In 1980, the New York magazine the Village Voice captioned a centre-spread photoshoot of Bette Bourne and his radical drag troupe the Bloolips with the phrase “living proof not only that rhinestones and politics can live together, but that they must”. Bette, who has died aged 84, doubtless received the accolade with the same arched-eyebrow disdain that greeted all attempts to summarise his work or life – but it’s not half bad as an introduction to the world of a man who revelled in turning contradiction into an artform.
The Bloolips’ riotous early performances mixed tap dancing, repurposed musical comedy showtunes, elaborate white-face makeup and polemic gay lib narratives. The defining feature of the radical drag for which the company became well known was that it had nothing to do with traditional female impersonation. Instead, the all-gay, all-male company arrayed itself in gender-defying combinations of visibly secondhand gowns with junk-shop accessories. The effect was to turn the whole world queer; as Bette himself once put it: “It wasn’t so much a question of me doing Hedy Lamarr, as of me doing John Gielgud doing Hedy Lamarr.”
