From jonwhitmer:
Saw this great article in this years pride guide for San Francisco, LA,
Houston, and Washington DC. Enjoy! I’ll try to scan the pictures that
accompanied it when I get back to work next week.
Have a great holiday weekend!
Jon
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Reprinted from "Pride.01: The Official Magazine of San Francisco Pride"
FLAGGING ENERGY
It’s here. It’s queer. And for those who wave those weighted sheets,
flagging is a very spiritual thing. John Polly reports on a club phenomenon
that’s breaking out into the light of day…
You’ve seen them. Standing on the edge of the stage, or atop a platform or a
box at a circuit party, or at a club or on a "Sea Tea" circling Manhattan.
Commanding your attention, yet they’re oblivious to it, defiant of it,
dousing themselves as they do in spotlights or laser beams or a rainbow of
flashes. They might be painted madly; sparkling, glittering, luminescent.
Chances are, they’re buff, in tight shorts, usually shirtless, working
themselves into a fluid, otherworldly frenzy of movement, music and rhythm.
And then there are the flags: swirling, whirling; looping; swooping; gliding
and riding the music. They shine, they glimmer, they soar and cut the air and
the frenzied atmosphere with alternate ferocity and silken grace. Their
owners, the bodies attached to these brazen billowing blurs of motion and
light, are caught up in a world (whirled?) of their own divinity.
They’ve always been here in one form or another, since the ’70s at least. In
classic, long-gone nightspots like New York’s Flamingo and the Anvil and San
Francisco’s Trocadero, some waved flags, others waved fans. They survived
defiantly through the era of AIDS, though many of the greats were lost. And
now finally, after all these years, they’re going stronger than ever. Flag
dancers aren’t just trippy set decoration or queeny sideshows. As often as
not, they are the show. And the dancers aren’t just aging, leftover club
kids that time forgot. They’re young. They’re sexy. And they want you to
know it’s not just about drama. It’s not just about the show or the drugs or
the out-and-out showgirl-fabulousness of it all. It’s spiritual. And it’s
art.
"I don’t do this for attention," says Sam Lipton, a 33-year-old New Jersey
boy who spends weekends tending bar at New York’s sexy leather bar, The Lure.
"It’s not so much a performance as a way for me to work out my emotional
stuff." Fine. So how does a nice boy living in Englewood get into this
stuff anyway? "The first person I saw flagging was my boyfriend, Phillip,
the first moment I ever saw him," says Lipton. "It was four years ago at the
Pavilion in the Pines on Fire Island. It was a magical moment, but it wasn’t
until I had the flags in my hands and I began moving that I understood what
all the fuss was about. I felt immediately that they were a natural
extension of who I am. I felt like I had been born with them in my hands."
Lipton, who’s also been dancing professionally since he was 12, isn’t alone
in this feeling. Talk to flag-dancers – serious flagger types – and chances
are they’ll profess an instant feeling of serendipity, a rightness of sorts,
when they picked up flags. Talk to them for more than five minutes and the
conversation veers not into the realm of "Well, I’m just a fierce drama diva,
and I love to make a mad spectacle of myself," but more towards the
spiritual, the emotional, the inwardly healing feeling they get from flag
dancing. Says Lipton: "When it’s just me and flags, it’s very, very
personal."
Michael Sigmann, a 40-year-old San Franciscan who creates and leads spiritual
awareness workshops, first observed the wonders of flagging 11 years ago at
the Red Party in Columbus, Ohio. "I saw this guy on a platform with a tight
body and shiny flags and was just captivated," recalls Sigmann. He went home
and started swirling himself. Within a year, he and some pals were already
being approached to perform at parties, flags and all. "At the beginning,
when I really felt the first move come in, when I got it, it was like being
possessed," Sigmann confesses. "I became obsessed. At work, I would close
myself up in my office at lunch, shut the door, get out my flags, put on some
music and dance for an entire hour."
Now, even a decade later and after leading his own group of flaggers (called
Centrifugal Force) who perform at events and teach classes, Sigmann is in awe
of this evolving art form and it’s power.
"It’s a means of transcendence," he explains. "You get an awesome feeling
from within. Flagging is a form of meditation, a celebration of finding
yourself. It is a spiritual practice, and for us as gay men, it’s a way of
expressing that we have survived the sufferings of AIDS and we are alive."
George Jagatic, a New York flagger, likes to put it in more earthly, though
no less enthusiastic and respectful terms. "Flagging is making the audible
visible," he says. "The music is playing, and it’s like you’re showing
everyone, ‘This is what I’m hearing!’ If you can accentuate and express
that, it makes the experience more powerful for everyone." Jagatic smiles
exuberantly; he’s excited about the endless possibilities of flagging, and he
has good reason to be. He helped found Axis Danz, a flag-dancing troupe.
Since its incarnation a few years ago, the dancers have performed at major
circuit events (including this year’s White Party in New York),
corporate-sponsored galas for MTV, and they have been featured in magazine
articles and TV news stories. He hopes to further encourage flagging, which
he calls "an entirely gay art form, of which we can be proud." To that end,
Jagatic teaches weekly classes for those interested in flag dancing; people
who can begin to appreciate what they and their bodies can do. "There’s no
limit to where this can go," he boasts.
In San Francisco, Sigmann feels equally optimistic. "Flagging is a way for
us to confirm the notion that there is a place for gays in this world," he
says. "This is our gift to the world, we can teach people through it. It’s
all about restoring balance between the thoughts inside you and the world
around you, combining color and light and sound. It’s using your own yin and
yang, both sides of your body."
Standing on a box half-naked, shaking your ass and waving satin, ultra-bright
flags has its perks, carnal as well as spiritual. "It definitely attracts
people," laughs Lipton. "Your physical aspects are magnified by the flags;
they enlarge the sense of the body. I can experience this incredible
epiphany in one song, then it can shift to an erotic masturbatory experience.
Flagging can be the most sensual expression of the divine slut!" Sigmann,
taking a less loin-centered stance, concurs, if demurely: "Sure, it may draw
you to someone, but what’s most attractive about flagging isn’t just the sex.
It’s the energy."
But what about the drugs? For many some of these transcendent moments and
"energy" don’t come without chemical assistance. But it’s not about that,
insists Lipton. "I’ve flagged completely sober, and it’s still thrilling,"
he declares. "The endorphins are amazing!"
Talk to flaggers, and what you’ll hear is their affection for their friends
who flag – their "flag families." It’s a community that is growing as more
flag-friendly clubs are popping up all over the United States. "In San
Francisco we already have groups of 100 or more men gathering for "Flagging
in the Park" events, says Sigmann.
It’s social, it’s sexy, and maybe sometimes it is just a big, mad, sassy
show. But still what flaggers stress time and time again is the transcendent
feeling and spiritual gratification they derive from their art. "When you
flag, feelings begin to emerge, and you break through a wall," explains
Sigmann. Trying to articulate the abstract. "Your pulse quickens, taking
you to a place where you can have no destination, no agenda but to enjoy
yourself," says Sigmann. For Lipton, the sensation is similar, if perhaps
just a bit more personal, more immediate: "I feel lucky to be able to do it.
It’s the most uplifting, inspired feeling – like I’m talking to God, talking
to angels."
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
