tribal artist bringing
us tribal folk dance, Apoorva Gupta a queer women bringing bachata
and I, performing a butoh /drag performance.
Now that the LGBTQIA+ have better status in India did you have
any Government support?
I guess over the years’ queer people and issues were on the front line
thanks to trailblazer like Padmashre Nartaki Natarajan, Manjamma
Jyogti and others. Having said that still we aren't included in mainstream
art. For example: drag queens and drag artists are not included in
institutional art form recognitions and also not considered as equal as
other classical dancers or musicians. So it is always a constant fight, we
have no government support at all. We are still in the initial phases of
implementing trans welfare boards across states, we are majorly relying
on local LGBTQIA+ organizations and LGBTQIA+ business owners such
as queer Nilayam, of Dark Vibe Society and Queer connects who are
individual contributors for changing queer rights landscape in
Hyderabad. Often we received support via donations and funds collected
as a part of the festival. Even for this year’s Dragvanti we had open
donations from audience to come and fund the festival and ticketed the
show, which was distributed across the artists. We also have a no return
back with lack of funds policy to accommodate queer trans people from
marginalized economic groups to be a part of the fest and provide
services such as volunteering in return.
Dragvanti is first of its kind festival of dance for LGBTQIA+ community
and surely they look forward to creating more such events and
engagements to uplift and bring queer artists across multiple art
platforms. Like we support other dance and art festivals let us all come
together to support this one too.
