Lil Buck: Walking on Water

November 02, 2020

The first time I saw Lil Buck dance, he was jookin’ to cellist Yo-Yo Ma’s rendition of French composer Camille Saint-Saëns’s song “The Swan.” This is the context in which many people, including the filmmaker Spike Jonze, who recorded the performance on his iPhone, were first introduced to Lil Buck. And I, as Spike Jonze probably felt when he decided to record the performance, had a rare feeling in the information age, that I had just witnessed something absolutely incredible.

Buck’s presence in material reality appears to be an illusion—to know the way he moves fits within reality makes me question the bounds of what is possible. He simply moves and interacts with space and time with different laws than believed sacrosanct. He appears outside of human physics.

Interview by Saam Niami
Photos by Alex Palmer/Red Bull Media House

But Buck, the man I spoke to over Zoom last week, is very human, and that may be one of the most incredible things about him. When we connect, he greets me with a genuinely huge smile, rare on this platform, and says, “How we doing today, Saam? I’m really excited to speak with you, man.” I had just spent the better part of a few straight days researching Buck and his art, something that seems outside of this reality, and he still greeted me as a friend.

It’s one of many surprising things about Lil Buck that I learned throughout our conversation. For someone of such great success as him, performing with world-class artists, being the face of Apple commercials, and starting his own dance company, he is exceedingly humble and cannot get through one sentence about himself without naming every person that is responsible for it. And perhaps that can explain Buck’s great success: his history reminds him of how far he has come, and it promises too how far he can go.

Charles “Lil Buck” Riley was born on May 25th, 1988 in Chicago, Illinois, where he lived with his mother, two older sisters, and younger brother for the first portion of his life. “I grew up poor in a very poor family,” he says. “We lived in my grandmother’s basement. We moved a lot, man.” Due to his mother’s struggles with abusive relationships and financial hardship, when Buck was eight, he and his family moved to Memphis where his father lived, whom Buck had never met before. “I found out I had three younger sisters on my dad’s side.”

It was difficult for Buck to make many strong friendships because it never felt like he stayed anywhere long enough to build the community he needed. “I never thought there was anything special about me,” he says. “There wasn’t anything I had to offer. I didn’t even know myself.”

Though, the one constant Buck had in his life was movement. “I’ve been dancing for as long as I can remember,” he remarks. “I started dancing seriously when I was thirteen. That’s when I knew I wanted to be a dancer.” Buck and his older sister Stephanie would dance together in their free time. “She was a majorette,” he says through his excited grin. “She’s always been dancing. She got me into dancing. It was a coping mechanism. It made me feel happy. It was the only thing that made me feel free.” And one of Buck’s favorite pastimes with his sister, apart from dancing, was watching old VHS tapes of Michael Jackson. “I thought he was some mythical being,” he reflects on Jackson. “We didn’t have YouTube. We didn’t know what was going on in the world. I thought you just had to be a special kind of person to move the way he did.”

But Buck stumbled upon myth in the streets of Memphis, watching older boys dance together and have battles with the Memphis-born dance style of jookin’. He first witnessed jookin’ when his sister came home from school one day and danced with precise, weightless control of her limbs that he had never seen before. She taught him what she knew and he became infatuated with the style. But Buck remembers one moment in particular that pulled a string in him that set him out on a lifetime of mastery in jookin’. “I was at the Crystal Palace Skate Rink in South Memphis,” he recalls. “Dancers would come to the skating rink because they would have the skaters come off the floor for the last hour that the rink was open and open up the floor to anyone who just wanted to come dance and have a good time. We’d see people battling. It was the first time I had seen people who were jookin’ for years.”

It was at the Crystal Palace, during one of the dance battles, that Buck saw Jeremy “Bobo” Greer, whom he calls one of the pioneers of Memphis jookin’. “When I saw Bobo, someone from my own neighborhood, someone who looked like me, with the baggie jeans and the long t-shirt with golds in his mouth, when I saw that guy glide across a carpet just like it was water, everything stood still.”

In one moment, the impossible became the present for Buck. “He was gliding just as smooth, if not smoother,” he offers, “and just as cold, as Michael Jackson.” He had a rare, priceless moment of revelation. The walls of possibility he had known collapsed. “I went home,” he says, “and I couldn’t stop thinking about the way he danced. I woke up in the morning and he was still gliding in my brain. And it never went away.”

If you look up “Memphis Jookin’” on Google, the first result is a video of Lil Buck performing at the Kennedy Center. It’s a dance style that most have probably never seen before seeing Buck perform it, but to Buck, jookin’ is a central part of what it means to be from Memphis. It was a part of the way people thought about things, Buck reports. “my mama used to do the Gangsta Walk back in the day,” an older version of jookin’ from the Memphis music scene, “and that came from just getting upppp!” Buck argues that jookin’ is just as close to people’s hearts as rock and roll, or the blues, or any of the Memphis legends like Elvis Presley and B.B. King. “It’s just as Memphis as barbecue,” he says. And for something so special to Memphis to have originated in the streets is one of the most beautiful parts of jookin’ to Buck.

When Buck started jookin’, he found that the form satisfied a lot more of the needs in his life than he had anticipated. “I was bullied a lot in school,” he reflects. “People misunderstood me. And my mom worked two jobs. I didn’t spend a lot of time with my family. I never really had any friends.” Jookin’, for Buck, went beyond his desire to escape through dance: it offered an opening into community at the heart of Memphis culture. “I wanted to be a part of something amazing,” he recalls. “I would wake up in the morning trying to learn how to do the moves. And I would stay up late at night perfecting them.”

Buck trained like this for years, dedicating most of his physical energy and mental space mastering jookin’. By the time he was sixteen, after three years of relentless training, he was beginning to formulate a sense of style and rhythm. “You have to do it a certain way for people to recognize it as jookin’, it has to be authentic to the culture” he stipulates, “But it's also a dance style that has a lot of room for your own creativity.” As Buck trained, he discovered that he had extremely flexible ankles and knees, which allowed for advanced improvisations of the form. Personalized evolutions of an art form—revolutionary diversions.

Once Buck had felt comfortable enough with jookin’ after a short three years, he accepted his first dance battle against his hometown idols. “I was nervous, I had never battled,” he says. “I was still a huge fanboy. Everybody was superstars to me. These guys were my personal Michael Jacksons.”

But in the Memphis scene, Buck couldn’t show any fear. He was determined to prove himself. He battled a fellow joker named TJ, who is now a close friend to Buck. “When I tell you I was nervous, man,” he smiles, “I was afraid I was gonna pee my pants.” But when the museum came on, Buck calmed. “I was a totally different person. I was ruthless.” Three years of training presented with an aggressive perfection performed to those whom he worked to replicate. He could finally call himself a Memphis jooker.

It was at this point that Buck enrolled in hip-hop dance classes, and eventually, Buck’s mother enrolled in a performing arts high school after a lifetime of switching schools. Stability and focus were found in the mastery of his form. He joined a hip-hop dance class to hone that introduced him to choreography outside of his private intuitions. He also learned ballet to build up his core, strengthen his footwork, and build greater patience, eventually earning a scholarship to perform with a ballet program. At this point, he felt well-rounded not only as a jooker but as a trained dancer—learning to walk by running.

As Buck entered adulthood, he took advantage of the emerging social media sphere, putting dance videos out on YouTube and Myspace. A film producer in LA discovered Buck and flew him and his cousin out to LA to shoot a video. “That was my first time on a flight,” he says. It was the first time Buck could dance for audiences outside of his hometown and he left people in total disbelief with his jookin’. The professional dancers that worked on the set he was hired for were so amazed by jookin’ that they relieved themselves from appearing in the video so that Buck and his cousin could show off.

After leaving LA, Buck kept in touch with the dancers he met, and they started reaching out urging Buck to move to LA so that he could continue to pursue dance. One friend offered to fly Buck out and let him crash but the friend could only afford a one-way ticket. He had already gained so much through jookin’ within his own community, but maybe it was time to show the world what his community was made of.

He took the ticket and started saying his goodbyes. “My mom was scared pantless,” he jokes. “She cared about me so much. She just wanted me to be alright.” With the little money they had, his mother gave him one hundred dollars to start in LA. “I didn’t know about the luggage fees,” he laughs, “so it actually ended up being around twenty dollars.”

He arrived in LA with a place to stay, twenty dollars in his pocket, and the drive to do the unimaginable, which was just enough to get off the ground. He would dance at the Santa Monica Pier to make extra money. Eventually, he signed with an agent and started doing commercials to sustain himself. He appeared on the Ellen Show. He co-choreographed a Janelle Monáe music video. And, eventually, he made contact with Yo-Yo Ma.

“That story begins back in Memphis,” Buck explains. The ballet company Buck belonged to in Memphis, New Ballet Ensemble & School would often do outreach programs to schools in the area. During a performance at a school in Little Rock, Arkansas, Buck performed a mix between jookin’ and ballet, something he and the director Katie Smythe would often experiment while practicing. The video ended up going viral.

While Buck was working in LA, Damian Woetzel, the president of The Julliard School and an appointee on the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities by President Obama, saw the video and wanted to work with Buck. He reached out to the ballet company and eventually found Buck on Facebook and asked him if he wanted to put a performance together with Yo-Yo Ma. “I was like, ‘Yo-Yo who?’” says Buck, but after researching Ma, he discovered Ma’s level of mastery and prestige that draws comparison to Buck himself. It so happens that Yo-Yo Ma is known for his rendition of “The Swan,” and Woetzel wanted to bring the two together to collaborate.

Buck went to the Disney Concert Hall in downtown LA to a performance by Ma where they planned to meet. “Yo-Yo gave me the biggest hug,” he remembers, “ and he says, ‘I want to try something,’ so we went out to the hallway and he started playing ‘The Swan,’ and I started dancing. It was magic.” They eventually coordinated a performance at a meeting between different creative celebrities to incorporate the arts in education that ended up in the viral video recorded by Spike Jonze.

What I originally loved so much about the video was the shocking departure from what I was used to seeing with the sort of classical music like “The Swan.” I expect careful, reserved expressions that find confidence in their surviving antiquation. I don’t expect what Lil Buck does. In a way, I felt embarrassed by my reaction to Lil Buck’s dancing. Why is it that we find discomfort in the pairing of art forms? What would be possible if we found ways to destroy the barriers of relation?

For an artist like Lil Buck, it’s not that his art asks these questions. Rather, his art is a rare moment of explanation. An answer, unexpected. When I ask him how it felt to jook with Yo-Yo Ma, he admits, “I can't even describe the feeling,” and continues, “it felt natural and it felt real for me because that was who I am.” To Buck, dancing with Yo-Yo Ma was a product of a lifetime of finding his voice. “I didn't grow up with much of a voice,” he says, “I didn't grow up thinking there was anything special about me. I knew that this was something I could speak to. This was something that people can understand.”

It was an unexpected moment for Buck, an accomplishment he didn’t expect to achieve, blending the conservative, elite, and aged world of classical music with Memphis jookin’, merging a world felt unattainable to someone like Buck with a form that, to him, was once unattainable. To destroy boundaries like this is deserving of a master that has himself has done the impossible already in his life. “To present street dancing like Memphis jookin’ to the classical world and have them see for themselves that street dancing an art form as any other dance, any other art,” he slows, “it’s beautiful. Like growing a rose out of concrete.”

Buck continued to grow and spread the message of Memphis jookin’ to all those who would look. Over the next ten years, he would dance with Madonna at the Super Bowl, model for fashion catalogs, perform with the New York City Ballet, organize more collaborations with Yo-Yo Ma, and appear in more Spike Jonze movies. And yet, even with all of these collaborations, it took time for Buck to create the sort of project that was by and for himself. Not “the jooker,” not, “the street dancer that performed with Yo-Yo Ma,” not, “Madonna backup dancer,” but just as Charles “Lil Buck” Riley.

“I’ve always wanted to touch on who I am as a person,” he explains, “I speak my truth in my dance but I never got a chance to tell my own story. I never got to express the traumas I went through.” Although he was appearing with some of the biggest names in all corners of the art world, he didn’t feel as though anyone knew who he was beyond the dancing.

Recently, Buck was teaching a dance class with Red Bull, who regularly sponsors dancers, and started speaking to different people at the company about creating a video. He got in touch with director David Javier to start on something, a video, that would just be about Buck.

Buck grew up close to the church with his parents being dedicated Christians. “I think choir is a big reason I got so passionate about dance,” he says. “I always thought the choir was where the holy ghost was. When they started singing, I couldn’t control myself. I would jump up and start moving. And my mom would scream and say, ‘My son got the holy ghost!’ These are the moments I never get to talk about.”

Buck told David about his past, everything he went through as a child, and how the recent Black Lives Matter protests were bringing out memories of his life in Memphis, dealing with police brutality and gun violence within his community. So they made a video, released one week ago, titled, “Nobody Knows,” a dance collaboration with Pastor T.L. Barrett and The Youth for Christ Choir. It’s a short video, a little less than five minutes, that tells a lifetime. A boy from Memphis, reaching outside of what is human, touching hands with God. A manifestation not only of personal history but also community memory. It encompasses pain and the love and hope found in common strength. And it’s a dance.

“I couldn't hold myself back,” Buck remembers. “I started to cry in some instances because it was something so personal to me and something that. I feel like I got to get off my chest and I got to speak through in the best way I knew. I'm actually speaking to your soul through dance, my truth. This was me out there naked.”

I half expect when I watch “Nobody Knows” for a singer to appear at some point in the video and begin to perform along with the themes, and yet it would feel out of place. “Nobody Knows” is a landmark for Buck as the central subject. It’s a departure from an empty sort of emotion that Superbowl dancers may know far better than Memphis street dancers: feeling like your work isn’t being seen. “Growing up jookin’,” Buck starts, “we take pride in the time and effort we have to do to cultivate this art that we've been growing. And we've been training ourselves. We're craftsmen, man. We're artists. We’re not just background dancers for other artists.”

While Buck reached heights in his career that he never expected growing up in Memphis, he found a surprising distance from the appreciation of his form the bigger he got, and it’s a problem all dancers in the industry face. “I'm working really hard to try to inspire the dance community,” he says. “Hone in on who you are as an artist and invest in that.” Buck feels especially passionate about making sure that those within the Black community, who are historically exploited within the dance sphere, are not undervaluing the power they have through movement. “This is a mission for me,” he states, “to show the Black kids in my community that they have a voice with their dance. You have power with your dance. As long as you focus and hone in on what you do, and work really hard at what you love. Don’t take no for an answer. You can make this happen for yourself.”

I can’t tell if Buck’s dancing is what it looks like to be touched by God, or if it’s the sort of thing that makes others believe they are witnessing an act of God. I imagine witnessing Lil Buck perform may feel similar to how it felt to witness the Chicago Bulls win their first NBA championship against the Magic Johnson LA Lakers led by a young man named Michael Jordan. Perhaps it is how those sitting in the Vivian Beaumont Theater felt when they saw a young woman named Whitney Houston perform “Home” on The Merv Griffin Show in 1983. It must have been what Lil Buck felt when he first saw Michael Jackson dancing on TV when he was a kid growing up in Memphis.

But, one of the most inspiring things I found in my conversation with Lil Buck was realizing that he doesn’t see himself the way that I or any of his admirers see him. After a lifetime of beating impossible odds, he reflects on his career with humility and compassion for young artists like the kid he was watching Michael Jackson on VHS.

“I’m not an anomaly,” he assures. “I’m not the only person who can do what I do. I’m not a special case. There are a lot of obstacles for us, being Black in this industry. It’s hard for the Black community, for people of color, to survive. This industry wasn’t made for us. But we set the tone. We are the trendsetters. Our culture is what people love. We have the power.”

I ask Buck, before we run out of time, to imagine a young kid in Memphis watching “Nobody Knows” on their computer and seeing the way Buck dances in the same way he looked at Michael Jackson. He smiled and closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. I then asked him, if he could say anything to that kid, what would it be?

“Wow,” he begins. “Thinking about what I’ve been through and what I thought as a kid, what it all took. I would just tell him, ‘Man, you should dream big. Dream as big as you possibly can, because no dream is too big.’” He smiles at me and begins to laugh. “You know,” he says through a chuckle, “when I was a kid, my biggest dream was to be a backup dancer!” Watching backup dancers when he was younger, Buck assumed they were just as well paid and just as well respected as the singer, getting up close to the singer, looking better than the musician. They added just as much to the art, so they should be just as lauded. And yet, although he may be right, such is not the reality.

“So, man,” he continues, “I would tell that kid to dream as big as they possibly can. From my experience, no dream is too big, and your dreams may not even be big enough for what you can do. You gotta go for it. You gotta work hard at what you love, for what you believe, for what you want to have happen for yourself. If what you love is dance, take the time to learn, have patience, learn the craft. Be a craftsman! Dream as big as you can.”

Culture

Mowalola x Miss Sixty Launch with H. Lorenzo

I swing my legs over the ropes that guard the VIP entrance. Always over (I’m 5’10), never under. I’m late to the H. Lorenzo x Mowalola event, and the line is wrapped around the block. I don’t want to be an asshole, but I hate waiting in lines; it just ruins everything.

“Hey, my friend is DJing right now. My name should be down,” I say.

The youngish security guard looks me up and down. I have made an adventurous choice for this type of crowd. Neon pink hoodie, bright orange vest, my Raimundo jeans, and Jeremy Scott animal print sneakers. I let him take me in and look over his shoulder. Hmmm… I will be swathed in darkness when he lets me in. Dark night, dark clothes, dark makeup, furs, hoods, leather accessories, and sunglasses. I don’t recognize anyone, but it’s hard to tell who anyone is because I can’t see after 8 pm without my glasses. Night blindness. I can still catch a vibe though.

“She’s in the bathroom,” Mr. Guard says, interrupting my squinting.

“Who?,” I ask.

“The woman in charge of the list.”

That’s a drag. I want to dance. Lately, I am going out in the name of music.

“So…can I go in?” I ask.

“Just wait for her to get back.”

That sounded fine. I wait. The outdoor smoking area is packed. I imagine the inside to be a mirror of this, hopefully with people dancing instead of blowing smoke in each other’s eyes.

“You got instagram?” The guard asks me after about ten minutes of flirting.

“Can I go in?” I said.

He laughs. He lets me in the event without a wristband.

Inside, I understand why the other guard was gone for so long. I made a mental note to not drink too much liquid, the bathroom line is almost as long as the line outside. The party is popping, far from a flop.

I push through the crowd solo, following the speakers to the DJ booth. The immersive visuals provided me with enough light to make out Mowalola in a gold bikini and her low rise denim. My pulse races like the horse printed on the front of her coochie. That’s the point of the collection, obviously.

My hips swing around before I head towards the open bar. I smile to myself, noting that it’s a mezcal forward menu. I see a drink that disgusts me so I order it without hesitation. It’s a mezcal coffee concoction. My heart ’s ran through already, why not go all in? I head back to dance when I hear Shigecki’s set start. I’m jumping around, sweating, and when I pause for a beat I let out a yelp. There are strippers working poles opposite and behind the DJ booth. Good. Events should be sexy.

I end the night smoking my friend’s Korean strawberry cigarettes taking in the air of cool- when a man comes up to me wild-eyed exclaiming that we look just like one another. I look at him- no, not at all. I turn slowly, remembering what I should be doing: listening to DJ G2G’s set. Back inside, she is playing reggaeton type beats with lasers beaming out of her headphones (I want these). A rave in it of herself.

Too bad all the events end at 2 am in LA.

Culture

Vans Pipe Masters 2024

On the first night, Steve Van Doren and the Vans team hosted the heat draw for the competitors at a casual backyard barbecue. The son of Vans’ co-founder Paul Van Doren, Steve has worked in the family business for decades, and is now known as the Ambassador of Fun. Wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a cowboy hat made out of old shoes, he was definitely dressed for the part. The surfers, along with family and friends gathered in a relaxed setting as 40 men’s and 20 women’s names were drawn from a shoebox. The competition would run in 3 rounds, the top 4 men and 4 women with the highest scores moving onto the finals. When asked about their strategies, most gave answers along the lines of “get waves.” Refreshingly simple.

After waiting a few days for favorable conditions, the first day of competition kicked off with Women’s Round 1. It was finally time to see Pipeline in action. Banzai Pipeline is known as one of the most dangerous places to surf due to the powerful waves breaking over shallow and sharp reefs. With the potential to crash into the rocky edges or have leashes caught in caves, it takes a ton of skill–-and even more courage–to surf here. No stranger to these risks, the first heat included favorites Caity Simmers and “Queen of Pipeline” Moana Jones Wong, who showed off exactly why they’d been successful here in the past. Midway through the heats, Mother Nature decided to throw in another element as a light drizzle turned into a proper downpour. Rain or shine, the athletes went out unfazed, focused on getting their first points on the board.

After another short day’s break, the competition continued with the women’s second round and the men’s first. The beach was filled with spectators, locals and tourists alike, as the competition was free for all to attend. While fans rooted equally for the women and men, the most popular were the local Hawaiian athletes, which made up about half the competition. The women started off the day again, hyping up the crowd with incredible rides. One ride by Bettylou Sakura Johnson earned the first Bag of Cash of the day– a cash prize (of undisclosed amount) awarded in a brown paper bag to any surfer that pulls off a wow moment, excites the crowd, and pulls off something spectacular regardless of what the conditions might look like.

Winds picked up as the men’s competition began and two strategies quickly emerged: an aggressive approach, targeting any decent waves to build small scores; and a patient approach, waiting for the perfect wave to chase a high single score. Even the waves that were unrideable were a spectacle in itself. The sheer size, illustrated by the length of surfboards riding up and over, and the following crash of white water spray was hypnotizing. Then imagining having to experience it out on the water, duck diving under or being lifted over, brought a renewed respect for the surfers.

After watching these early rounds, it was time for office to head back to the cold. With the competition officially spanning from December 8-20, it seemed the forecast was gearing up for some massive waves— and it didn’t disappoint. Following from afar through Vans’ Instagram and live updates, we saw the full extent of what it means to surf at Pipeline. After a series of electrifying and daring surfs, the 2024 winners were crowned: Erin Brooks and Nathan Florence.

The thrill of watching top athletes compete at the highest level of their sport, even remotely, never fails to inspire. Few sports surrender so completely to the forces of nature as surfing does. And at its core, surfing is all about having a deep respect for the ocean—its unpredictable whims, its immense power, and its ever-changing moods.

Culture

The Cost of Queendom

December 17, 2024

One summer afternoon in New York, a few days after their New York premiere of the acclaimed documentary Queendom, office met up with documentary filmmaker Agniia Galdanova and producer Igor Myakotin at a tattoo parlor on the west side of Manhattan. While Agniia received a tattoo of the portmanteau “DOCU CUNT” across her fists, she — unfazed by the needle on her knuckles — answered our questions alongside Igor about the making of the stirring story that has traveled around the world.

One of the opening scenes of Queendom depicts a ritual many of us are all too familiar with in the 21st century. Jenna Marvin, the documentary film’s central subject, takes her friend along with her to take photos for Instagram. When she finds a suitable backdrop, she poses, poses, poses, and then reviews the photos. Dissatisfied, she gives her notes, and then returns to pose, pose, pose again.

By Brook Aster
Photos by Liv Solomon

The ritual may be familiar, but nothing else about the scene — from its setting to its stakes — is ordinary. The backdrop behind Jenna is a sweeping expanse of ice and snow in a small Russian port town called Magadan. Jenna is dressed in drag, but not drag of the Rupaul’s Drag Race variety; her drag has been referred to as “creature drag.” Her signature white face paint, platform heels and surrealist costumes, with their exaggerated sculptural proportions and use of duct tape and repurposed items, catches the ire of her neighbors and the love of online admirers alike. Jenna eventually accrued a following on social media for her public and technically illegal drag performances, which often involved little more than her walking or being in public spaces but nevertheless were often met with abuse and threats of imprisonment.

But when Agniia first encountered Jenna, she hadn’t yet reached the level of virality that would eventually come in the years to follow. The filmmaker was researching different drag performers in Russia for her sophomore project, which she thought would be a docuseries, when she heard from a friend about a young drag queen from Magadan. “I was like, this is impossible. I have to meet this person,” Agniia remembers. “And I could not actually go meet her because I was in Moscow and she was in Saint Petersburg, so I sent a friend of mine with whom I’d been studying with in film school, and she went and filmed the sample.” The simple video, showing Jenna and her friend getting dressed up for a party, struck something in Agniia. The drag was an earlier, more prototypical version of the style Jenna is now known for; less duct tape and ornamentation, but still that signature striking makeup. “Something sparked. I knew I just had to stick to this feeling,” Agniia says. She decided to turn the docuseries into a documentary solely focused on Jenna.

Around that time, the entire world came to a grinding halt: the onset of COVID-19 pandemic had just led to lockdowns around the globe. With only a couple thousand followers on social media at that point in time, Jenna had tried to branch out and connect with other drag artists in Moscow and Saint Petersburg, but faced rejection; her drag was extremely unconventional, and not even other drag artists quite understood it. “I think we found each other at the right moment, because nobody knew what to do, how to cope with all this,” Agniia says. “Jenna was saying that she was lost, and she also didn't know how to develop her art next.”

Unlike some of the other artists Agniia had initially researched, Jenna didn’t need much convincing to allow the camera into her life. “[Especially] after COVID came, there wasn't really [any] drag in my life,” Jenna recounts when I speak to her later over Zoom. “I realized that what drag is for me is not just a costume, a dress, something that you leave, that you take off and then in the dead of the night you put back on. Later, I understood that this is who I am, that I am art and I am drag, and that this is way bigger and more important than just clothing or costume.”

[LEFT TO RIGHT: Agniia Galdanova, Jenna Marvin, Igor Myakotin]

When it came time to move into production stages, Agniia sent a clip to Igor, who had been referred to her by a past colleague. When Igor saw the footage, he was similarly struck by Jenna — and even more struck to find out she shared his small hometown of Magadan. “It was just so fateful to know that I also come from this town, and I've never seen it through this cinematic lens, through the vision that Agniia has,” he says. “I was mesmerized by the footage, mesmerized by Jenna. I thought to myself, I have to do everything I can [for us] to work together, whatever the collaboration is gonna be.”

The two followed Jenna for over three years; Agniia first relocated to St. Petersburg, where Jenna had taken up residence after leaving her grandparents’ home in Magadan, and later Jenna moved in with Agniia in her home in Moscow. All the while, Igor and his team worked remotely from the United States to meet Agniia’s production needs. Inevitably, with all their time spent together, Agniia and Jenna became close.

“There is an unspoken rule in documentary filmmaking that you have to keep this line, and you can’t overcome certain boundaries,” Agniia explains. “In my first film, it was not an easy subject [to do this with] as well. I was following a family for seven months, and [we became] close, but I always was trying to keep my distance, and was constantly thinking about it. How much should I say? How much should I give?” But as she got to know Jenna, it became clear that this time, that distance wouldn’t be possible. “With Jenna almost from the very beginning, I was like, fuck it. That’s not going to work with this one. I'm going to break this rule 100%. I never regretted it, because that's actually what built up the trust that is there.”

As Jenna's public performances continued and began to garner more public attention, her online audience multiplied. Among her virtual admirers was French fashion maven Michèle Lamy, who would eventually sign onto Queendom as an executive producer. Lamy's discovery of Jenna led to an invitation to walk in the Rick Owens show in Paris — her first time modeling, and her first time leaving Russia in her life. Of course, Agniia and her camera followed. But most of their excursions were not so glamorous; many of Jenna's performances shown in the documentary were undertaken at a real risk to her physical safety, and by extension, to the safety of Agniia. But neither of them were daunted.

I remember who I am. And this is what carries me through this life.

After all, Jenna was used to both taking risks and documenting them well before she was the subject of a film; she and her friends long filmed the often impassioned, sometimes violent reactions of strangers and policemen to their mere existence in public spaces in drag. And after a protest performance in which she wrapped herself in the Russian flag, Jenna was kicked out of beauty school, her last attempt at a practical route before pursuing her drag as a full time venture.

The only time Agniia tried to dissuade her was on Paratrooper’s Day, a Russian military holiday often characterized by the drunk soldiers roaming the streets. The risk for violence was especially high. “On Paratroopers Day, people say you can't come out in skinny jeans or with nail polish,” Jenna describes. “[I think] you should do the opposite. You should really make a statement and come out wearing what you want to wear. I think that clothes, what we wear, is really at some point beyond our psyche, our mind, our understanding. It is as if it's a certain kind of spice that is enticing you and you follow the scent of that spice and you don't see anything else except that scent and you follow it. That's how I see it.”

“I was like, ‘girl, maybe we should not do that,’” Agniia says. “Igor was stressing out and she told us, ‘well, you don't need to follow me. I'm gonna go and do it. I don't care if you're coming or not.’” In the end, Jenna ventured out for her performance anyway, protesting the then-recent invasion of Ukraine. Agniia followed. Not shown in the film is that the two were arrested, and managed to talk the police out of their arrest.

Not too long after, she would have to leave Russia again, this time moving for Paris for good; the film follows her struggles to get a visa in time to leave the country after the onset of the war. “It's already been three years that I've been in France, and it is important for me to understand and remember who I am, and to remember that pain, those moments when we were back in Russia doing drag, fighting with the police and law enforcement,” Jenna says. “It is important that this resistance continues and that those voices are not being silenced. Yes, here there’s much more freedom, there are pride parades and queer people can get married, but this is an illusion because there are also places where you cannot get married and you cannot enjoy the same freedoms. I cling to who I am, who I was from the very beginning. I remember who I am. And this is what carries me through this life.”

“Meeting Jenna gave me hope for the future of the country, because governments come and go, people in power come and go, but the generations change at the same time,” Igor says. “So it warms my heart to see that someone like her came from somewhere like that. If I saw her back then at a similar age, it would be even more personal. I think I would’ve accepted myself as gay quicker, and I wouldn't be nervous or closed and not open to the world or myself… Working with this project also meant that we were amplifying the voices of many, many people who couldn't speak like Jenna could.”

For Agniia, the honor of telling Jenna's story is only paralleled by the honor of having her in her life. “We found each other,” Agniia says. “And what I learned from Jenna is so precious; about life, about art, about surviving. And I appreciate it a lot. This film grew so much larger than just a documentary, because I have a family now, a working family.”

Queendom is now available to stream on Apple TV.