Get Femme, Get Funky

July 02, 2019

On the dim parquet floor of the Promontory Chicago, office joined Red Bull for their inaugural Renaissance One party. Inspired by Chicago’s iconic first ever city-wide queer dance party at the Coliseum Annex in 1970, the event put on acts from Bbymutha, TT the Artist, Kidd Kenn & Blu Bone and DJ set’s by Rae Chardonnay, Hiro Prodigo and Professor-Wrecks.

Historically speaking, Chicago’s queer community has been somewhat isolated in Boys Town, a predominantly white neighborhood near north Chicago. In 2015, Nick Alder and Rae Chardonnay decided to spice things up on the scene by co-founding Party Noire, an inclusive space for femme people of color to loosen up and get down. office had the opportunity to chat with these two individuals about Chicago’s ever-evolving queer community, how Party Noire earned its stripes and the bright, gleaming, funky future of the project.

Interview by Drew Ross
Photos by Mitchell Connell

Give me a background on Party Noire.

Nick Alder Party Noire is a space that celebrates and centers around Black Women.

Rae Chardonnay We’ve been around for almost 4 years. While there were other black queer women-focused parties they didn’t look like the spaces we wanted to be in regularly. We noticed this shift in what people were looking for in terms of nightlife. We love dance and house music and Nick and I both really appreciate social spaces where we can build authentically with our community members. So I think there was a lack of spaces where we could do both of those things, so Party Noire was birthed out of the need for that space for our generation, people younger than us and even some people older than us. A lot of folks I think were feeling the need for a dance music focus and black queer women centered space for real.

So touching on that, four years ago how did you envision this being rolled out?

RC I’m not going to say we didn’t envision it rolling out, but it was very different from how it turned out. When we ideated around the first party it was just supposed to be one party. Then the goal was to eventually take it to other cities—we didn’t know when, we didn’t know how, but that was the goal. After we threw that initial party we were asked if we wanted to stay a bit longer than what we were scheduled to stay. Then we were asked if we wanted to come back the next month. That’s basically how it became a monthly day-party.

Having played in other cities, what qualities set Chicago apart in terms of night life, house and dance music.

RC I’m gonna let Nick touch on this too, but as someone that is not from here there’s a different perspective. For me, if there’s a level of depth to the music, a very soulful feel, a super black-as-fuck feel to the music, then people are gunna move, people are gunna go dance—they hold no bars against dancing. I think that’s one thing that really differentiates Chicago from other places that engage in house music; we will dance, we will fucking dance without any restraint.

NA Yeah, I think Chicago is the forefront of music culture in this country. Chicago gets placed as a second child to New York or LA but really if you look at what’s happening here musically, Chicago is setting the standard and everybody else is just falling in line. So I think along the lines of what Rae is saying in terms of making people move, the conversation is around house being ahead of its time and people are just catching up now to what Chicago has been doing for years.

How have you seen Chicago and Party Noire grown in your years throwing these parties?

RC I feel like every year and every six months we are collectively addressing something that our community needs. When we first started the party we knew that we wanted a space that centered around black women, we knew that we wanted a space that championed dance and the importance of Black Music. Once the people that we were connected to started to show up, it became a space where their needs were met as well as ours. A lot of black queer women come to our space, so eventually it became Okay well this is what we will create to be a safe space for black queer women across the gender spectrum. It eventually grew into that, we didn’t necessarily start with that intention but we realized that that was what was needed.

What was it like in terms of representation prior that that realization?

RC I don’t want to say it wasn’t there at all.

NA It was a statement that was made. We forthrightly said this is what we're doing and we were intentional in the steps we took forward. So I think, for example, we started with booking male presenting DJ’s or male Identifying DJ’s, then we quickly realized that people were not coming here for that, they were coming here for the femme identifying DJ’s, for the people identifying across the gender spectrum. After realizing this fact, we were just like this is what we’re hearing from the community, they want to see these people, we can go to any other party and find men djing.

RC And I think we also personally felt that when we did go out to spaces that weren’t Party Noire or of the likes, it was an unfortunate series of events that we didn’t align with. So, collectively, from the co-founders to the community we were serving, it was definitely clear that it was a necessity.

Touching on this event, how did you guys come about picking the artists you did?

NA Let’s start with the headliner. So Bbymutha is somebody that we have been wanting to book for years. We initially reached out to them around a year and a half ago to try to book them for a show, but it just didn’t work out. So when it came time to put together this show, we were like, "yo we gotta have Bbymutha!"

RC We gotta have Bbymutha!

NA Bbmutha would be the coldest ass, just bringing you raw ass fucking Tennessee ass.

RC I appreciate that she’s from so close to Chicago, I feel as though parts of Tennessee feel much like parts of Chicago. It just felt like really good to include her in this. But like Nick said, we’ve always been huge fans. TT the Artist is the epitome of dance club culture for a millennial crowd.

NA We are a dance party and I’m sure they’re out there now fucking it up.

RC I know theyre fuckin it up. I know they’re going crazy.

I’d imagine that with every event you’re seeing more and more people that you’re unfamiliar with or don’t recognize, but could you give me a glimpse into how much you two have grown since four years ago?

RC It’s actually one of my favorite things, and keeps me headstrong about this project just knowing that there are still people out there who-

NA Who still don’t know what the fuck is going on.

RC Always more people to reach in the space that were creating and that there are more people looking for a space like this.

And not just Chicagoans!

RC Not just Chicagoans! Absolutely not just Chicagoans! Its crazy, we can't get to DC in a week like how people want us to. We’ve been asked to do DC pride for three years

NA For so long.

RC But we haven’t been able to go out there and do it.

NA And i'm just like is there not a party in DC that celebrates women?

RC That’s the question, are there not parties in the cities that are asking for us run by women?

NA Or is it just not Party Noire.

I don’t think I'm tapped into the femme black women scene, not going to say I am as a white man, but probably not. But as far as im familiar with, I don’t think there are any other mobilized forward-thinking inclusive groups that are focused on that objective. So I guess on that point what are you guys looking forward to in the future?

NA We want to go to London next year, we want to be international. I think that, like you said, everytime we go to a new place we understand that there is this need. People are like what you’re doing is something that I want to see and want to feel and I want to be there often. So what I would like to see from us is an international activation. We’ve been doing this for four years, that’s a long time to be doing something. We got Chicago on lock and we understand what it means to activate other black queer spaces in the states, but now we're trying to take it beyond.

RC We’re trying to take the mission beyond where we are right now. That’s definitely goals. I think another collective goal is just to continue to uplift and support the community that has built us up for so long over the four years that we’ve been in existence. There is definitely a consistent community support level that, as long as we have the platform, we will continue to be a part of.

NA They’ve been here.

RC We’ve been here and will continue to just uplift you and book you for things when we get opportunities… yeah.. as long as we can continue to do that.

NA Take them with us.

RC Yeah, take them with us when we go to London for Afro Punk. I don’t know, I don’t even know, but I know that the goal is definitely inclusive of the community that has held us down and the community that we are continually hoping to serve and make space for.

Culture

The Club Is Coming to the Stage

We enter and make our way to what is approximately front left of the DJ booth, where we’re accustomed to dancing at clubs in New York. “So is this a techno club or a dance performance?” yells an uncertain participant in my boyfriend’s ear. He laughs, bouncing along to Ben UFO, and yells back, “It’s both!” The club has long been a hot topic in European contemporary dance but it is only now making its way into New York performance venues, largely through transatlantic tours. R.O.S.E. follows recent examples like Michele Rizzo’s HIGHER xtn. at MoMA PS1 (May 2024), (LA)HORDE’s Room with a View at NYU Skirball (October 2023), and Gisèle Vienne’s Crowd at BAM (October 2022).

Do these performances compromise the club’s spirit — a space idealized for its anonymity, dark lighting, and thundering music? The notion of the club as a utopian escape is admittedly just that — an ideal — because of how its intense conditions can create barriers to entry. Still, the club remains sacred for many, a place to forge connections and embrace an alternative state of being. Looking at how performances transfer this spirit to new settings reveals what aspects of the club are essential and those that aren’t.

Sharon Eyal, R.O.S.E. 2024. Photography by Stephanie Berger, courtesy of Park Avenue Armory.

Eyal’s dancers make their entrance. The lighting shifts from roving blue to yellow spotlights as Ben UFO’s tracks transition to more melodic beats. Clad in deconstructed lace Dior lingerie with dark red tears painted on their faces, the dancers move cautiously in a tightly maintained pack, slicing paths through the horde with hoof-like steps and jerky leg extensions. After around ten minutes of this controlled choreography, the dancers vanish as the lighting shifts back to blue and Ben UFO picks up his dubby beats. The club, as we knew it, resumes. This cycle of tightly executed movements and free-flowing club-goers repeats several times, each time emboldening the dancers to plunge further into the crowd.

Clubbing in a building once built for the U.S. Army National Guard on Manhattan’s Upper East Side turns out to be surprisingly successful — at least for the audience. What starts as an awkward, scattered group searching for their non existent seats gradually gels into an engaged, bouncing crowd that erupts in cheers each time the dancers enter and exit. Performance patrons who might never step foot in a club find themselves swept up in its potential for communion, moving in unison with fellow ticket holders. But it isn’t until the very end of R.O.S.E. that the dancers finally break free from Eyal’s choreography and join the fired-up audience in a brief moment of improvisatory movement with the music. By keeping her dancers at arm’s length, Eyal seems more interested in the club as a backdrop for her signature movement style than wholly as a space with meaningful stories to be told.

Michele Rizzo, HIGHER xtn. 2024. Photography by Cameron Kelly courtesy of MoMA PS1.

Back in May, I attended Wire Festival, a multiday electronic music event at Knockdown Center that had no shortage of organically united dancefloors. It attracted a crowd of seasoned ravers who were eager to celebrate the start of spring as they danced alongside DJs who played well into the daylight. I left Wire in an afternoon daze to see Michele Rizzo’s HIGHER xtn. at MoMA PS1. My sleepless euphoria only deepened as the performance unfolded, starting with a lone dancer who looked plucked out of the festival.

The dancer, dressed in sneakers, baggy jeans, and a tight tank top, shuffled slowly into the gallery, perfectly in sync with the looping bars of an understated electronic melody. Soon, other dancers, clad in the same staple rave uniform, joined him — each having traveled from Europe for the U.S. museum debut of HIGHER xtn., which premiered at the Stedelijk in Amsterdam in 2018 and quickly became a fixture at kunsthalles and festivals across the continent. As the score’s tempo climbed, the choreography locked into a 16-count sequence, which the dancers executed with precise synchrony. They remained intensely focused, never making eye contact with each other, as they sought release in the endless repetition of synthesized beats. Once the dancers reached their limit, they stopped the sequence and exited the gallery, one by one.

HIGHER xtn. used the focused daylight of the gallery to highlight the meditative release found in the repetitive movements that dominate dark dancefloors. The performance’s restraint brought more consistency and intentionality than Eyal’s all-encompassing club construction in R.O.S.E. Yet both performances offer enticing entry points into club culture for those who may not frequent raves. Rizzo’s ecstatic, hypnotic repetitions reveal how the club can mirror other meditative practices, while Eyal’s interpolation of performance and clubbing helped hesitant audience members blossom by the end. Still, both works overlook one of the most underappreciated aspects of clubbing — its potential for individual expression. HIGHER xtn.’s pristine uniformity especially risks promoting the outdated techno trope that there’s a “right” way to dance to electronic music.

Maybe this shortcoming is, in fact, a benefit. For habitual ravers jaded by one too many sunrise sets, it’s a reminder to return to the club with more intention. If you pause and peer through the darkness, you’ll see hundreds of people moving to the same beat, each with their own subtle variations. This collective choreography is a ready-made spectacle that doesn’t need validation in a theater or museum. And when the music shifts slightly, you can watch the ripple effect sweep through the crowd while feeling the new beat in your body. Maybe this small bit of magic is best left on the dance floor.

Culture

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Culture

Porsche SCOPES Brings Art, Music, and Design to Toronto

The festival was a full immersion into Toronto’s dynamic creative energy. Day one set the tone with DJ collective Living Room, followed by an experimental performance by Claire Rousay that captivated the crowd. Jewelry designer Steff Eleoff unveiled her Porsche Taycan 4S art car installation—a bold fusion of automotive and wearable art inspired by her Sedona ring—while OVO Sound’s Naomi Sharon and DVSN wrapped up the night with powerful, genre-defying performances.

We witnessed SCOPES Toronto bridging underground and mainstream with day two’s lineup. DJ Korea Town Acid’s set paved the way for Angelphroot and Dameer’s debut of BASSMATI, a track blending South Asian influences with bass-driven sounds. Chippy Nonstop’s return to Toronto and Richie Hawtin’s extended set were milestones of the evening, proving that the city’s underground scene has a global resonance.

The final day featured standout performances from local pianist Harrison, Indigenous artist Tia Wood, and hip-hop visionary Sean Leon, who elevated his set with a live choir. Moonshine Collective’s film and musical performance explored themes of African utopia, showcasing art’s power to bridge culture and technology. Rising Toronto star SadBoi, who paused her tour to perform at SCOPES, further underscored the festival’s commitment to nurturing local talent.

Throughout the weekend, we experienced installations from artists like Mitsu Mitsu and culinary creations from Bar Mordecai, capturing the multifaceted creativity Porsche SCOPES brought to Toronto. This milestone 10th edition, open to all, allowed Toronto’s vibrant arts scene to thrive, underscoring SCOPES’ mission to celebrate local talent while connecting it to a global audience.

office had the chance to connect with rising star SadBoi ahead of the event. In our conversation, she shared insights into her creative journey and reflected on what performing and growing up in Toronto means to her and her work.

How are you, and where are you at right now? You told me you were traveling.

Um, I’m good, I’m feeling really good right now. I’m traveling back to Salt Lake City. I had a show yesterday in Seattle. I’m on tour right now with Coco and Claire.

How is touring life treating you? Do you like it?

I love being on the road. To be honest, I feel like I don’t know—like I’ve had good experiences and bad ones—but this time it’s really fun, especially with the people I’m surrounded by. It’s also the longest tour I’ve been on; I have about four more weeks to go. I’m trying not to think about how many days I have left.

Do you feel homesick?

Yes, because when I start thinking about how many days are left, I start to miss my dogs. I’ve just been trying to stay in the moment—I don’t even know what day of the week it is, to be honest with you.

Oh, sweet! What are your dogs’ names?

Jillian and Winston. I know, they’re crazy names.

You’ll be performing at SCOPES in Toronto, which is where you grew up. Do you feel like the crowd is different when you perform in Toronto compared to other cities?

Yes, I mean, Toronto just feels different because it’s home. Every time I come back to perform, something in my career has changed. The last time I performed in Toronto, people just wanted to have a good time, and I’m excited to perform back home again to see everyone’s reactions. I know it’s going to be different from the last time. It’s exciting to see your own growth. Toronto is a tough crowd, though. If we’re with you, we’re really with you.

So, they’re super picky? You have to gain their respect, or what is it?

I think Toronto people are in their own world, but when something really connects with them, they’ll lose themselves in the moment. But it takes something to bring them out of that. Toronto crowds are tough because even if they like you, they won’t show it outright until they’re really vibing with you.

It’s like a vibe check, right?

Exactly. They’ll enjoy your performance, but it’s hard to explain. When people visit Toronto, they often say, “Oh, you guys are so nice,” and I’m like, “I don’t think we’re that nice, we’re just polite.” Like, you can walk down the street, and no one will say anything, but it’s just our mannerisms.

You mentioned Toronto can have a moody energy, especially at night, and that the underground night scene there really inspires you. Can you talk more about what makes Toronto's nightlife so influential for you?

Absolutely, Toronto has this unique energy that comes alive at night. Similar to New York, there are the popular clubs everyone knows, but you need to find your niche—the people who know where the real parties are. I remember going to raves in high school yards, sneaking in because I wasn’t old enough. Events like Baby, Jerk!, and Yes Yes Y’all were pivotal, exposing me to DJs blending dancehall with EDM—something I hadn’t seen before. Toronto nightlife is moody and intense, but when everyone’s out, it’s like the whole city is alive.