Everybody, you need to know about Faux Pas le Fae, the feminist faerie and performance artist I just interviewed for Luna Luna. Why? Because this:
“When I was first was studying butoh, the work was much more what you’ll maybe see if you look up a video. This sort of truthful beauty in the grotesqueness of humanity. But the more I did it, the more I thought, like, “I’ve studied this art form and I know how to do it. I love it.” But I started playing with this authenticity. [Butoh] grew out of this post–World War II reaction the bombings in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, this horrible thing. It was rebelling against traditional kabuki. And so I started playing with taking the essence of butoh and putting it into my own heritage. What does that start to look like?… I’m not Japanese. What if I make it where I come from? What if I did that with that philosophy? So I would joke with myself, like, “Oh, it’s Broadway Butoh now! That’s what we’re doing!” So I started doing butoh shows where the imagery was still physically like that, but, like, I did one to Broadway showtunes. But we didn’t emulate the showtunes. That’s just what you heard.
“And we found the irony in, like, “Here’s what America was doing during wartime. Woo-hoo! Everything is awesome over here! While we’re bombing you.” So it became a very politically-charged anti-war statement by accident. I mean, not that I don’t agree with that. But it showed sort of the bizarreness.”
Also, this: “When people ask, ‘Well what are you?’ I say, ‘I’m a faerie. Ok? I’m a faerie. I’m a feminist faerie. So that’s all you need to know.’“
Yes. There’s a lot more of that over at Luna Luna. Please check it out. And after you do, I’ll see you at one of Faux Pas’s shows. Like, soon.