Neighbor Sarah Jenny Co-Curates ‘Everybooty,’ A Celebration Of New York City Pride Month At BAM Fisher This Friday

It’s time to show our pride, neighbors!

Neighbor Sarah Jenny, who you may know from her Hey Queen! dance parties, is co-curating the fifth annual Everybooty, a multi-genre, multi-gender celebration of queer culture and New York City Pride Month coming to BAM Fisher this Friday, June 26 from 8pm-2am.

Curated by Sarah, SPANK, and Big Art Group, this radical arts mash-up highlights local artists who are shaping the future of contemporary art and culture in a one-night-only event featuring musicians, dancers, visual artists, drag performers, DJs, and more. (You can see the full lineup here.)

Before this weekend’s shindig gets underway, we wanted to catch up with Sarah and find out more about the festivities:

First of all, we love the name! Can you tell us about the process that led to it being called Everybooty?

We were collaboratively brainstorming and DJ Sean Be of SPANK / Xanadude just came up with it! We all fell in love with the fun but inclusive nature and decided to go with it.

How did you get involved with this event?

I’ve been a cultural producer in one capacity or another for over a decade. I was co-producing a queer dance party & performance event called Hey Queen! (2009 – 2015) and was introduced by Chris Bouza of Cubana Social to a similar event with a different but overlapping audience called SPANK. Chris had a vision to bring Pride to N. 6th Street and all of the promoters really hit it off. We brought in downtown curator Earl Dax and got the ball rolling.

Our first year, we took over Public Assembly (formerly Galapagos and currently Black Bear Bar), a nearby loft, and Cubana Social — all venues on the same block in Williamsburg. It was such an enormous, successful collaboration we had over 2,000 attendees and not nearly enough space. Crowds wound around the block waiting to get in all night.

We learned a lot from that first event and took that knowledge with us when we moved to the now-defunct Dekalb Market space for a daytime festival style event. The event was free, incredibly fun and unbelievably long — we had programming I believe from 2pm – 10pm at night!

The following year, we were invited to BAM, where will will be returning for our third year. BAM has been incredibly supportive of this project and our mission. We’ve been able to scale up by curating four different spaces simultaneously and really transforming the venue.

What are you most excited about with Everybooty?

It’s hard to pick just one thing! What I love about Everybooty is that we really do have something for everyone. We have a rooftop bar featuring tarot readings and music all night long from the DJs of Xanadude. We have karaoke in the lower lobby and gorgeous installations and video throughout. We have a reading series, a collaboration with Brooklyn Community Pride Center, and then things pick up with bands, burlesque, drag and performance art. We end with a two hour dance party on three different floors of the venue.

Truthfully, what I really love is our desire to highlight both emerging and established LGBTGNC (lesbian, gay bisexual, transgender and gender non-conforming) performers in and around New York City who span not only experiences of sexuality and gender but a range of identities that influence their creative work. It gives someone the opportunity who came for one band to stay and see work by a completely different performer they may have never otherwise encountered.

Has there been anything particularly surprising or inspiring that’s happened while you’ve been co-producing this event?

Our major inspiration was to create a really integrated event for Pride. So many events around pride are around a specific identity — lesbian events, gay events, leather events — and there really wasn’t quite anything like what we were envisioning. We wanted to see the entire LGBTQGNC continuum on that dance floor, mixing and mingling. Sharing a safer space and connecting with one another. We wanted it to be financially and physically accessible.

We wanted to elevate the creative work by trans people and people of color. It’s been really amazing and challenging work. I’m inspired by both my colleagues in this project and all the incredible artists who give so much to make this event so beautiful and transgressive.

In the past, you’ve run the amazing Hey Queen! dance parties — how has that experience helped prepare you for Everybooty?

Thanks so much! Hey Queen! also scaled up over the years. We started in a small gay bar known at Sugarland and really held to a DIY and accessible mentality all the way through.

Working on large scale events with an enormous staff eventually just becomes second nature. You have to have the personality for it.

You seem to always be on the go! What can neighbors expect to see from you after Everybooty is over?

You can expect to find me at our local coffee shops and on leisurely strolls at the farmer’s market on Sunday mornings. I am taking a nice long break from cultural production and nightlife to enjoy my weekends the rest of this summer. We’ll see what next year has in store, though!

Everybooty will take place at BAM Fisher (321 Ashland Place in Fort Greene) on Friday, June 26 from 8pm-2am. To find out more about the event, and to purchase tickets ($20 in advance or $25 the day of), please go here.