The Fly Honey ensemble/Photo: Ricardo Adame
Opening night of the final Fly Honey Show was a wet one. Outside Thalia Hall, buckets of rain poured from the heavens. Inside, the Fly Honeys ground, thrusted and twerked up buckets of glistening, glitter-enhanced sweat in a three-hour celebration of the joyous power of sex and the human body in all its forms.
A large thrust stage (“a strap-on for the proscenium” joked co-host and co-founder Mary Williamson) jutted into the standing audience, who at turns hollered back, danced along and held up their phone lights to illuminate a very dark political moment. Williamson and her co-host Melissa “Boom Boom” DuPrey and guest host Sonal Aggarwal regaled the crowd with blue jokes and righteous rage. The nine-piece brass band, led by co-founder John Cicora, rocked the house with everything from new songs commissioned from local musicians to a beat-heavy remix of “Sing, Sing, Sing” to a hardcore Act One closer to a spot-on cover of Portishead’s “Glory Box,” backing what might be the most virtuosic pole dance of all time. More on that later.
The Fly Honey brass band/Photo: GlitterGuts
This was the beginning of the end—or at least, an end: the first performance in a three-week run that will be the last Fly Honey Show as we know it. The cabaret cum (get it?) variety show cum (said it again) DIY party started in a warehouse fifteen years ago. Hundreds of artists have participated in the show over the years, either as part of the band; as solo acts spanning music, spoken word, burlesque, stand-up and more; or as members of the thong-clad Fly Honey hive who attend at the sidelines between explosive, raunchy ensemble dance numbers. The show is the biggest energy for your money and has ratcheted up venues over the years accordingly—the Chopin Theatre basement, The Den Theatre—then landing at Thalia Hall three years ago.
So why shut it down now? “Finding ourselves an institution at this moment feels conflicting,” says co-founder and director Erin Kilmurray. “I don’t know if bigger is the idea. Impact is the idea. Platform is the idea. Being witnessed is the idea.”
Kilmurray, Williamson, Cicora, producer Missi Davis and countless collaborators platform performance genres that come from the underground clubs, the strip joints, the queer ballrooms—dance styles at the margins that have massive yet overlooked influence on mainstream culture. “In our final flight I’ve been thinking so much about the cultures and movements that have opened up liberatory joy,” Kilmurray muses. “The Fly Honeys have been inspired by cabaret and striptease in its earliest iterations. I’m thinking of calling in the radical queer spaces that came before this moment. The dance forms born from strippers and pole dancers, born from women and in queer space. Ways of working for survival and dance forms that came from that need. Genres that deserve acknowledgement and uplifting, especially in the commercial field.”
The early iterations of striptease were given a nod opening night by drag queen Ari Gato, whose uvula-quivering lip-sync to “Rose’s Turn” from “Gypsy” would do Ethel Merman proud. Things got increasingly naked—physically, emotionally, politically—from there. “This isn’t just ass-shaking, this is a revolution,” roared longtime Fly Honey Mia Vivens. Ass did shake. Nipple-taped tits bared in joy and defiance. From the box seats high above the crowd, DuPrey railed against the fascist acts of the current administration and “he who shall not be named”—especially deporting and disappearing citizens.
Shawnee Dez, barefoot and clad in drapey black, provided a quieter moment in the arc of the evening. She performed two heartfelt and heartbreaking original songs, rich and full-throated, to solo guitar. “I love you,” someone shouted from the balcony. “I love you too,” she said softly into the mic.
Dalton Rhodes performing in “The Fly Honey Show” in 2023/Photo: Ricardo Adame
As per custom, the solo acts in the Fly Honey show rotate. That is except for Dalton Rhodes, who will appear every night in the aforementioned pole dance. Rhodes, standing a willowy seven feet in skyscraper platform heels, performs superhuman feats of flexibility and strength with impeccable musicality, timing and grace. The Thursday night crowd—never as full or fiery as a Friday or Saturday—lost their mind. Or at least I think they did; I was so busy losing mine I could barely take in peripheral action—just the constant, mounting roar of approval as Rhodes effortlessly arched, inverted and coiled around the pole, shedding gossamer layers to near nothing. Earlier in the evening, Williamson declared that these performers are artists and athletes. If anyone had a doubt in their mind, Rhodes’ number put it to rest.
Kilmurray tells me in our interview that this show has changed her life. She teaches at Northwestern and University of Chicago and says she now has students writing dissertations on the Fly Honey Show. From the underground clubs to the ivory towers, the Fly Honey platform has had impact. On a personal level, Williamson said from the stage that hosting the show over the years has changed her, the way she feels about her body, the way she moves through the world.
Regarding the grand finale, the Honeys say they’re “burning it down to see what rises from the ashes.” While it can feel hard to—as the old song DuPrey leads the crowd in chanting says—“let the motherfucker burn,” there’s no denying the creativity and sheer life force of the dozens of artists who have come together each year to make this thing happen. They will not disappear. And they will certainly not be quiet.
“The Fly Honey Show” at Thalia Hall, 1807 South Allport. July 10-25, pre-show at 8:30pm, show at 9pm. $45 general admission, $55 seated balcony, opera boxes start at $100 per person. Tickets and info at theflyhoneyshow.com.
