A half hour before the show, a line of students was already waiting in front of the Undergrounds and up the Old University Union staircase to get spots for Friday’s performance. As it started, the room was packed with students crowding the seats and sitting on the floor. Late Nite Binghamton’s third annual Drag Competition had begun.
DeeDee Dubois and Vanity Faire, professional drag queens from Rochester’s Tilt Nightclub, took over the basement of the Old Union to lead a night of dancing, shaking, poetry and gender fluidity to entertain guests and crown a new top drag performer of the student body.
Dubois, who hosted the show, introduced the five contestants one by one as they strutted on stage and got the competition going with different challenges of mental and physical prowess. Contestants, competing for the $200 grand prize, each had to perform three dances, comedy and a poetry reading.
Performers earned cheers for their vibrant outfits, curly and colorful wigs, and tiny dresses, but Desborne Villaruel, whose stage name was Dahshawnnaray, stole the spotlight. As he moved in sync in front of two backup dancers, Dahshawnnaray incorporated a plastic sword into his moves. Dahshawnnaray’s performances earned loud cheers from the crowd as students clapped along and cheered him on to win the drag title.
“Honestly, it’s an amazing thing,” said Villaruel, a sophomore double-majoring in management and accounting. “I had the two past winners help me with my own performance so it was like a collaboration. I had a phenomenal time and the host was hilarious. I won’t see myself doing this again because after you win, you should let someone else come after you.”
During a question-and-answer portion of the competition, Dubois got personal with each contestant, explaining what drag meant to him and asking what drag meant to each of them personally.
“I started drag when I was 18,” Dubois said. “I was kind of shy and drag was an opportunity for me to be something different. Drag actually helped allow me as a guy to become more comfortable with myself.”
Caleb Valentin, a fifth-year senior double-majoring in human development and theater, went by the stage name Ginger Lacquer. According to him, the Q-and-A portion was intimidating at first, but he thought he did well.
“It’s okay to be who you are,” Valentin said. “Drag is the freedom of expression, it’s the challenging of gender norms. I think it’s important to showcase people’s talents and their bravery to go up on stage even though they’ve never done this before, like me.”
Following the questionnaire, judges Ann Merriwether, a Binghamton University psychology and human development professor; Alexandrea Roland, a second-year graduate student studying student affairs administration; and Faire calculated the results. While the audience waited, Faire and Dubois could not resist the stage and donned glittery outfits to show off some of their own moves to songs like Taylor Swift’s “Shake it Off” and Nicki Minaj’s “Anaconda.”
Kyrie Kirn, a second-year graduate student studying student affairs administration and the Undergrounds programming adviser, said that they put on the event to raise awareness for the drag community and because of past success of the event.
But Dubois explained it much more bluntly to those in the audience.
“I’m a man in a dress,” Dubois said. “I don’t care.”