Fred Astaire’s Dancing Lessons: Queer Mentors and Monsters: Multimedia Performance by Dustin B. Goltz

What does it mean to be “part” of the queer community in 2019? Who tells you your story? Your history? Your future? This solo performance is a 70-minute multimedia, performative examination of shifting perceptions of queer male mentorship, LGBT aging anxieties, and the lingering cultural threat assigned to queer sexuality. The piece is an avalanche of pop culture, flamboyance and monstrosity—an intertextual interrogation of queer generational tensions- reclaiming a story of the monsters who refuse to die (for long), refuse to hide the histories their bodies carry, and who keep surviving through wit, camp, irreverence, and an ongoing commitment to the queer community.

Dustin Bradley Goltz is an Associate Professor of Performance Studies and Communication at DePaul University in Chicago. He is a scholar and performing artist whose work examines gay aging, queer temporality, LGBTQ media representation, and personal narrative performance. His research has been published in over two dozen articles in journals, which include Text & Performance Quarterly, Critical Studies in Media Communication, and Journal of International and Intercultural Communication. His most recent book, Comic Performativities: Identity, Internet Outrage, and the Aesthetics of Communication was published by Routledge in 2017.