Alternative drag is concerned with maintaining a subversive outlook on gender. As drag becomes more and more mainstreamed and cross-dressing becomes increasingly visible, performers who want to push the envelope of what drag is capable of must seek out new terrains of gender expression. One such performer is none other than Brooklyn's high-concept other-worldly queen, Esther the Bipedal Entity.
Esther appears in many visual manifestations, but she (?) always is dressed in garments that cite some sort of otherworldly force. Esther doesn't just play with silouhette, she completely impales it, turns it inside out, inserts her own DNA and births it anew. I don't think I've seen any other queen in New York have such an aggressive visual assault on the concept of female shape and silouhette as Esther.
For one of my first shoots with Esther, I was able to take a look at the beginning stages of her gray and black porous/organic/alien garment and how it was fashioned from literal scraps of foam. Each piece was woven into each other to create a static positioning with little to nothing underneath. At first she was hesitant about utilizing the garment as a functional piece in which she could perform or move in, but the garment actually turned out to be more resilient than we thought. I'm waiting to see this incorporated into a high-concept number that Esther is famous for.
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