Two days after graduation, I moved back to Rochester to begin my career as a professional dancer. Moving back to Rochester was not something I expected to do at this point of my life. Having grown up in here, I assumed I knew Rochester front and back. I thought I had experienced all that there was to experience here.
9 months later I found myself working through a shift in my relationship with dance. I found myself less eager to interact with the art form off the clock. That plus the familiarity of Rochester made me feel uneasy and stuck.
I was craving adventure and newness.
I started to see one of my neighbors about 5 months after moving home. At first infrequently but as the visits increased in an exponential I found myself developing a special place in my heart for him.
One of the times I saw Zaire, he told me about this underground dance party he once attended. He could only describe it as a “gay free for all”. I love house music, queer people, and dancing. I was intrigued. We got a few people together and go to the next function.
And so we went to Sole Rehab.
Discovering the party is a special feeling. My eyes opened upon entering the space. The energy was ecstatic. It was liberating, it was sexy, it was tender, it was communal. It was here that I would learn things about myself, find a confidence I didn’t know I had, and feel alive in a new way.
For Community
I wanted others to feel the same. I would invite old friends from high school, Grindr dates, strangers from Lux, and any queer person that (after a vibe check) I felt needed this kind of community and the love surrounding it. Connections formed and were expanded upon. Community building in real time.
As I brought people to the party, the party brought people to me. People that I would grow to love so much.
I cannot express my love for this beautiful queer family. We dance together, hug , laugh together, support one another, grieve together, and hold each other in times of loss.
For Will Paturzo
I met Will Paturzo at Lux about two years ago. I sat down at a table with him and Dano and told Will he looked like a character from “Perks of Being a Wallflower”. I then asked him his favorite band and he says… “The Smiths”. We instantly bonded over our love for Björk, rotted humor, awkward comedy, and our love for dance music. We’ve spent our time since then queening out on dance floors all over Rochester (and under that one bridge in Brooklyn), talking each others ear off and dancing. . We would eventually learn how to mix together.
For Mixing, Music, and Movement
Mixing is a form of curation. Turning a space into a common ground where people feel free to move with one another. When music is felt, we free ourselves to dance, and when we dance we feel free!
When I was given an old controller… it was like my next endeavor falling into my lap. With support from local DJs and with Will as a practice buddy, I began to mix. Since I was 10 I’ve always found pleasure in making playlists for those I love. A mix is simply a playlist with lashes. Pretty quickly I realized it was something I wanted to commit time and energy towards. I approach mixing through the lens of a dancer. Every song I play tonight has a physical effect on me. I can also predict how it will affect others. As I prepare a crate I imagine what my friends will look like moving to specific songs. Whether or not these visions are correct is to be determined but it’s a really fun image to hold as I practice.
For Feelings of Gratitude
Growing up, I always believed in Rochester, New York. To know that others do too warms my heart. I cannot fully express how much love I have for everyone who is putting in the work to make our little queer lives here in Rochester better. To those who commit to growing roots in the rust belt. To folks like Mickey and Jordan who inspire us to build up the city we live in to be a place that people want to move to and not from.
Every Rochesterian that moves with community as a priority. Everyone who continues to show up and indulge in what Rochester and especially queer Rochester has to offer.
To everyone that put aside the time, changed their schedule, and shifted plans to come dance tonight. I feel so held.
HUGE thank you to Tom, as none of this would be possible without all he has poured into Rochester’s queer scene. Thank you for taking a chance on Will and I, trusting us, and giving us this opportunity.
Tonight is an ode to Radical Belonging, and to those who bring me to it.
“Thinking of Mickey and Jordan, Buffalo, grief, loss, dancefloors and queer time. l've included a time map of the dancefloor that I drafted quickly after they passed using a bookmark as a straight edge, attempting to give shape to something impossible, to organize a deep indeterminacy which grief often brings; of being out of time.
I've learned that grief is not something that can unfold over time, it must unfold over time.
In the words of Matthew Rattcliffe, grief has a particular way of disorienting time and shifting it into a space of indeterminacy where "strange connections might dislodge familiar organization in such a way that new patterns can form... (providing) a range of subtly different changes in the structure of temporal experience...To feel lost in this manner is also to feel lost in relation to time."
That indeterminacy mimics that of rave time: a bubble of nonlinear time, where the now becomes the not-yet, or the future glimmers before it breaks into the present.
I got to know M + J on dancefloors, where life was lived, love was formed.
and in the words of
the great Joanna Newsom: love is not a symptom of time, time is just a symptom of love
In the blue light of @buddybuddy.fun they’ll twirl for infinity”
Apollo Chastain (ze/hir, he/him) is a trans faggot who writes poetry about demon twinks, airports, and being willing to do anything for his friends, among other things. Ze lived in Rochester for undergrad, but is now pursuing research work and grad schools in a lot of other places (like the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery and Washington University in St Louis!) to work with poetry, history, and trans archives. The recipient of the 2021 Academy of American Poets College Prize for hir university and PEN America’s 2023 Free Expression Fellowship, Apollo’s work appears or is forthcoming in journals including Poets.org, a PEN America fellowship publication, the Michigan Quarterly Review, and Diode Poetry Journal, among others. Pay hir a visit at apollopoet.wordpress.com, or on Instagram @apollo.chastain.
