Hold Me Closer Teeny Tiny Dancer: A Conversation with Salem Vytch Tryells
The queer community has long admired drag performers and are only recently (with the arrival of shows like RuPaul’s Drag Race or POSE) coming to widespread appreciation. Although the audience’s appetite for drag has grown, it remains a niche art form, often looked as being to0 flamboyant to be a serious art form. Covering amateur and professional shows raises awareness of these artists whose art form encompasses costuming, choreographing, writing, staging, and performing. It is this all-encompassing reality of drag performers that we wish to focus on in a special series on Queer Kentucky’s storytelling platform, supported by the Snowy Owl Foundation. Queer Kentucky is committed to supporting drag as an art form in Louisville through raising the visibility of performances and performers.
photos by Sydni Hampton
Picture it: Flip Flop Jack’s, circa, idk, 2012. In just a few short months, Salem is competing for the first time in National Entertainer of the Year, one of the biggest drag pageants in the United States. I have no idea who she is. She’s not necessarily the most well known drag artist in the state, but, once you’ve seen her perform – you will be left with your jaw on the floor, gagged, and you will NEVER forget.
I enter this industrial-Ron-Jon-motif of a venue and watch as Salem performs ‘Single Ladies’ at this benefit show with the hope of financing her bid to be recognized as one of top 10 contestants at nationals. I’d never seen someone so little in drag. She stands at 5’5”, and even in heels, somehow doesn’t seem to come up to the average person’s shoulder. She was so small but so fierce. On everyone’s face was a smile, and in every hand was a dollar, extended, with the intent of supporting her NEOY dream. She’s always inspired people to smile, laugh, or just stand there stunned at how she brings elements of drag, burlesque, and dance to her numbers.
A Scorpio, she is a true agent of chaos in her mind, but in her day to day as I’ve come to know her over the last decade (and then some), she’s shy, quiet and humble. It’s when she gets on stage that she shines the brightest. Whether she’s performing ‘New York, New York’ to an audience at Play Louisville for NYE and receiving, I believe, the only standing ovation ever in that room, or performing ‘Here Comes the Rain Again,’ dressed as a beautiful rose, on pointe, stunning everyone with her grace, agility and strength, she captivates the entire audience. It’s hard to get people to pay attention in a large room full of drinking adults, especially in the age of cellphones and infinite scrolling, but when Salem is on that stage, you can guarantee she will be twirling and dancing to her fullest potential, and everyone will stop to watch.
I say all of this, I believe, unbiased. We’ve known each other well over 10 years, but we’ve been at each other’s throats at least half of that time. She’s an opinionated and unmoving Scorpio and I’m an opinionated and unmoving Taurus. We can’t both be right, right? Despite the near constant arguing, we have always supported each other – even if we had to swallow our pride to do so. Salem inspires a certain kind of respect that (regardless of what you’ve argued about) you cannot deny her raw talent and abilities. Due to her intense rehearsal schedule and her various other projects she is entangled with, it’s hard to catch Salem for a sit down interview. I join her in her drag room, while she sews gauntlets for an upcoming performance with the Va Va Vixens.
SH: Tell me how you began drag.
SVT: Years ago, there was this place called Sumchees Family Room, a cafe or coffee shop, where they had drag shows for people who weren’t old enough to get into the Connection. My friend Danielle told me they did these open stage nights, and there was a Disney theme coming up, and that I should do my Cinderella thing, which at the time, was something I had been rehearsing for a while. [The Cinderella ballet performance] never happened, but I did have the routine in my back pocket. I did it and was asked to come back the next week. I didn’t even know it was a lip syncing thing, so when I came back the following week, I did what everyone else was doing. Then they asked if I wanted to be on cast.
SH: Legendary.
SVT: We never got paid or anything, it was just a badge, basically, like, “I’m on cast somewhere.” We just got tips. I was maybe 23 or 24, I was there for about 2 years. It was fun and I got my start.
SH: What was that like, your first performance doing Cinderella, were you in drag?
SVT: Yeah.
SH: Was it your first time being drag makeup?
SVT: What drag makeup? There was some foundation, but did it match my skin tone? Probably not. I was pretty opaque for a time.
SH: Chapstick and mascara, been there, Mare. What came of Sumchees?
SVT: The place is literally a parking lot now, across from Wix shoes.
Salem continued breaking ground for herself in the city, even after Sumchees closed, she was competing in pageants and performing from Akron to Knoxville. While on her journey, she discovered she was a transgender woman, and began hormone replacement therapy. She always wanted to be a girl, but didn’t have much in the way of an example. Watching the Le Boy Le Femme show at the Connection, she found a world unlike what she’d known in the sleepy town of Radcliff, KY.
SH: Talk to me about your exposure to drag, what was that like for you?
SVT: My friend, I guess my ‘gay mentor,’ Jimmy, got me into the Connection, my senior year in high school. I couldn’t wait to go. This is when you didn’t miss an episode of Queer as Folk.
SH: So this is like 2005, 2006?
SVT: Oh, no, no no. No.
SH: Wait, you’re 35? 36? No? I’ve been telling people you’re mid-to-late 30s.
SVT: That’s a really big jump from when you would tell people I was 60.
SH: Well, this was 2000. Bush-era. Senior year. Your senior year was my fourth or fifth grade.
Salem describes walking into the Connection nightclub, now yet another hotel in downtown Louisville (hello, food desert?) and she recalls taking in the big lobby of mirrors, the bathroom with the ‘piss wall’ which was just a loud drumming from the fountain of water washing away the drunken, smelly pee. God, we miss it. The floors were sticky- the mark of any good gay bar – and barely a surface could be found that was touchable. The dance floor lit up with LED lights that made you feel like you were dancing on a bright Rubik’s cube. The real draw, the reason for going each weekend, was the Titanic of a showroom. Another hall of mirrors led you to a legitimate theater, dark and warm, which housed an impressive stage. The stage was certainly the biggest I’ve seen in-person for drag shows, and had two bars on either side of the room, and a balcony. This setting was not unfamiliar to Salem, but what occurred on the stage blew her mind. She competed several times for National Entertainer of the Year on that very stage.
SVT: That first night, I saw Syimone. I remember she did, I don’t know why I remember this, she performed Danger by Erykah Badu. I’d never seen women like this, they were so high up on that stage. At the time, I didn’t know what transgender women were, so seeing these drag queens with breasts really made an impact.
SH: Did you immediately think, “I wanna do th-”
SVT: YES. I knew I wanted to be a gorgeous woman. I wanted to be what Syimone was. I wanted to be what Dominique Chappelle was. I didn’t want to lose my roots, my whole ballet thing. I took dance very seriously.
SH: You were able to marry the two and make your ballet and your drag support and highlight the other. That’s amazing.
I fasten one of her gauntlets, and she tells me about how she felt she didn’t have a future dancing. Not because she wasn’t good at it. She just didn’t have much interest in doing lifts, like the boys do. She wanted to be a woman, and dance only boxed her in.
SH: How has drag shaped you?
SVT: It was life-changing. It took drag to discover myself. I knew deep in my mind it was true. Drag just helped me believe it could be. I didn’t have to be stuck performing one way. I wasn’t just a dancer. I wasn’t a singer.
SH: NO. Many car rides to and from gigs in Tennessee and Ohio have taught me, no, you are not a singer.
While searching for a needle she dropped, we laugh at how we both spent years denying our transness, rebuffing every “you know you’re a woman, right?” saying, “Noooo, I’m a boy!” and celebrate how we each finally stopped lying to ourselves. She recalls Tatiana DeLaRouge, the face and body of the scene at the time, was the one who finally got it out of her. Tatiana knows how to recruit the dolls. She clocked me the moment she met me, and she was right. It took me another 10 years to figure it out for myself! When Tatiana asked Salem, “when are you gonna stop kidding yourself, you’re only happy when you’re in drag,” it cracked the proverbial egg. From there, she sought out HRT and began her journey to self-actualization.
SH: Do you feel your gender is still very tied to your drag?
SVT: No, not anymore. When I first started transitioning, I wanted to just be a woman. A beautiful woman. I was a titty queen. Now, I’m doing characters, boy, girl, or neither. I don’t have to be high femme, high glam.
SH: I think I met you toward the end of that era. Your way of thinking changed a lot once we met. You were less pageant-minded, and you really enjoyed cosplay drag back in the days of our Sunday Funday cast.
SVT: I didn’t want to just be a celebrity impersonator. I wanted to be bigger. I’ve always been into costumes. Big feathers and beads and stones and I wanted to look like I belonged with the Ziegfeld Follies…
SH: How did your childhood influence your drag?
SVT: When I was a kid, I was a weird kid. Socially anxious, quiet. I wasn’t into Top 40s. I was begging my mom for the soundtrack to Oklahoma. I wanted classical music. I remember going ham after my mom bought me a two sided cassette tape of Tchaikovsky classics from Walmart.
SH: Woooooooooooow. Cassette. What other favorite media do you want to age yourself with?
SVT: I was highly obsessed with Disney’s Beauty and the Beast.
SH: That tracks.
SVT: How so?
SH: It makes sense you’d be attracted to a film about this simple small town girl, who goes to this beautiful castle and meets this, I mean yeah he’s a beast, but he’s a prince, and at the end of it she gets to wear a beautiful dress and then the beast becomes a big, giant, hunk of a man. Rags to riches. Not quite Cinderella. Take out the stockholm syndrome and it’s very romantic.
SVT: Turns out I was never Belle. I was the lady who needed six eggs.
SH: What inspires your aesthetic? Your visual choices for drag?
SVT: I really like Victorian-era things. Marvelous Miss Maisel. I love the old, old styles.
SH: What goals do you have for your drag?
SVT: I don’t know. I want to have my own show one day. I want to pay my performers a certain rate and maybe one day have my own version of The Nutcracker. A drag version of that. A queer retelling.
SH: How have you used drag to chase other opportunities?
SVT: I’ve gotten to perform in the Hardin County Performing Arts Center’s annual performance of ‘The Nutcracker,’ and I do it as myself, but I have elements of my drag in it. Now I’m working with Va Va Vixens. Lola Delicious liked a lot of the ideas I came to her with through Good Girl Corsets, and she recommended me to Lisa Frye, the owner of Art Sanctuary, and they offered me a booking and from there I’ve been on cast. It’s probably the best drag and non-drag thing I’ve ever done. I wanted to do Vaudeville and now I get to do Vaudeville. I find it wild that I get to work with these vocalists, aerialists, burlesque talents.
SH: What advice would you give someone starting out doing drag?
SVT: It’s great to discover yourself, but don’t let it become your whole identity. Don’t let it consume you.
SH: What mantra do you live by?
SVT: I like this one because it keeps me humble, “the people you see on your way up the ladder, are the same ones you’ll see on your way down the ladder.”
Salem and I spoke for an hour and a half about shows, drag, life, and how different things look from when we met. As I approach my 10 year drag-aversary in late April, I can’t help but feel kinda soft when I think of how Salem has been on this journey with me since the beginning. We’ve seen each other grow a lot professionally, sure, but what we’ve seen of each other personally has been a wild ride. Like most girls in Louisville, I believe her to be deeply under-recognized and under-utilized. If you’ve never caught an act from Salem Vytch-Tryells, I implore you to make that a priority. She’s worth the ticket price and a hell of a lot more.