KXLL

In front of a red velvet curtain on the Rendezvous stage, Juneau drag king Tyquan lays down some fancy footwork to Bobby Brown’s “Every Little Step.”

With a fake wireless mic, Tyquan lip syncs as the R&B singer, flanked by backup dancers in gold parachute pants.

Juneau artist and rising drag king Tahir McInnis addresses themes of gender and race through performance, art and fashion.

McInnis said her drag persona was inspired by Bobby Brown’s portrayal in BET’s biopic miniseries “The New Edition Story.”

“He was awful. He was the worst,” Mcinnis said. “That’s kind of what I based my character of off: this bad boy, womanizing, out all night partying, like that type of persona.” 

Tyquan nails the look with a high-top fade and suit jacket buttoned low with extra-square shoulder padding.

The suit jacket exposes the illusion of pecs and a six pack. It’s a foam costume piece McInnis customized by painting it to match her skin.

“I was kind of shocked that it turned out, like, spot on for a little Halloween costume chest plate because I know people spend thousands on materials for drag, padding, chestplates, stuff like that.”

Since Tyquan’s debut in April, McInnis has appeared as the rapper Coolio and the Disney character Powerline from the “Goofy Movie,” crafting head to toe looks for each routine.

McInnis started sewing when she was just 8.

It’s a trade that runs in her family. She’s been making clothes as long as she can remember, and now creates her own patterns.

After starting at such a young age, she says whipping up a costume like a jumpsuit is no big deal.

“I just roll up to Joann’s and say give me a couple yards of this, give me some yards of that.”

She’s started a line of clothing and home goods called Melanin Auntie, which features images from her paintings including fantastical mermaids with afros and orcas in space. This month she was featured artist for First Friday at Downtown Dames.

“I had a young, black girl come in, she was maybe about 9. She bought one of my T-shirts that she saw online because she’s never seen a mermaid that looks like her,” McInnis said. “I just let her know, ‘You’re beautiful, and you don’t have to change anything about you. Your hair, your skin, anything.’”  

“If I can just make one little brown girl in town make her feel like she’s not outta place, like, how I felt  growing up here, then I’ve done what I’ve set out to do,” she said.

She’s lived in Juneau for more than 20 years. Outside of drag, she said she’s repeatedly mistaken for being transgender.

“Growing up here in Juneau, I’ve had people always ask me if I’m trans, if I’m transgender … I’m not, but I support that community,” she said. “All my trans sisters, just be you.”

“After a while I said, there’s no problem with that, I’m going to embrace it, it’s not going to hinder me in any way, it doesn’t hurt my feelings, and I’m proud of what I’m doing. And if you guys want to see the man, I’ll show you the man.”

This weekend, 10 amateur drag performers took the stage at Femme Fatale, Juneau’s biggest drag event and main fundraiser for the Alaska AIDS Assistance Association’s services in Southeast.

Tyquan competed for the first time in the Locals Night show against four other kings.

Wearing a light-up, white fringed jumpsuit and sporting a large white afro, the drag king danced and handed out roses to a medley of Parliament Funkadelic, Marvin Gaye and Rick James.

He took third place.

A satirical play with a megalomaniac title character who talks about himself in the third person opens this Friday at Perseverance Theatre.

While “The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity” takes place in a professional wrestling ring, the men in tiny tight outfits explore ethnic politics, celebrity and American culture.

A professional wrestling ring may not be where one expects to find fine art that deals with issues like these.

But, according to play director Shona Osterhout, they’re complementary.

“Wrestling is, and I am going to air quote this and I’m not trying to spoil anything, it’s fake, right? It’s make believe. It’s theater,” Osterhaut said. “Then you have a play — a piece of theater — on top of a piece of theater. Then you have these layers of what I like to call masks, right? You get to peel all of these layers back and see actually what the real story is.”

In an interview with the Actors Theatre of Louisville, playwright Kristoffer Diaz described the main character, Mace, as a Puerto Rican pro-wrestler from the Bronx.

“Who is really good at the wrestling, part of professional wrestling, and he comes to find out that the wrestling part is a very small part of it,” Diaz said. The part of interacting with an audience, being charismatic — those are the big factors for somebody’s success.”

In Juneau, Enrique Bravo plays Mace.

His counterpart, superstar wrestler Chad Deity, is played by San Diego-based actor Vamel Sephus.

“Chad is the face of the league,” Sephus said. “He’s The Rock, your Hulk Hogan, your Stone Cold Steve Austin. Anyone of those guys who you think of as the champ — he is the champ.”

To exemplify the part, Sephus spoke in his character’s voice.

“Chad Deity was hanging out with his boy, Derek Jeter, the other day,” Sephus said in character as Deity. “Chad Deity’s boy, Derek Jeter, turned to Chad Deity and said, ‘Chad Deity, you’re the champion and the ladies’ man and the media icon I’ve always wanted to be.’ And Chad Deity turned to his boy Derek Jeter and said, ‘Chad Deity knows Derek Jeter. Chad Deity knows.’”

Beyond examining a megalomaniac who talks about himself in the third person, playwright Diaz, who was raised in the Bronx and is of Puerto Rican decent, points out additional themes.

“It’s also about racial politics, ethnic politics, America, celebrity, opulence, money, all that kind of good stuff,” said Diaz in an interview with the Dallas Theater Center.

And the set at Perseverance Theatre?

“It’s a 65,000-seat stadium with a huge ring,” Sephus said.

“As an audience member you are invited to participate. We want it,” Osterhout added. “This is a play where you want to get involved because it’s just going to be more fun for you — it’s going to land fun for you. You’re coming to a wrestling match, and a play happens.”

“Scream, yell. Cheer on the champ, boo for the bad guy,” Sephus said.

“The Bad Guy” is played by Richard Jay Carter. Additional cast include Tom Robenolt at Everett K. Olson, and Jacob Athyal as Vigneshwar Paduar.

Perseverance Theatre’s production of “The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity” opens 7:30 p.m. Friday.

There are also pay-as-you-can previews 7:30 tonight and Thursday. The play runs through October 7.

“Lineage: Tlingit Art Across Generations” premieres Tuesday night on 360 North. The 1-hour documentary film is a collaboration between KTOO Public Media, 360 North public television and Tlingit poet and storyteller Ishmael Hope.

The documentary explores the artistic lineage of many Tlingit culture bearers, including weavers, carvers, bead artists, musicians and more.

“What was important to me was a multi-generational revelation of how the spirit of Tlingit art gets fostered, how it continues, how it gets reincarnated,” said Hope, who I co-directed with.

One of our first shoots was with culture bearer and carver Paul Marks.

“When we dance it does something to our spirit. It makes us feel good. And to wear our ancestral at.óow brings us strength and pride in our people, of our ancestors,” said Marks.

To see the art in action, Hope organized a Khu.eex’, or potlatch, in Sitka.

“What I love the most is when we are seeing the people in the regalia, in their at.óow, their Chilkat blankets, and the clan hats, those heavy important clan hats, their dancing in that. The culture is fully alive and everyone in that room feels it,” said Hope.

In Sitka, we filmed master weaver Teri Rofkar in her studio. Rofkar passed shortly after our visit and the scenes in the documentary are her last footage.

At one point in the documentary Rofkar points to a robe and a basket in her studio.

“The mountain goat and this spruce roots. You know, this was cutting edge science 6,000 years ago. And so for today, what are we doing? If I want Tlingit methodology, if I want our weaving to be relevant 6,000 years from now, how am I going to make that possible? It’s very obvious now that I’m the one passing through the weaving, not the weaving in me,” Rofkar said.

Fellow master weaver, Clarissa Rizal, also passed after our time with her. Beyond footage of her working with her daughter, Lily Hope, she left us with knowledge like this.

“This is a spiritual practice for women. When you raise up the spiritual practice of a woman, you raise up the level of harmonious existence,” Rizal said.

We also spoke with multi-disciplinary artists, brothers Nick and Jerrod Galanin as they carved a canoe in Sitka. They’re the grandchildren of master carver George Benson.

“Working on this canoe, by making artwork, and studying that, and diving into that, actively engaging it, has become the best way to feel some ownership towards it. And I guess, belonging to it,” Jerrod said.

Jerrod’s brother Nick, and his music project Silver Jackson, provided the documentary’s music. Songs like this one called “Perfect Mistake.”

If Hope regrets anything with the film, it’s that we didn’t cover more artists.

“This is a sampling and hopefully it has enough range to reveal some of this vision and these questions we were going for regarding the generations, regarding the spirit and character of the art,” Hope said.

“Lineage: Tlingit Art Across Generations” premieres at 8 p.m. Tuesday on 360 North. Visit 360North.org/Lineage for more information and to watch the documentary on demand. Funding for the documentary was provided by the Alaska Humanities Forum.

Correction: In an earlier version of this story, the photo caption for Paul Marks misidentified his clan. He is a member of the Lukaaxh.ádi, clan, not the L’uknaxh.ádi. 

This fall, the University of Alaska Southeast is opening up some of its Alaska Native language and Northwest Coast arts classes to the community at-large at reduced rates.  

UAS Chancellor Rick Caulfield said with few fluent speakers left, there’s an urgent need to create language learning opportunities.

“As a University I think we have an obligation certainly to provide the academic pathway for those who want to study the language and help create critical mass of more people who are speakers of the language or at least conversant in the language,” Caulfield said.

Regular students will study alongside community members taking advantage of the non-credit option.

“Often we’ll have individuals in the community, for example, who grew up understanding some Tlingit, the Tlingit language in their home, but have never had a chance to really study it,” Caulfield said. “Often they can add a lot to the instruction because they bring what they knew from growing up into the classroom and that benefits the students who are doing it for academic credit as well.”

Ishmael Hope (Ḵaagwáaskʼ) and Lance Twitchell (Du Aaní Kawdinook Xh’unei) will teach the evening Tlingit classes at beginning and intermediate levels.

Caulfield said the university also is working closely with Sealaska Heritage Institute to make Juneau and Southeast Alaska the center for Northwest Coast arts.

Abel Ryan is teaching Northwest Coast design classes. Lyle James (Xeetli.éesh) is teaching a drum-making course, in which students will work with pre-processed deer hide to create a wooden-framed drum.

Classes begin Monday. The reduced community rate is $75 per credit. Contact the UAS admissions office at 796-6100 or visit the campus One Stop to enroll.

More classes from UAS Artist in Residence Nicholas Galanin (Yéil Ya-Tseen) will be announced later this semester.

This month Juneau chefs Lionel Uddipa and Jacob Pickard represented Alaska at the Great American Seafood Cook-Off in New Orleans.

In a hotel room in New Orleans ahead of a national seafood cook-off, a pair of Juneau chefs were sweating.

“The rice wasn’t cooking as well as we wanted it to, our stock didn’t taste how we wanted it to,” Uddipa said. “Going into it, we’re, not gonna lie, pretty nervous.”

The rice is a key ingredient in one of Uddipa’s contest risotto. He calls it a lifestyle dish, a comfort food combining aspects from both sous chef Jacob Pickard’s Italian heritage, and his own Filipino roots.

“We eat rice 3 times a day, and we just didn’t want to just scoop rice onto a plate,” Uddipa said. “We wanted to give it some character.”

Together the chefs went through a dozen variations before settling on a plate that represented the seasonality of Alaska’s fisheries: alder smoked Bristol Bay king crab, skewered with a blueberry branches from Eaglecrest, and the risotto garnished with sea asparagus foraged with their toddlers.

In their hotel room the chefs stayed up until 2:30 in the morning workshopping their dishes — tweaking the vanilla ratio, counting out salmon roe — and practicing their presentation.

In front of television cameras and a live audience the following day, they had only 60 minutes to prepare seven plates.

Timing was key as they skewered the crab thighs, smoked the alder wood and made final counts of sea asparagus and salmon roe.

At first, his rice didn’t cook fast enough.

“Five minutes felt like 30 seconds,” recalls Uddipa, knowing if risotto sits out too long, it gets mushy.

Back in Juneau outside the restaurant Salt, Uddipa runs into another Juneau-famous chef: 10-year-old Denali Schijvens, who cooked his way to the White House and competed on Food Network’s Chopped Junior.

“I don’t think it really got to his head,” recalls the young cook. “I saw his face when he won (Uddipa laughs) it was happy, but it wasn’t — I’m-the-best-no-one’s-better-than-me face.”

The pair have been cooking together since Denali was 8, he considers Uddipa his mentor.

Like Denali, Uddipa grew up around food, helping out his aunt who owned Valley Restaurant. His cousins and siblings would play in the apartment building upstairs.

He says when the restaurant got busy, “We would just get a phone call from, like, my mom or my aunt and they’d be like, ‘We need help, we need you to come here and polish silverware, wash some dishes,’ and we were always stoked to do it.”

His advice for aspiring chefs like Denali?

“Be humble, and just be willing to learn, always try to improve from yesterday,” Uddipa said.

Uddipa said he still polishes silverware, helping out wherever he’s needed at Salt.

His teamwork with Pickard and creative spirit continues in Salt’s hot and humid kitchen.

Bacon lardon sizzles as Pickard slices grapefruit. It’s for tonight’s scallop special.

“It’s going to be a salad made out of shaved Brussel sprouts and zucchini with a grapefruit vinaigrette and champagne with whipped mascarpone and honey,” he said.

They’ve only been cooking together for eight months.

Long before the contest, Pickard started making their winning risotto’s signature ingredient, a black cod fish sauce stored in a downstairs prep kitchen.

“You need to make sure everyone’s at least 100 yards away,” Uddipa said. “And that you use a very large wooden spoon that you’re OK throwing away.”

He recommends plugging your nose.

But in very modest dabs in risotto, Pickard said the fish sauce adds another level of salty, oceany umami.

The winning dish will be on Salt’s menu of specials soon.

The Alaska Seafood Market Institute sponsored the chefs’ trip to the New Orleans and provided coaching support.

Juneau chef Beau Schooler won the same national competition in 2015.

Juneau chef Lionel Uddipa of Salt was crowned king at the 14th annual Great American Seafood Cook-Off in New Orleans. 

His winning dish was smoked Alaskan king crab with risotto prepared in fermented black cod fish sauce. The food was garnished by local sea asparagus and a blueberry branch foraged by Uddipa and sous chef Jacob Pickard before leaving Juneau.

In 2015  Juneau chef Beau Schooler and sous chef Travis Hotch of the Rookery Cafe took home the award for their nose-to-tail sockeye salmon dish.