No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Queer Performance and Radical Possibilities: Bill Butler and the Post-Stonewall Roller Disco
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 March 2024
Extract
The preface of Bill Butler and Elin Schoen's 1979 skating instruction manual, Jammin’, teems with encouragement, but offers one slight warning. Welcoming his first-time skaters, Butler tells the reader, “chances are, once you've roller-discoed, you won't want to stop. You'll want to stay on wheels. And there's no reason why you shouldn't, even if you're not in a rink.” With the tagline “[everything you need to know to get up and boogie down!],” Jammin’ begins with “skating the rail”—a necessary means for first-timers to establish balance, appreciate the tempo of the rink, and learn to control the skates beneath them. Butler then goes on to describe couples skating, group skating, and dancing in place, each of which articulates a relationship to tempo and “the beat,” to the other individuals in the rink, and the contradictions of the rink itself. Jammin’ therefore proposes a practice of emphatic improvisation that is decidedly nonlinear and centers an expressive practice. Jammin’ also cites the logistics and pleasures associated with skating as a community. These logistics and pleasures include everything from “dealing with other people” to “how to become a disco dazzler in one minute flat.” Butler tells us the secret of both is, simply put, to relax.
- Type
- Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Authors, 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of American Society for Theatre Research, Inc.
References
Endnotes
1 Butler, Bill and Schoen, Elin, Jammin’: Bill Butler's Complete Guide to Roller Disco, (New York: Pocket Books, 1979)Google Scholar, preface.
2 Ibid., 42, 21.
3 Ibid., 3.
4 Laura M. Holson, “How Long Has Roller-Skating Been ‘a New York Thing? Take a Look,” New York Times, 23 September 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/09/16/nyregion/roller-skating-nyc.html, accessed 4 August 2023.
5 Butler and Schoen, Jammin’, 3.
6 Andy Thomas, “Bounce, Rock, Skate, Roll,” WaxPoetics, 9 December 2020, www.waxpoetics.com/article/bounce-rock-skate-roll/, accessed 18 August 2023.
7 Ibid.
8 Dyana Winkler and Tina Brown, dirs., United Skates, HBO documentary (2018).
9 Lecklider, Aaron S., Love's Next Meeting: The Forgotten History of Homosexuality and the Left in American Culture (Oakland: University of California Press, 2021)Google Scholar.
10 Julia Carmel, “Meet Bill Butler, the Godfather of the Roller Disco,” New York Times, 30 December 2021, www.nytimes.com/2020/12/30/arts/dance/bill-butler-empire-rollerdrome.html, accessed 15 June 2022.
11 Brooklyn Public Library, “Empire Skate: The Birthplace of Roller Disco,” Central Library: Brooklyn Collection, 7 January–29 March 2019, www.bklynlibrary.org/exhibitions/empire-skate-birthplace, accessed 15 June 2022.
12 Gaines, Malik, Black Performance on the Outskirts of the Left: A History of the Impossible. (New York: NYU Press, 2017), 1Google Scholar.
13 Ibid., 17.
14 Vogel, Shane, The Scene of Harlem Cabaret: Race, Sexuality, Performance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 130Google Scholar.
15 Nyong'o, Tavia, Afro-Fabulations: The Queer Drama of Black Life (New York: NYU Press, 2019), 4Google Scholar.
16 Ibid., 160.
17 Rodríguez, Juana María, Sexual Futures, Queer Gestures, and Other Latina Longings (New York: New York University Press, 2014), 102Google Scholar.
18 Cohen, Cathy, “Deviance as Resistance: A New Research Agenda for the Study of Black Politics,” Du Bois Review 1.1 (2004): 27–45, at 31Google Scholar.
19 Butler and Schoen, Jammin’, preface.
20 Low, Stephen, “The Speed of Queer: La La La Human Steps and Queer Perceptions of the Body,” Theatre Research in Canada 37.1 (2016): 62–78, at 65CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
21 Defrantz, Thomas F., “Queer Dance in Three Acts,” in Queer Dance: Meanings and Makings, ed. Croft, Clare (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 169–80, at 173CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
22 Butler and Schoen, Jammin’, 34.
23 Vogel, Scene of Harlem Cabaret, 3.
24 Butler and Schoen, Jammin’, 1.
25 Ibid.
26 Ibid.
27 Defrantz, “Queer Dance in Three Acts,” 170.
28 Halberstam, Jack, In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives (New York: NYU Press, 2005)Google Scholar.
29 Gaines, Black Performance, 1.
30 Butler and Schoen, Jammin’, 2.
31 Ibid., 21.
32 José Esteban Muñoz, Cruising Utopia: The There and Then of Queer Futurity (New York: NYU Press, 2009).
33 Butler and Schoen, Jammin’, 42.
34 Lecklider, Love's Next Meeting, 287.
35 Vogel, Scene of Harlem Cabaret, 118.
36 Butler and Schoen, Jammin’, 3.
37 Low, “Speed of Queer,” 71.
38 Butler and Schoen, Jammin’, glossary entry.
39 Ibid., preface.
40 Alison Kafer, Feminist, Queer, Crip (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013), 38.
41 Butler and Schoen, Jammin’, 38.
42 Ibid., 1.
43 Rodríguez, Sexual Futures, 12.
44 Butler and Schoen, Jammin’, 42.
45 Ibid., 50.
46 Ibid., 60.
47 Muñoz, Cruising Utopia, 1.
48 Ibid., 65.
49 Gaines, Black Performance, 179.
50 Joshua Chambers-Letson, After the Party: A Manifesto for Queer of Color Life (New York: NYU Press, 2018), 5.
51 Ibid.