Slay belle with orchestra

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This article was published 22/11/2024 (659 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Drag queen Thorgy Thor isn’t one to play second fiddle.

Among RuPaul’s Drag Race’s most quotable and “memed” stars, Thorgy is also a conservatory-trained violinist and violist who’s been touring as a soloist for several years.

Her show with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra this Saturday — like her past presentation here, Thorgy and the Thorchestra — brings extravagance, spectacle, humour and drag to concert music in a way reminiscent of the more ambitious cabaret of yesteryear.

Music and Fashion with Thorgy Thor is a tour through the history of music, from Beethoven to Beyoncé, filled with period costumes and fashion. The WSO encourages concertgoers to dress up in their most “outrageous, era-inspired fashion,” hinting that Thorgy, 40, may even invite the most interestingly dressed onstage for a necktie competition or walk-off.

The prospect of jumping onstage with this legend may be daunting. Drag culture — which has gifted the wider culture with such infinitely repeated slang as “slay,” “fierce” and “throw shade” — can be a highly competitive space, and Thorgy is one of RuPaul’s fierier wits.

But the family-friendly Music and Fashion with Thorgy Thor is meant to be an inclusive experience.

“At the beginning of every (show) I ask the audience: ‘How many of you are here because you saw me on a television show and you love drag?’ It’s about half the audience that explodes in applause,” Thorgy says.

“And then I say: ‘OK, quiet down. How many of you, by audience applause — and don’t be scared — have season tickets to the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, and you have no idea who the hell I am?’ And it’s the other half.”

The New York-based Thorgy (born Shane Thor Galligan) hopes that younger audiences will fall in love with symphonic music, while older audiences will later find themselves “at the drag club at one o’clock in the morning on a Monday night, supporting their local queens.”

At a time when post-pandemic pressures are compelling orchestras across North America to get extra creative about engaging younger audiences, it’s easy to see the commercial appeal of a show like Music and Fashion with Thorgy Thor. But Thorgy, collaborating with Calgary conductor Daniel Bartholomew-Poyser — the host of CBC Radio’s Centre Stage — was determined to develop a show that went beyond the sort of gimmickry sometimes associated with pop and “crossover” programming in classical music.

Authenticity matters to this creative maverick.

European classical music offers much to mine for drag artists and fashion designers — think of the movie Amadeus, with its musicians and aristocrats in powdered wigs, rococo dresses as loud and colourful as 1980s kitsch, and satin breeches.

But at first, Thorgy, in the spirit of caricature and fun, hoped to lend a modern and queer take to the costumes on display at this concert.

‘I worked with a really brilliant designer … But they were very upset with me (at first), really, because they were very trained in period costumes,” she says. “But after going back and forth, I actually said to them, ‘You know what? I agree with you.’”

Thorgy’s integration of drag and classical music goes back to the beginning of her career. In her early days as a drag artist, Thorgy, who holds a violin degree, would play and record every part of Mendelssohn string quartets, and use this as soundtracks while telling stories in drag shows.

“I remember my family saying, ‘What are you doing? You know, you have a degree in music.’… But I would be at the club making connections in the New York City drag scene, knowing damn well that this was a very important craft,” she says. “Then years later, RuPaul’s Drag Race started … And now we’re winning Emmys.”

RuPaul’s show, which had its first season in 2009, helped catapult the once underground culture into the mainstream. The first drag competition is supposed to have taken place in Harlem as far back as 1867; a rich, complex history has unfolded since then. (And surely someone will argue this culture predates 1867.)

In the early 1990s, the documentary Paris Is Burning — depicting the working-class Black and Latino pioneers of the ballroom scene, a competitive milieu focusing on fashion and dancing — helped show an aspect of drag culture to a wider audience. (It inspired Ryan Murphy’s Emmy-winning 2018 FX series Pose.)

Someone was bound to bring drag to reality TV, and producer RuPaul has done so to extraordinary commercial success. Fortune calls RuPaul “easily the world’s most famous” drag queen, and many of the queens who have competed on her show, like Thorgy, are icons in their own right.

But if drag has become mainstream, the sort of thing that even commercial banks are eager to associate with come Pride Month, Thorgy says that she’s sometimes still met with skepticism in the world of classical music.

“Drag is important. It is just as much of a disciplined craft as practising alone in a room to perfect a wooden instrument with strings,” she says.

“And after all is said and done, I thank (the orchestra) for their time. I thank them for having me. And… some of the most conservative players come up to me afterwards and say to me, ‘This is the most fun I’ve ever had playing in the symphony.’”

conrad.sweatman@freepress.mb.ca