The Colors of Pride 2022 celebration of the LGBTQIA+ community at Dartmouth has come together with an outpouring of student enthusiasm this spring with events celebrating queer culture, including the biggest Transform drag show ever, slated for Friday night.
About 50 students volunteered to organize this year’s Pride events and the Office of Pluralism and Leadership has seen tremendous enthusiasm from the Dartmouth community and beyond, says Angélique Bouthot, program coordinator at OPAL.
“Folks are really energized to get back to in-person programming,” Bouthot says. Also, with an increase in anti-LGBTQ legislation across the country, “folks are really excited to come out to build and support the queer community in a way that they haven’t been able to over the last two years.”
Upcoming events include a voguing workshop Wednesday at 8:30 p.m. in Collis 101; the Transform drag show Friday at 8 p.m. in Kemeny Courtyard; a discussion titled “Inclusive Grammar and Romance Languages” on May 9 from 4 to 5:30 p.m. in the faculty lounge at Hopkins 205; and Lavender Graduation on May 12 from 5 to 6 p.m. at the Top of the Hop. Visit the Colors of Pride 2022 website for more details.
Friday’s Transform drag show, always a popular Pride event, has grown to the point that it has moved from Collis to an outdoor stage and catwalk constructed in Kemeny Courtyard where 13 student acts and headliner Adore Delano, one of social media’s most-followed drag queens, will put on a “gender-bending drag and fashion extravaganza.”
Bouthot says the whole slate of events under the student-selected theme of The Colors of Pride “point to the history of the use of the rainbow and the many facets that make up queerness as a community of so many intersecting identities creating a vital expanding community.”
This year’s events, running from April 23 through May 12, are sponsored by the Special Events and Programming Committee, the Division of Student Affairs, the President’s Office, the Department of Geography, the Department of English, the Program in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, the Native American Program, and South House.
For more information, contact LGBTQIAplus.Student.Advising@dartmouth.edu.
