Announcement: "Como La Danceflor," Artist Talk/Music Set/Interview with AB Soto

We're excited to share with you the first of a few events within a series called "MIGHTY REAL The Politics of Queer Nightlife." AB Soto, a visual/performance artist and musician, will be sharing and discussing his work on Thursday, September 17 in the Ransom Center's Prothro Theater, from 1:30pm - 3:15pm.A brief word about Soto:

Born in East Los Angeles AB’s work as a visual / performance artist and musician is an amalgamation of his Latin roots and early influences; street and pop culture. This combined with a rebellious streak that challenges and questions mainstream gay culture and norms is what defines AB as a recording artist. AB’s early background as a professional dancer and fashion designer informs his work as the artist he is today - all of AB’s work is original and self produced; choreography, lyric, styling and design. AB’s art is a stylized commentary on homophobic attitudes present in the dominate culture. His aim is to show the diversity of the more marginalized members of the gay community and bring them to a wider audience.

And a brief word about the MIGHTY REAL  series:

This artist/speaker series, open to the university and Austin communities, will invite musicians, entertainers, DJ, and organizers working in queer nightlife spaces to offer their perspectives on politics, performance, and labor. Prior to the infamous Stonewall Riots of 1969, bars, house parties, and nightclubs have been essential sites of community making and political action for gender and sexual dissidents. While these spaces are imagined as utopians and escapist, nightlife has long been the target of state surveillance and moral legislation. Additionally, recent scholarships have demonstrated how people of color, working class people, and gender non-conforming people are kept at the margins of entertainment cultures. It is imperative, in a climate of state-sanctioned racial surveillance, border patrols, and trans phobic attacks, to more critically politicize queer nightlife, an industry that is assumed to offer refuge from the psychic and physical violence of heteronormativity and racism. This series will offer perspectives from those working on the ground, and will provide a nuanced understanding of nightlife as a space of political action.