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The Center Celebrates Rollerena |
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by Bruce-Michael Gelbert
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Everyone needs a fairy godmother, the old stories tell us. And on April 21, the LGBT Community Center celebrated our community's roller-skating, Harlequin-bespectacled fairy godmother, Rollerena, as at home in the movement as in the disco, on the occasion of her birthday, complete with birthday cake and gifts, and the 30th anniversary of the heyday of Studio 54, the disco whose dance floor she often graced. Music at the dance, aptly entitled "Classics" and coordinated by the Center's Joe Fiore, consisted mostly of vintage disco, provided by DJ Ted Snowdon.
Rollerena's life changed in 1970, she shared, "when I laced up these legs and roller skated to work" and, thereafter, to the LGBT Pride March, Macy's, and Studio 54. After a self-imposed seven-year sabbatical, commensurate with the solemnity of the AIDS crisis, she became, on Halloween 2001, the "reborn Rollerena."
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A highlight of the dance was a Rollerena look-alike contest, with our fairy godmother as sole judge, and the winner was the Imperial Court of New York's Fanny Fondue, whose prizes were the movie "Sex in the Seventies" and novel "Dancer from the Dance," both offering glimpses of Rollerena's illustrious career, and a soap-on-a-rope. The program concluded with Rollerena leading those assembled in the packed hall in dancing to ABBA's "Dancing Queen."
The next Center dance, billed as "Ball 208," is on May 5, from 9 pm to 1 am, at 208 West 13th Street. Admission is $10, $6 to Center members. Check www.gaycenter.org or call 212/620-7310 for further information.
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photos by Bruce-Michael Gelbert |
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