麻豆约拍

"Don鈥檛 forget your lingerie鈥︹�� Timandra calls out to me. 鈥淚t all starts from within.鈥� I'm headed for the Queer Tango festival in Paris, and I've frankly got no idea what to expect, except that there's going to be a boundary, and I'm going to be on the wrong side of it. It's late when I arrive at the Cirque Electrique, a big-top circus tent in the 20th, on the P茅riph茅rique ring-road that circles the city, separating in from out. I am in a vibrant cerise-pink shirt that I have bought in a store near the Gare du Nord.

The moon is up.聽 I walk past the caravans into the tent. There are men dancing with men, women dancing with women, women dancing with men. Old and young, post-op and pre-on.聽 No one is looking at my shirt. It is a site of gender oblivion, a place where the normal categories used to define identity just don鈥檛 seem to be operating. Is this a glimpse into the future?

鈥淲hy queer tango?" I ask Jon. 鈥淏ecause it鈥檚 so hard鈥�, he says.聽 And when I dance, I start to understand. In queer tango there are no rules. It's like you鈥檙e playing rock, paper, scissors, and for three solid minutes you鈥檙e managing to throw the same identical shapes with your legs as your partner. You can only do that, he tells me, if you are joined to them, in the same physical and energetic space, if you have forgotten the identity boundaries that we put up-not just straight or gay, male or female, black or white, but the big one - the Berlin Wall of identity boundaries - me versus you. 鈥淲hy queer tango?" I ask Diane, a French banker. 鈥淭o lose myself鈥�, she says.

Leo