Extend your Pride Celebration!

The First Annual Queer Arts Festival is happening on Saturday October 10th, 3-5 pm at the Arts Center Carrboro. All ages are welcome.

Come revel in a Queer event, held in a safe and welcoming place with a great dancefloor! We are an amazing community and we deserve celebrating! Come be a part of this inaugural event and let’s be dazzling together!

FEATURING: Chi Hughes-Spoken Word, Alyah Baker-Modern Dance, Lisa R & The Lucky Stars-Music, Aris Valentine-Drag, Danny O’Shaughnessy-DJ

Chi Hughes-Spoken Word

Chi Hughes life and work explores the intersection of art and activism. A pioneer in the LGBTQA+ Civil Rights movement, in 1975 she co-founded the Lambda Student Alliance at Howard University, which was the First Openly LGBTQ+ Student Organization at an HBCU, and only realized under threat of a lawsuit. She performed spoken-word poetry with the legendary Essex Hemphill as the only female member of CINQUE and took the stage at the National Theater, as well as underground arts spaces. She founded the Sapphire Sapphos, a social and political organization, that sponsored events featuring poet Audre Lorde and Sweet Honey in the Rock. She also sang with Sweet Honey in the Rock’s workshop group InProcess.

Alyah Baker-Modern Dance

Alyah Baker (she/her) is an Assistant Professor at UNC Charlotte and performer working at the intersections of art and embodied activism. She investigates Queer Black ballet as an expansive landscape with fluid boundaries that caress and include—rather than assess and exclude—Black bodies that refuse the container of homonormative classical dance expectations. Her choreography has been commissioned by American Dance Festival, Queering Dance Festival, and Oakland Ballet, among others. Baker’s research and choreography have been recognized in local and national media, including Dance Teacher Magazine and the New York Times.