[Photo Credit: Jackie Rudin]

Directed by Kay Turner

Edited by Caroline Berler and Kay Turner, with additional assistance from Rue Watson

Videography by Caroline Berler and Rue Watson

This program is dedicated to the memory of the extraordinary lesbian songwriter, singer and activist, Alix Dobkin, who died in May.

Kay Turner’s Lesbopalooza, an epic variety show held at Dixon Place in June 2019, is now a HOT! new documentary ready for streaming into your private life. Kay hosts a screening live on Zoom with select artists on August 5 at 7:30pm, then the video is also available on demand for a week following. Bring Lesbopalooza into your living room at your leisure!

Turner conceived and hosted the first Lesbopalooza with her band Girls in the Nose and NYC’s Maul Girls for the 25th anniversary of Stonewall in 1994. She wanted to shine a little bit of lesbian lite and life on that gay boy extravaganza. Fast forward to Stonewall 50 in June 2019. Turner decided it was time once again to palooza the lesbo. There was simply too much dyke talent to be denied. A lesbo-centric mash-up of songs, jokes, diatribes, film clips, too many costume changes, and cat fur ensued…

Performers included Alix Dobkin, Nedra Johnson, Moe Angelos, Susana Cook, Carmelita Tropicana, Gretchen Phillips, The Traveling Millies, Lex Vaughn, Paula Schorr, Karen Siegel, Marga Gomez, Joanna Labow, Viva De Concini, Babs Davy, Ann Cvetkovich, Shelley Marlow, Terry Dame, Ann Pellegrini, Girls in the Nose, and so many MORE!!

Lusty, laughing lesbians poured into DP to see a show that went on for four hours without intermission. It was Lesbian Lockdown without a care in the world except uplifting the lavender menace.

That was then…

Now we’ve whittled that very IRL four hours down to less than two on video. We give you a virtual option to revel in that pre-pandemic paradise of viva la vulva Lesbopalooza.

The August 5th premiere of Lesbopalooza 25th Anniversary: The Movie begins at 7:30pm EST with Kay and several artists TBA in a clit-chat on Zoom followed by the screening at 8pm. Ticket holders for the August 5th event will receive two links, one for the Zoom clit-chat and a second to access the screening. The screening link will be available to August 5th ticket holders for 28 hrs, from 8pm on Friday, Aug 5 to midnight on Saturday, Aug 6. Then beginning on Monday, August 8 Lesbopalooza 25th Anniversary: The Movie is available on demand at 8pm to Monday, August 16 at 8pm. On-demand ticket holders will have access that week 24 hrs from the time of ticket purchase. Demand Lesbopalooza forever!

Kay Turner is an artist and scholar working across disciplines including performance, writing, music, and folklore. Turner’s most recent performance works are centered in an exploration of the witch figure in folklore and history. The series is called What a Witch and includes “Healing Persephone’s Wounds,” with Elizabeth Insogna (2021), “As the crow flies….” (2019); ”Muses of Malta: Witch, Goddess, Madonna” (performed in Malta, 2018); “Night Hags: Visitation” (2018); “Spurning Fertility” (2016-ongoing); and “Before and After: What the Witch’s Nose Knows that Andy Warhol’s Nose Can Never Know” (2017). Other performance works include “When Gertrude Met Susan: A Literary Love Fest” (first performed at Dixon Place in 2011) and, with guitarist Viva De Concini and bass player Mary Feaster, “Otherwise: Queer Scholarship into Song.” Turner co-founded the Austin, Texas- based rock punk lesbian-feminist band “Girls in the Nose,” active from1985-1996 and now touring again on occasion, most recently seen at Lesbopalooza in 2019. Turner’s books include Beautiful Necessity: The Art and Meaning of Women’s Altars; Transgressive Tales: Queering the Grimms (with Pauline Greenhill); and the newly released Before and After: What the Witch’s Nose Knows That Andy Warhol’s Nose Doesn’t Know (with Zini Lardieri, 2021).

Caroline Berler is an award-winning documentary director and editor based in New York City. Her recent editing work includes the short film The Lesbian Bar Project (2021) and the feature length film Mama Gloria (2020),which premiered at the Chicago International Film Festival and broadcast on PBS. Also in 2020, she directed and edited a short film for T: The New York Times Style Magazine called The Renegades. Caroline won the Outfest Film Festival Special Programming Award for Emerging Talent for her debut feature film Dykes, Camera, Action! (2018). She holds an MFA in Social Documentary Film from School of Visual Arts and teaches in SVA’s BFA Film Department.

Proud woman of New Jersey, Rue Watson is a deejay supreme who has brought many a lezzie to the dance floor with her turns at the turntable. She has also documented lesbian culture in and around New Brunswick, NJ since the mid-1970s and maintains an amazing archive of her work. She lives in Princeton.

As seen at Dixon Place on June 25, 2019

1. Girls in the Nose (Kay Turner, Gretchen Phillips, Joanna Labow, Viva DeConcini, Mary Feaster)—“Sodomy”

2. Alix Dobkin—“If It Wasn’t for the Women”

3. Paula Schorr —“Lesbian President”

4. Lex Vaughn—“Unlock the Doors”

5. Nedra Johnson —“Any Way You Need Her”

6. Ann Cvetkovich—“What Will Become of Lesbian Chic”

7. Gretchen Phillips—“To the Lady C”

8. Joanna Labow —“Uteropia”

9. Alexis Clements— “All We’ve Got” (film clip unavailable due to licensing restrictions)

10. OTHERWISE band: Kay Turner, Viva DeConcini, Mary Feaster and Liz Snyder. “Bicycling for Ladies”

11. Karen Siegel—Merkin Works presents the “Kitten Kit”

12. Chris Cuomo— “Chastity,” update of a Girls in the Nose song written in 1992

13. Ann Pellegrini—“In Between with Judy G”

14. Jean Carlomusto and Shanti Avirgan—clip from “Agility,” a film about Esther Newton; the film has since been renamed “Esther Newton Made Me Gay”

15. Susana Cook—“The Origins of Homophobia”

16. Moe Angelos—“My Butch Rack—A Butch Gets Fitted for a Bra, A Striptease”

17. The Travelling Millies (Donna Binder, Betsy Crenshaw, Linda Gui, Harriet Hirshorn, and Polly Thistlethwaite)— “Dental Dam”

18. Babs Davy—“There’s a Girl in My Bed”

19. Ishwari Lynn Keller—“Aphrodite”

20. Oxana Chi & Layla Zami—“Sweet Honeymoon”

21. Annie Lanzillotto—“Anything But Love,”

22. Shelley Marlow—“Dear Best Witches”

23. Paula Schorr and Karen Siegel—“Frau Trude Was a Witch”

24. Terry Dame—”Peach Eater”

25. Carmelita Tropicana—“Dramatic Reading from The New Fuck You “

26. Alexandra Pinel—“Lesbian Folk Dance”

27. Marga Gomez— “A Certain Prop”

28. Viva DeConcini –“Lesbopalooza to the Beats”

29. Kate Conroy— Crazy Times Newsie

30. Girls in the Nose (Kay Turner, Gretchen Phillips, Joanna Labow, Viva DeConcini, Mary Feaster)—“Bite Me” and “Starpower”