Flower Power Drag Ball Gets Southern On Its Feet

Top: Ryder Die takes their hat back from junior Felipe Cortes. Bottom: Matt Cabahug (in green t-shirt) and Bleach. Lucy Gellman Photos.

The queens were on fire. Sapphire Bills and Ryder Die spun and strutted down a makeshift stage, dropped to a crouch and began to vogue. Rory Roux Lay twirled until they were a blur of shining purple. Bleach stopped in front of Matt Cabahug, and extended both hands. 

I'd rather be dry, but at least I'm alive! Ariana Grande and Lady Gaga proclaimed from the speaker. Against the low light and shabby carpet, Cabahug rose and seemed to glow. Moments later, he was dancing into his first drag performance. 

Monday night, Cabahug found his light—and his feet—during the "Flower Power Drag Ball," an initiative of Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU) and its LGBTQ+ student group, Prism. Held inside the Michael J. Adanti Student Center, the three-hour event transformed a drab third-floor room into a dazzling stage, celebrating LGBTQ+ voices at a time when they are increasingly endangered. 

Proceeds from the ball went to the New Haven Pride Center and A Place To Nourish Your Health (APNH), formerly AIDS Project New Haven. The title is an homage to the celebrated and historic drag balls of the 1970s and 80s, which became a form of support for LGBTQ+ youth in the last decades of the 20th century. This year, it came just one day after International Trans Day of Visibility.

Top: Sapphire Bills. Bottom: Mellody Massaquoi, a Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School grad who is now in their senior year at SCSU.

"We want LGBTQ students to know that it's okay to be a part of this community," said Mellody Massaquoi, a senior social work major who is the president of Prism. "We're out here, unapologetically being who we are. We want other students to know we're a safe space. We will always be a safe space."

Amidst rows of chairs and thickets of pastel-colored balloons, both students and queens brought that space to life, breathing bright bursts of light into the dimly-lit room. As music coasted over the carpet and bounced off the walls, Norwalk-based performer Ryder Die glided onto the floor, dressed in a paint-splattered bodysuit, blue faux fur hat, and feathered gloves that made them look ready to fly. Two blue boas encircled their white go-go boots as they danced.

“Yesss!” came a cheer from somewhere in the audience as they moved through the space, letting the thumping bass carry them. Dollar bills emerged from pockets and purses, waved with abandon. Some students mouthed along with the lyrics; others snapped with gusto, as though they might join the dancing if given the chance. A new wave of applause exploded as Ryder Die returned to a makeshift aisle, dropped down, and began to vogue.  

Top: Bleach. Bottom: Perry Winkle. 

"Diva diva diva!" Bleach cried as the music wound down, and a cacophony of screaming college students took its place. "If you hear me scream 'Diva Diva Diva,' it's because I'm really living!"

It seemed that the performers—six in all, including at least two SCSU Owls—were just getting started. As students opened their rainbow fans and waved handheld Pride flags, Perry Winkle emerged from a doorway at the back of the room, half-marching past the DJ booth as his gold pants rippled in the light. 

As he took the floor, patterned shirt unbuttoned, two students slipped into the back with blue-and-white flower crowns. Winkle raised his hands toward the ceiling, smirked, and then fell to the floor. In one fell swoop, he lifted one leg and began to strum an air guitar. In the front row, Brandon Iovene shimmied in place and began to clap. 

“This is the embodiment of queer joy,” said Iovene, a second-year graduate student in sociology who works at Southern’s Sexuality and Gender Equality (SAGE) Center and has previously performed as the queen Portia Lynne Throne. “So much of what defines the queer community is trauma, and this is a way to take everything we hear and turn it into empowerment.”

Top: Iovene. Bottom: Rory Roux Lay in a mashup from the 1967 musical Hair.

And for each number that followed, it was. To a mashup from the Broadway musical Hair, Rory Roux Lay exploded into movement, a voluminous, curly wig bouncing on their head as they spun, kicked, reached for the heavens and then sank into a perfect split. When a cast recording announced This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius! Lay bounded into movement, embracing the lyrics’ counterculture message five decades after they were first written. 

An audience soundtrack never stopped. Applause followed Lay out of the room, with an extra loud burst for a social media account dedicated to sewing. It reached a crescendo when Bleach announced Vypra, the drag alter ego of SCSU senior Elijah Ortiz.

As Beyoncé crooned her 2008 “Sweet Dreams,” the queen took the floor in a bobbed brown wig and shimmering leotard, fishnet openings at the chest and sides. Midway through collecting a half dozen dollars, arms outstretched across the room, they changed course and jumped onto a chair, heels not missing a beat. Cheers filled every nook and cranny in the room.

By intermission, students were buzzing with excitement. Felipe Cortes, a junior who is studying international business, blew Vypra a kiss as chatter rose around him. A drag enthusiast—Cortes estimated that he attends one or two shows a month—but rarely gets to see New Haven queens do their thing on a school night. He praised the event for its openness: after transferring to SCSU from Manchester Community College last year, “I feel much more free,” he said.

Top: Vypra. Bottom: Cortes.

“I also feel like the gay community [at SCSU] isn’t as unified as it could be,” he said. “To come together, to have a night to just be in community together, is just beautiful.”

That was true for friends Angel Gomez and Kassie Martel, both graduates of James Hillhouse High School who attend Gateway Community College and SCSU respectively. After learning about the “flower power” theme, both got out their glue guns and makeup to assemble flower crowns, the bright results resting atop their heads like haloes. 

For the friends, it marked a first: while they’ve been to New Haven’s annual Pride celebrations, neither had attended a drag show before Monday night. In addition to their crown, Martel had come in style, with dangly round earrings and tiny, teardrop-shaped white petals painted around her eyes. “It feels great!” they said. “You get to express yourself.”

Top: Angel Gomez and Kassie Martel. Bottom: Vypra, sans wig, at the end of her second performance.

“There’s no judgment,” added Gomez. Two years ago, seeing drag queens in pop culture and on social media helped them come out to their family and friends. Now, he sees them as a reminder to be comfortable in his own skin. Plus, he said, he was delighted to see Bleach—a former Hillhouse Spanish teacher—rocking the mic as emcee.  

His enthusiasm radiated through the second act, as performers made way for a student lip-sync contest and then returned to the floor one by one. In one moment, Miley Cirus was blaring over the room, catching on the words “This is our house/This is our rules.” In the next, Perry Winkle had reappeared with a doll swaddled in white feathers, gyrating gently as Barry Manilow’s “Copacabana” made a three-minute comeback. 

“You will realize that this is what life is about!” Bleach said. “You’re able to just be kind and free.”

Dressed in a gray sweatshirt and orange knit cap, Cabahug slid quietly into the front row for the last few numbers, a smile spreading across his face as he watched. When Bleach asked if students had ever considered becoming a drag queen, his hand went up. The queen sauntered over and tipped the mic towards his mouth, waiting for a drag name. 

Cabahug paused. He wasn’t sure, he said. Those kind of things take time. Bleach asked for his favorite color.

“Black?” he ventured. Bleach chewed on the answer for a moment, and then suggested the name Onyx. “I would zhuzh it up a little,” Cabahug later said—but it stuck.  

In his seat, Cabahug thought that was the end of his participation in the ball. He may be a theater kid, he said, but he’s still a mild-mannered nursing major, navigating his freshman year at the school. But when Bleach cued up “Rain On Me” and extended her hands to him, all six queens already on the dance floor, he stood up and began to move. The room went wild, a burst of sound audible even down the hall. 

Cabahug soaked it in, tossing his sweatshirt and hat blindly into the audience as he danced. Raised in Branford, he knew for years that he was gay, he said, but it took him a long time to feel comfortable in his own skin. It was watching drag that gave him the courage to come out to his parents, immigrants from the Philippines, and two older siblings. 

“Drag is such an escape,” he said after the song had ended, with especially high praise for Drag Race contestants Loosey LaDuca, Robin Fierce and Amethyst. “I see people so proud to be themselves, and then I’m proud to be myself. I’ve always wanted to start drag because I know that it’s gonna be such a release for me. This has been such an eye-opening experience.”  

Bleach echoed the thought, pointing to the sheer thrill—and sheer joy—of drag as she posed for photos after the ball. Born and raised in Ponce, Puerto Rico, she came to Connecticut for college, and ultimately earned a degree in linguistics at Southern.

After years of teaching Spanish at James Hillhouse High School, she realized that she wanted to pursue a longtime dream of becoming a professional drag queen. She quit her job and has been performing ever since. For her, it’s about showing audiences that it’s okay—even encouraged—to be silly. 

“Queer people are people,” she said. “We’re not what the media says we are.” 

For more from the drag ball, check out the Arts Council's Instagram.