Highways Queer Festival Celebrates 30 Years

Highways turns 30! The performance space presents Behold! Highways' Queer Fest 2019 May-June, its annual queer performance arts festival, which appropriately collides with the enduring creative space's 30th birthday. From May 3rd through June 30, 2019, two months of new LGBTQIA work will be presented by Highways' extended family of artists, writers and performers such as solo-theatre legend Tim Miller (a founder and original co-artistic director), eminent artist-activist Michael Kearns, the nation's first out transgender modern dance choreographer Sean Dorsey, and Black Lives Matter Co-founder Patrisse Cullors. Look for specific Dirty 30 anniversary events that bookend the festival (5/3, 5/4 and 6/29). Behold! will also feature such emerging performance artists and curators as Tyler Matthew Oyer, Marval A Rex, Celeste xx, Moises Josue Michel, Kyoko Takenaka and Shruti Purkayastha. Highways Performance Space is located at the 18th Street Arts Center (1651 18th Street, Santa Monica, CA 90404). Tickets for all performances are available online at www.highwaysperformance.org.

"Our vision is to celebrate the LGBTQIA community that launched Highways in 1989, states Highways' Artistic Director Patrick Kennelly. "Inspired by Highways' original queer fest, Ecce Lesbo-Ecce Homo Festival, BEHOLD! is a two-month-long series of new LGBTQ performance, dance, spoken word, theatre, multi-media, and ritual."

During the two-month festival, a diverse array of events will be intersperse for maximum reflection on Highways to honor and celebrate its rich 30-year history of significant contributions to the cultural landscape of Los Angeles. Highways' DIRTY 30 Birthday celebration launches the festival on Friday, May 3rd, which will include a pre-show Meet the Behold! Artists Reception.

Leo Garcia, Executive Director Highways explains, "Since this celebration, our 30th, serves to present new artists who pay homage to the art of early Highways, Dirty 30 on May 3rd is a down and dirty event to celebrate and toast the past and move into the future. Our second evening of Tim Miller's new performance work on Saturday, May 4th, remains true to our mission of presenting new works and social justice works. At the same time, Miller's event serves to reminisce and honor our past. Our third and final Dirty 30 event on Saturday, June 29th, Rainbow Fashion Show, will be an audience participation fashion show (free for Rainbow Fashionistas who do the walk down the Rainbow Runway) celebrating the history and meaning of the Rainbow Pride Flag (in partnership with California LGBT Arts Alliance)."

Garcia continues, "The LGBTQIA community and its liberation movements of the '80s and early '90s is inextricably entwined with Highway's founding and mission, particularly the space's organizational leadership in the fight against AIDS.

Highways' intention is to develop and present a diverse yet clear program that reflects the complexity of the community and its history while expressing a range of aesthetic techniques - from visual-arts based performance installation to spoken word narrative."