It’s WorldPride weekend in New York City, with the annual Pride March commemorating 50 years since the Stonewall riots. On Friday (June 28), the actual date marking 50 years since black trans activists kicked off the modern struggle for LGBTQ equality, LadyFag (NYC's after-hours Pied Piper) demonstrated the best of New York nightlife to any visiting WorldPride revelers in attendance with the second annual LadyLand Festival. And like last year, it was a peerless blend of performance, dancing and inclusion.
Expanding from one day in 2018 to two days in 2019, the festival returned to the open-air Brooklyn Mirage venue and boasted a rare U.S. performance of Pussy Riot, the Russian feminist collective whose anti-Putin punk prayer landed them in jail in 2012. Unlike the fast, loose rock that put them behind bars and catapulted them to international renown, Pussy Riot brought an eclectic, far more polished sound to the stage. With dancers sporting their infamous neon balaclavas, the core band alternated between melodic indie pop and hard-hitting dance with thick bass and throbbing techno. The performance art entity remains hard to pin down, but impossible to look away from.
