At Danceteria and Other Stories
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At Danceteria and Other Stories
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Narrated by:
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Philip Dean Walker
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Julia Whelan
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Ron Butler
About this listen
Caught in their last moment of decadent obliviousness, the characters in At Danceteria are so blinded by the strobe lights they can't see what's waiting in the shadows. While fictional, each of the collection's seven stories, set at the dawn of the AIDS crisis, takes as their inspiration a real event: Halston and Liza reliving the Studio 54 glory days; Freddie Mercury Roman Holiday-ing Princess Di to a drag show; the Reagan White House rolling out the red carpet for Rock Hudson; a man-on-the-street with main character energy; Jackie Kennedy at a leather bar; a serenading Sylvester; and Keith Haring's 26th birthday party, hosted by Madonna. Deftly balancing incisive wit and nostalgic melancholy, Walker paints a neon picture of the past, turning queer legends—both lore and people—into vivid reality.
©2016 Philip Dean Walker (P)2024 AudiobraryCritic reviews
2017 Kirkus Prize for Fiction Semi-finalist
Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2017
Kirkus Reviews' Best Indie Books of the Month Selection (April 2017)
Kirkus Reviews' Best Indie Books of 2017
“Walker’s debut collection imagines encounters between iconic gay men, drag queens, clubgoers, and warmly empathetic female divas in a vibrant but increasingly shadowed demimonde where news of the deaths of friends becomes routine… Too cleareyed for nostalgia, this volume paints an evocative, painful, but sympathetic portrait of a cultural watershed. A fine collection of tales about people dancing frenetically on the edge of doom.”
Kirkus Starred Review
"The slim volume is the Washington, DC-based writer’s debut story collection and takes for its inspiration the heady mix of sex, celebrity, and sinisterness inherent in the ‘80s in cities like New York, DC, and London. Six of the seven stories in At Danceteria conjure the ghosts of deceased celebrities and reimagine them in unique settings… It’s a testament to Walker’s sense of restraint that he resisted the understandable urge to layer too much camp upon these venerated gay icons; the strength of the stories lies in their plausibility as unguarded moments between legends. But it’s not all frivolity in Walker’s world. The very real specter of AIDS hangs over each of the stories like a serial killer in a horror movie lurking just outside the frame—it creeps around the edges, lending an air of foreboding to even the most exuberant scenes.”
Lambda Literary
"This highly original meditation on the '80s is like nothing else you've read. Dead celebrities are brought back to life in the oddest places: Jackie O in a New York sex club, Princess Di in a London drag bar, Rock Hudson at the White House. Plus Sylvester, Halston and Liza, Keith Haring, Madonna, and, best of all, an anonymous narrator who notices that only good-looking guys in New York are getting the new gay cancer. Odd conjunctions, great wit, and the shadow of AIDS make these stories deceptively light and strangely disturbing.”
Andrew Holleran, author of Dancer from the Dance