HardFemme Dances Presents: The Boof Quadrille

Hard/Femme Dances and Trisk Present: The Boof Quadrille

Trisk Presents Hard/Femme Dances’ The Boof Quadrille on June 22 & 23, 2023 in the Trisk Theater. The Boof Quadrille is a loving spoof, pastiche, and homage to the grand social dances of the Gilded Age. Utilizing the structures of social dances such as the waltz, the quadrille, the tango, the polka, and contemporary dance-making modalities and vocabularies, The Boof Quadrille is a latter-day cotillion where desire, jealousy, and one-upmanship are on full

display. The performers weave, bob, and sashay their way around the stages as alliances are forged and shattered, reputations are ruined, and bitter rivalries are reconciled, all in the ultimate quest to become the Belle of the Ball.

Hard/Femme Dances is a Brooklyn-based Dance/Theater company devoted to queering narratives through the transformative power of glitter. Coming from a wide-ranging background of concert dance, immersive theater, burlesque, and drag, Hard/Femme Dances' work honors these disciplines to challenge and explore their conceptions of self/hood unique to their authentic voice. As a company, they are excited by anything outlandish, outré, and operatic in scale. With a camp and queer sensibility, their work draws on diverse elements of pop culture and uses found objects to collage, blend, and distill these artifacts into darkly humorous fantastic narratives. Always character driven, their work has been hailed as "Vivid," "Virtuosic," "Incendiary" and "Desperate for Attention."

Artistic Director Kelsey Rondeau (they/them) was raised in Northern California and fell in love with dress-up and make-believe at an early age. Since 2016, they have lived in Brooklyn, and have worked with the likes of AnA Collaborations, Arthur Avilés, Boy Friday Co., Kelly Ashton Todd, Springboard Danse Montreal, Thryn Saxon and Third Rail Projects, among many others. They formed Hard/Femme Dances in late 2018 and have shown their work around the city. When not in the studio, you can find them styling wigs or gogo dancing at The House of Yes as their alter ego, Ava Lanche.

The Boof Quadrille has been a labor of love. Up until now, Hard/Femme Dances has striven to pay its dancers $15/hour for their time, creativity, and artistry. This fundraiser hopes to raise $3000 before the premiere so the company can increase rehearsal rates to $20/hour. The company has upcoming shows as well and wishes to put away some funds to share with dancers at a later date. If you have watched Hard/Femmes grow as a company over the years, please consider donating what you can to help an independent company develop its work.