Features
Montréal Shows Its Divers/Cité
Montréal
Shows Its Divers/Cité
Electronic
Cabaret SongSpiel
by Ric Kasini Kadour
In
the last week of July, Montreal's gay and lesbian community unleashes
itself onto the city in a week’s worth of high-powered events called
Divers/Cité. The festival begins the evening of Monday, July 25th
and runs through Sunday, July 31st.
To call Divers/Cité Montreal's gay
pride celebration is an understatement. The week-long event, jammed with
concerts, lectures, performances, and parties, fits snuggly into Quebec's
festival tradition. From early May through the Fall, Montreal plays hosts
to festival after festival after festival, sometimes dueling and overlapping,
and generally focused on a particular ethnic or cultural attribute. Also
in July is an international fireworks competition, Le Mondial SAQ; the
International Jazz Festival; a classical music festival; a comedy festival;
an African music festival; a boat race; and Les Francofolies which celebrates
aspects of French culture supposedly left out of the dozens of other festivals.
These are no small affairs. Streets
are closed. Large teams of security are hired. Lavish press conferences
are held. Official parties celebrating the successful launch, completion,
and sometimes simply the half-way point of the festival are had. At any
one time, whole neighborhoods in the city are under the partial control
of an overworked man or woman clutching a clipboard, screaming into a
walkie-talkie.
The only thing special about Divers/Cité
is that it is a gay festival. And by gay, I mean super-gay, and by super-gay
I mean big-hat-wearing-drag-queens, erotic-German-cabaret, queer-rock-electro-punk,
lesbo-monde gay. And I do not mean, tucked-away-in-the-corner, or let's-pretend-they're-not-that-queer
gay. Montreal embraces Divers/Cité the way it embraces the Grand
Prix or the Festival Baroque. As they should.
The budget for Divers/Cité
is $1.5 million (CAN). Divers/Cité is big business with big business
support. Sponsors of this year's festival include the likes of Molson,
Air Canada, music vendor Archambault, condom maker Trojan, and Naya bottled
water. Mainstream media partners include CBC television and the Canadian
version of MTV, MusiMax, among others. A local television station will
carry the parade live. Festival planners work closely with the Economic
Development Canada and the Quebec Ministry of Tourism as well as the City
of Montreal.
Divers/Cité has more in common
with Berlin's Love Parade and Sydney's Mardi Gras than it does with gay
pride celebrations in the United States. It is relatively free from the
ongoing debates about the meaning of gay pride, whether or not pride should
be a protest or a celebration, and what parts of the queer community are
appropriate to show mainstream society. Liberated, Divers/Cité
is a celebration of things queer, a sharing of gay ideas and aesthetics,
and quite simply, a damn good time.
Ric Kasini Kadour is our Montreal cultural maven, and he maintains
a residence in Shoreham.
Must-Dos for Divers/Cite 2005
Parade
Monday, July 25th
Divers/Cité launches
with a night parade on Monday evening. The parade begins at 8PM and travels
on Boulevard René-Lévesque from Avenue de Lorimier to Rue
Berri. Expect a spectacle as this year's parade lights up the night. FREE
SongSpiel: Electronic Cabaret
Tuesday, July 26th
Opera meets electronic music.
For those who love opera, the program includes a must-see pop-art adaptation
of Purcell’s Dido & Aeneas. For those who think opera is gay,
Songspiel is a sexy, multi-media whirl of video and dance with music that
will move you and a twisted story about a man on the edge. 8PM at Cabaret
du Casino de Montreal. $35 CAN
La Mala Educación
Wednesday, July 27th
French isn't the only language
spoken in Montreal. Diver/Cité presents Pedro Almodovar's Bad
Education outside at Emilie-Gamelin Park. It goes something like
this: you, sitting on the grass under a star-lit summer night watching
Gaël Garcia Bernal emerge from the swimming pool in very tight white
underwear. FREE
Lady Bunny @ Jello Bar
Thursday, July 28th
Who wouldn’t want to see something
called Lady Bunny at a place called Jello Bar? But seriously, the Grande
Dame of Drag, Miss WigStock herself will be hauling her huge headwear
to Montreal for a performance at this retro-chic venue. If the big hats
and legendary status of Lady Bunny aren’t alluring enough, perhaps
one of Jello Bar's fifty signature martinis will do the trick. Midnight,
151 Ontario East. $12 advance, $15 at door.
1, Boulevard des Rêves
Friday, July 29th
"Velvety jazz, smooth R&B,
and crisp pop music" is how the folks at Divers/Cité are describing
the sounds of this outdoor concert. It's free, so check it out. But the
real Boulevard des Rêves, which means 'street of dreams,' is Sainte-Catherine
from Beaudry to Papineau where a few thousand people will pour into the
gay Village for the start of Pride weekend. Expect the bars to be packed
and the terraces to be overflowing with hot homo action.
Lesbomonde
Saturday, July 30th
Okay, I freely admit that Montreal
is not the best city in the world for lesbians, but every now and then
an event pops up that'll make women roar. Lesbomonde is one of them. NYC
DJ Twisted Dee spins and new wave pioneer Carol Pope sings at an event
guaranteed to show that women can party just as hard. Oh, if you've never
been in a crowd of several hundred (sexy!) lesbians, here's your chance.
9:30-3AM, Just for Laughs Museum, $22 before July 18th, $27 after.
Sexgarage
Saturday, July 30th and Sunday, July 31st
"Sexgarage is a two-day
onslaught of queer rock and electro-punk performances featuring some of
the most sonically diverse and atypical acts in alternative music."
This two-day festival will be on the Trojan stage on the corner of de
Maisonneuve and Saint Denis. On Saturday, don't miss Quebec City's Echo
Kitty, who makes electro-pop out of rockabilly, new wave, and glam. On
Sunday, you have to see Lesbians on Ecstasy: politically infused dance
music. Think of it as folk music on drugs.
For more information, see www.diverscite.org