Pride After Dark is an event held every year at Stevens as a way to celebrate pride and bring the LGBTQ+ community together. Although June is Pride Month, many colleges like Stevens recognize a week in April to give everyone a chance to celebrate together during the academic year.
This year, Pride After Dark was hosted on April 6 by Torch, oStem, and the Diversity and Inclusion Committee (DNI) at Techflex. The event is the culmination of Pride Week, which included events such as oStem and the Art Installations Club’s Tie-Dye, the Lavender Link-Up, the LGBTQ+ Resource Fair, and Drag Bingo. Pride Week also featured keynote speaker Tara Fuller, who discussed fostering inclusivity.
Pride After Dark itself was a three hour celebration where participants could enter raffles and play LGBTQ+ related trivia to earn prizes. Glitter tattoos were also offered as well as pride stickers, flags, and a backdrop to take photos with friends and even the performers for the event.
This year’s performers included drag queen Neon Calypso, drag king Myster E Mel Kiki, and DJ 622chaos.
Neon Calypso was a crowd favorite from last year’s Pride After Dark and was a hit again this year. She performed three times during the event and interacted with the crowd each time. Some highlights of her routine include her doing cartwheels, jumping off stage, and dancing with a member of the crowd. Additionally, Neon Calypso promoted her upcoming docuseries Drag Queen of the Year: Behind the Pageant which is set to premiere on April 21. The show will be streaming on Roku, Apple TV, and OutTV.
Myster E Mel Kiki was awarded Best Drag King at last year’s 24th annual Glam Awards. They performed twice during the event and some of the highlights of their performance were dancing through the crowd and singing along to songs from the ‘80s.
622chaos is a senior at Stevens and provided all of the music for the night. He kept the energy up and danced with the crowd while Neon Calypso and Myster E Mel Kiki performed. Members of the audience were also given a phone number to text pictures to and those pictures were displayed behind the DJ during his performance. His set included original music that he produced, such as his most recent single “short hills mall.”
At the end of the night, Neon Calypso returned to the stage to remind us of the importance of supporting the LGBTQ+ community, starting with the organizations at Stevens. As students Maddie McIntosh and Claudia MacRae, members of DNI and oStem, emphasized, this event was completely student run. McIntosh and MacRae hosted the event and worked with all three organizations involved to make the event run as smoothly as possible.
On a more serious note, the audience was reminded of how many organizations on campus have made a commitment to not use the Gianforte Family Hall building, also known as Gateway North, due to Governor Gianforte’s homophobic and transphobic rhetoric and harmful legislation against the LGBTQ+ community. As Neon Calypso mentioned, it is up to our generation to be the change in order to make sure all members of the community feel safe and respected. This includes working together to make sure our voices are heard.
As DJ 622chaos summarized, this school may not be perfect but we are lucky that we have this community and are able to host events like Pride After Dark. He closed out the night by reminding us to not be afraid to do what we love, whether it be singing, acting, drag, etc. The whole purpose of pride is to celebrate ourselves and be comfortable with who we are.
If you would like to become more involved with the three organizations at Pride After Dark, follow their Instagrams: @ostemstevens, @torch.alliance, and @dnistevens. Also, definitely follow the performers to keep up with them and their work. Their Instagrams are: @neoncalypso, @mxmelkiki, and @622chaos.
