Remembering the legendary Michelle Ross (1954 – 2021), a Jamaican-Canadian drag queen who graced Toronto’s stages for decades, leaving an indelible mark on the international drag scene.
While leafing through the photos of Michelle Ross’ various drag performances between 1985 and 1996, a scribble of blue catches my eye as I turn the photo over on the yellow manilla folder, reaching for the next. Smeared across the back in blue ballpoint pen like a whisper: “next time, I fall in love,” ⎯just like that. Below, or on another photograph, I can’t entirely remember now, is another scribble that loops on forever, or at least until the end of the page. I momentarily size it up and back down again, placing it finally as my familiar friend, the cursive letter “S” that had been practiced endlesssssssssly. Looping on and on itself like a long, curdled strand of hair. Or a long and winding kiSSSSSSSsssss. Just below that, a real kiss, bestowed in dark-rust lipstick probably bearing a name like “Rachel” or “Ruby Woo” or “Paramount” or “Spice it Up.” I contemplate the context under which this photo of Michelle Ross, mouth open; mid-performance, might have been later inscribed. I picture Michelle shifting through the photos of her previous show in her dressing room, half-dressed and half-made-up for her next, reflecting on her last performance. “Next time I fall in love” seems to be a universal aspiration for audiences and performers alike, and the lolly-dawdling repetitions of “S” suggest an ongoing practice, a honing of her craft.
Indeed, Michelle Ross, taking after her namesake, Diana, was known locally and internationally for her polished performance. “Dearest Michelle,” Jeanette Dupree writes on a photo from Michelle’s 30th-anniversary show at Zippers/Cellblock in 2004, where the amount of dress changes, mood shifts, and camera angles throughout the night create a tableau of a never-ending party, “You are an inspiration to the art of female impersonation.” “You are my heart and soul of the drag world,” writes Chris Edwards just below. Michelle’s career, lasting well past her 30th anniversary party, was prolific, performing at weekly gigs and Pride events throughout Toronto, as well as abroad—rolling through the thick, buzzing air of London, Jamaica, and Japan, leaving a storm of kisses and applause in her wake.
Within her recently donated archival fonds, we see more than just the documentation of this prolific career—we are left with marginalia, hints and anecdotes surrounding Michelle Ross’ public representation. In the repetitions of “S”—what I assume to be practice in crafting a perfected signature, and in the photos stained with what could be smudges of lipstick or coffee off a dressing room table, and in the contact sheet where her favourite poses are circled with blue wax crayon, we see both the act, and what went into making it. It’s in the material’s textures and textural defects1 that we can witness the formation of Michelle Ross as a carefully curated performance, and we can understand the fabrication of gender at large as a series of embodied and performative repetitions that collude in the illusion of continuity.
Flipping through the collection of photos, I come across moments of visual contrast. Michelle Ross, in her dressing rooms, engulfed by all her showtime materials, looking like an Old Hollywood star; giddy, surrounded by sparkling dresses, mirrors, tulle, half-eaten plates of takeout, and a blur of blue fur coats. She suddenly reappears, as soon as the next photo, in a stark carpeted hallway that leeches that anemic grey bureaucracy of the 90s I never knew but somehow understand. Still, it’s a dullness that can’t begin to stifle Michelle’s colourful glamour. A shining star subjected to a series of enclosures—first within the greyish-ness of the hallway that backdrops most of her Polaroids, next, within the white box of the Polaroid frame, then between two sheets of paper, inside a yellow manilla envelope, and a white cardboard box on a shelf. There are many layers of material to chew through to get to the yolk.
All the cluttered objects, the hair, the shoes, the gowns, the open-mouth laughter, the lipliner, the lipstick, the heavy red velvet curtains that fall like they are lined with lead, the microphones, the dappled showtime lights—all the materials that went into the making of Michelle Ross explode from the envelopes and boxes on the table in front of me. I would call it anarchival2 if I didn’t know any better. It’s through these layers of grey enclosures that we see, in contrast, the sheer amount of liveliness Michelle Ross had. Looking through this collection is like glancing into a lit-up window at night, when everything on the outside appears different shades of dark, depressing blue and grey, to see a family having dinner, television on, and the sounds of cutlery, laughter, piano music, cake being topped with whipped cream, and sparklers being lit bleeding into the nighttime air. It’s also through these various enclosures that the ephemeral nature of performance art is emphasized—that its presence cannot be contained or fully related through its documentation. As someone who has only ever witnessed Michelle Ross through such documentation, I am left with a collection of touching moments, like glossing through a family photo album in which the glimmering joy of a life lived lighting up the lives of others lives on.
- Eve Sedgewick
- Trudi Lynn Smith, https://www.trudilynnsmith.com/2018/04/anarchival-materiality/
Author bio: Mailey Horner is a writer and artist based in Toronto, working across mediums.