As Ühu Betch, the ballet dancer can express himself in a different way, with room for error.
My desk doubles as a vanity. It sits under a window looking out onto a street lined with brownstone – I’ve been here at Park Slope since August 2020, when the apartment was handed over to me by a friend of a friend who moved to the countryside. The natural light is great, perfect for dragging.
First I set up a mirror and put down towels, where I put everything I need. I use one of those purple glue sticks from grade school to cover my eyebrows, and Kryolan foundation, the thickest ever. I like glitter, heavy lashes, an aggressively curved eyebrow. Big lips, always. Every time I’m in drag it’s pretty serious. I have an extreme face: it is very tall and slender, with a lot of bones. It’s not a fleshy, round face that you can cut lines into – it’s lines nothing but†
I’ve been doing stage makeup since I was 12, but I started dragging around 2006 when I was with the Boston Ballet. My friends and I used to throw living room parties where we performed for each other. I eventually formed a group called the Dairy Queens with my ex-boyfriend Dan Donigan, who acts as… Milkincluding a number of performers in Boston and New York, where I am now principal dancer and choreographer at American Ballet Theater.
My tow name is Ühu Betch. Ühu is an irreverent nonsense queen. She is not overly polished. She’s funny and frankly a bit stupid – a drag queen with dad jokes. All the performances I do are dance heavy, because that comes naturally to me, but they are never too sexy, or maybe they are sexy by accident. One of my favorites was at a club in Philadelphia in 2015. I sewed a silk Pope suit, miter and all, and glued Velcro on the back so I could tear it off. Throughout the song, the audience stuck out their tongues and I placed rice crackers on them. I was stripping, giving people the Eucharist, doing drop splits and just going crazy.
Ballet is really my life’s work, so when I feel like I’m not achieving what I need to achieve, I’m disappointed. I invented this character to express myself in a different way – drag is an opportunity to play, but it’s not something I want to be the best at; it’s all room for failure. It helps me rediscover the childhood sense of freedom that people often lose as they get older, and it taught me to be fearless and confident in everything I do. I’m not very shy so if I want to try something I go for it, be it writing, photography or dancing. If it doesn’t work, I move on – you don’t give up being creative, but you do learn to move on from a failed concept. I think it’s important that you have the space to explore. Some of the best things have come out of that.
This interview has been edited and abridged.
