Lingering longer: Performance, queer of color joy, and Baltimore’s VERSION

Abstract

This essay moves through the nuances and complications of queer of color joy’s potentiality. Mobilized through performance, queer of color joy is theorized as containing possibilities “to explore the limits of human curiosity; renegotiate what relationships can look, feel, sound, and smell like; and use desire to propel us through the social world where we refuse colonial futures and expand decolonial options” (Tristano, 2022: 279). Through a performance ethnography of VERSION, a dance party for queer and trans people of color which takes place monthly in Baltimore, MD, USA, I detail how queer of color joy circulates through complex modes of power. I move to theorize queer of color joy further by exploring how queer of color joy lingers. Gesturing towards after the party (Chambers-Letson, 2018), I detail how queer of color joy is performed outside of VERSION; after 2:00 a.m., on the sidewalk, and through clouds of smoke. Lingering, I argue, further animates queer of color joy’s radical potential through queer relationality to nourish queer and trans of color lifeworlds.