The Unicorn pARTy Aims To Highlight Bi Creativity And Stories In Los Angeles
by Heather Cassell
A new festival celebrating the love of more than one gender is coming to Los Angeles this weekend with the launch of the Unicorn pARTy.
“There’s a lot of excitement about it which is awesome,” said Kai Hazelwood, lead producer of the Unicorn pARTy.
More than 100 attendees are expected to come out to the one-day festival celebrating bisexuality through art, crafts, and live performances created by queer artists on Saturday in the heart of the City of Angeles.
“The Unicorn pARTy is basically the party that I wish I could have gone to when I was in search of bi community,” said Kai.
The 34-year-old bisexual choreographer and founder of Good Trouble Makers, a collective of 12 bisexual artists-agitators, including Kai, is producing the September 14 event at the Bootleg Theatre near downtown Los Angeles.
Kai Hazelwood, founder of Good Trouble Makers and producer of the Unicorn pARTy, in Los Angeles, California. (Photo: Courtesy of Good Trouble Makers)
The Unicorn pARTy isn’t the first bi festival that has been hosted in Los Angeles, said Kai. She and the collective were inspired by the Los Angeles Bi Task Force’s attempts to create a festival for years. The organization ended the event last year, according to the Good Trouble Makers August 10 press release.
“We are certainly inspired by their hard work,” she said.
Declaring September as Bisexual Awareness Month, Kai is hoping the Good Trouble Makers collaborative will have better luck at building a solid festival celebrating bi culture that will be ongoing.
September 23 is Bisexual Awareness Day.
“I think that I have the advantage of being a bi artist myself and having a lot of bi artists around me so the community and the excitement around doing this was already there,” Kai said.
The festival will premiere “inVISIBLE,” a choreographed piece telling bisexual’s stories through the movements of bisexual dancers.
“inVISIBLE” received a lot of positive feedback from bi people when it was being workshopped.
Bi people would come up to Kai and tell her, “I’ve never heard a story that I could relate to from the stage,” she said.
“It gives people this beautiful sense of, ‘Oh, that struggle that I was going through alone – that I thought was just mine – is actually shared by a community of people,’” she said.
The performance takes queer audience members out of their personal isolation giving them hope that there are people that they can talk to who understand their experience.
“There is also an element of getting to see yourself reflected on stage and share your own stories on stage which is something that bi people don’t generally get to have,” she added.
The evening will be hosted by drag persona Miss Barbie-Q.
Attendees will be able to enjoy live music performances by some of Los Angele’s best bi bands Cindy Jollotta, VATTICA, and Diimond that will take the audience “on quite a musical journey throughout the night, but it will be fun,” said Kai.
The festival will also feature a small craft market with six bisexual venders Escàndalo, Daytoya’s Jewelry Box, Some Kind of Punderful, Relena Vegan Bondage, Devin’s Dudes, and Morgasm curated by Queerdo by Kiki.
VATTICA bandmembers (Photo: Courtesy of VATTICA)
“There’s a lot of pretty amazing vendors,” said Kai. “It’s going to be a pretty cool market.”
Creative, Radical Roots
Kai, a second-generation San Francisco transplant in the Southern California metropolis, grew up in the “City by the Bay’s” creative and queer communities.
“I’m lucky I grew up in San Francisco. I’ve been an artist my whole life. I didn’t have a difficult coming out experience,” said Kai.
“What I really loved about growing up in the Bay Area and the art community there compared to New York or Los Angeles [is that] it’s a small community, but it’s a really vibrant community that has its own really distinct voice, said Kai, who received a lot of love and support from her family.
“Growing up there I feel like allowed me to believe that I too can have my own distinct voice.”
A voice that is audacious and that pushes boundaries.
“I think that there is a spirit of reverence in the art community there that I really love and the audacity and the boundary-pushing,” she continued. “I feel like I get to carry all of that with me no matter where I live.”
Moving to Los Angeles was challenging for Kai at first. She didn’t know where or how to find her community, she said. Then she discovered the Los Angeles chapter of bisexual social group amBi.
The group provided her with a similar community that she had at home. They were politically active and social, but she wanted something more joyful and celebratory of bi art and culture.
“That type of political action is vital,” said Kai, “but being visible, being joyful, having fun – celebration – is also an important political act. That’s what’s this party is about for me.”
Creating Joy
Kai’s goal is to create a joyful queer space at the Unicorn pARTy where bisexual, pansexual, and people who love and support them can come together celebrate life and love.
It’s a purposeful act to counter the multitude of studies that find that bisexual people are often isolated and experience social stigma. Overall, bisexuals suffer from the highest rates of suicide, depression, and domestic violence, according to “The Bisexuality Report.”
Kai Hazelwood, founder of Good Trouble Makers and producer of the Unicorn pARTy, in Los Angeles, California. (Photo: Courtesy of Good Trouble Makers)
Kai hopes that the festivalgoers will leave the event with a “sense of community” and a “sense of pride in being a member of that community,” she said.
With the advent of the festival, she hopes bi people will realize that there are bi artists, bi culture, and bi events “that they can take pride in being a part of that and also they just had a really good time.”
The festival is sponsored by The American Institute of Bisexuality, amBi, #StillBisexual, and the California Institute of Contemporary Arts.
The Unicorn pARTy is on Saturday, September 14 at 5 p.m. at the Bootleg Theatre, 2220 Beverly Boulevard in Los Angeles, California. Tickets are $20 to $25 per person.
Book your next queer adventure with Girls That Roam Travel. Contact Heather Cassell at Girls That Roam Travel at 415-517-7239 or at .
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