A dance party with a brain

Bemoaning the dearth of hip, intelligent women’s spaces in Los Angeles, a circle of friends -- all queer academics, artists and activists (and they prefer to use the term queer) -- decided they would take matters into their own hands.

They sought an experience more interesting than a typical nightclub or bar but less earnest than a community center or activist meeting. What they launched in November was Ditch, an event all its own.

Ditch -- as in ditch your girlfriend, ditch your morals, ditch your preconceived notions -- was mounted as an antidote to the compartmentalized lesbian nightlife scene.

The idea was hatched by Judith Halberstam, professor of English and director of the Center for Feminist Research at USC, and artist Judie Bamber.

“We wanted it to be more than just a space for people to socialize in but something with an intellectual or cultural component as well,” Bamber says.

They initially conceived Ditch as an afternoon tea, but it evolved into an evening salon, something where they could mix semi-serious discussions with booty-shaking beats.

Inviting additional collaborators who are also academics and queer theorists -- Laura Harris, Alex Juhasz, Karen Tongson, Deb Vargas and Emily Roysdon, one of the co-founders of the queer art and theory journal LTTR (Lesbians to the Rescue) -- they brought in an impressive lineup for their debut event. There were performances from local Latina performance duo Butchlalis de Panochtitlan and Montreal band Lesbians on Ecstasy, a DJ set from J.D. Samson of the band Le Tigre, and a Roysdon-led Q&A; with Samson about her emerging status as a transgender figure.

Having only two weeks lead time and a contact list consisting of their friends’ e-mail addresses, the organizers were thrilled to attract a crowd of about 200 to a night attendees found refreshingly inclusive.

“We’re really trying to not cater to a specific scene,” Tongson says. To that end, Ditch was partially successful. While the event was markedly more ethnically diverse than most L.A. lesbian spaces, it was still predominantly white and the age range seemed solidly mid-20s to mid-30s.

They also wanted to counteract the glossy, ultra-femme representation of lesbian life in the Showtime soap “The L Word” because, Juhasz laughingly says, “We all know how untrue that is.”

“To me, it’s really important that it be a queer feminist space with a politicized understanding,” Harris adds, stressing the importance of an intellectual component to the evening rather than it merely being a social hour.

The Ditch founders plan to hold the Sunday night salon once a month at venues around town. The February event promises a “critical look at love,” with discussions, some crooning featuring Tongson (whom friends refer to as “the singing professor”) and something called “critical karaoke,” in which participants are invited to pick a favorite love song and reminisce about its personal and cultural significance while the song plays in the background. For the following month, they’re planning a “Hell-Word” spoof and panel discussion to which some of the television series’ key contributors will be invited.

Ditch will host an event Sunday that will feature the experimental audiovisual duo Marriage, performance art from Flight, the DJ stylings of Triple X and the debut of the Miracle Whips, a femme burlesque troupe that incorporates educational and political skits into its striptease. The Miracle Whips are the brainchild of yet another group of academics -- yes, even esoteric gender theorists like to cut loose now and then -- who attended the first Ditch night.

Piqued by the “ditch your girlfriend” theme, which they saw as a subtle way of marginalizing femme lesbians, and seeking an appropriate venue for their inaugural performance, the Miracle Whips approached the event organizers. At the intersection of the intellectual and the physical, their act focuses on a radical, highly politicized notion of femme queer identity, one that lies somewhere between the frat boy-friendly version of lesbianism and more obvious visual representations of gayness.

“It was the Miracle Whips who chose us, and actually, that’s what we’d like to see in the future,” Halberstam says, underscoring the welcoming, community-based nature of the event. The Ditch organizers hope that through word of mouth and increased attendance, people will come to them with suggestions for future salons.

It’s a strategy that exposes the practical and theoretical workings of Ditch.

“We took their critique and incorporated it into the next event,” Halberstam says, chuckling. “It’s really very Machiavellian.”

*

Elina Shatkin can be reached at weekend@latimes.com.

*

Ditch

*

Where: Zen Sushi, 2609 Hyperion Ave., L.A.

When: 7 p.m. Sunday. Performances begin at 8 p.m.

Price: $2

Info: (213) 665-2929