Drag Queen and Choreographer Olympia Bukkakis

»A lot of people who follow me and my work were really excited that I do a show with a string quartet. So from both sides, the drag and the classical music side, there is this real interest in what would actually come out of this.«

Olympia Bukkakis is a contemporary dancer, choreographer, drag queen, writer and moderator. For her daring and explorative shows she moves well beyond the pure drag performance. Steven Walter invited the dancer from Australia to his personal podcast »Classical Contemporary« earlier this year not only to learn a lot about drag performance and queer art, but also to talk about »Lavender Paths«. This performance showcases Bukkakis together with the Malion Quartet, a classical string quartet, with artistic interventions of classical and new music and performative dance. 

»Lavender Paths« was premiered as part of PODIUM Esslingen Festival and was re-performed at Beethovenfest 2022 at the Bundeskunsthalle. If you missed the extraordinary show, listen to Steven and Olympia review it and get a glimpse in the show's trailer below.

For this weeks episode of bee.contemporary, we thank Steven Walter for providing us with an episode previously released in his personal podcast, »Classical Contemporary«.

»As an artist, very often we are asked to create a sort of mythology of ourselves, and to build this bio. And I didn't want to do that. It feels kind of dumb to me. (…) So I was like: If I'm going to engage in that, then I'm going to engage kind of ironically. So my bio starts off with all these exclamations that I'm the queen of heaven and stuff like this. And that way I get to hold all of that stuff at a distance from me. Olympia is basically the lens through which I do anything. Because I do so many different things. But it is not a coherent charakter that I put on.«

Listen to the podcast to learn what it means to create a drag stage persona, what sub-species drag has today and how the Eurovision Song Contest relates to queer culture.

bee.contemporary is a podcasts by Beethovenfest Bonn. We invite guests from the areas of music, culture and society to talk to us about new artistic projects and contemporary debates.

For this weeks episode of bee.contemporary, we thank Steven Walter for providing us with an episode previously released in his personal podcast, »Classical Contemporary«.