Into the Wildness

The concept of “wildness” no longer exists so don’t go looking for it. Backup off that Redwood tree, leave your tidy state park behind and come to L.A.where the real Wildness lives.Built on soggy swampland in the late 1800s, MacArthur Park was a drinking-water reservoir before it became one of L.A.’s biggest city parks. Though centrally located, most L.A. natives dismiss it (somewhat hysterically)as a hotbed for drug dealers, fake ID vendors and gang shoot-outs. Though certainly seedy at times, the sprawling park’s Levitt Pavilion hosts free world-music concerts as well as a beautiful tribe of swans. Around the corner, ahistorical institution of another constitution nurtures its own tribe. SilverPlatter, a bar founded in 1963 by Rogelio Ramirez and passed on to his brother Gonzalo Ramirez in ’91, has been proudly queer for 47 years, and fostering experimental performance artists for almost two decades.Once a week a cross-section of various communities collides: lesbian, trans, queer, and friendly straight folks squeeze into a skinny rectangular room,pouring over the disco-lit dance floor and out onto the smoky back patio toperform the ritual that is Wildness. For some, it is the only public space thattruly feels safe. For others, it is simply the best place to dance. That it canbe both at once is not to be taken for granted: the creators, curators andcustodians of Wildness take great care to weed this garden well. This is theonly bar in which I’ve never experienced an unwelcome advance, the only danceparty at which I do not feel self-conscious, the only art event whose attendeesparticipate as enthusiastically as its architects. Wu Tsang, Daniel Pineda, AsmaMaroof and Ashland Mines are artists, activists, performers, filmmakers andmusicians who maintain this weekly ecosystem between organizing gallery shows,EP releases and free legal services for the transgendered community.Resident DJs NA and Total Freedom direct a soundscape as dynamic andcompelling as the identity politics represented in their audience. Salsa,electro, house, cumbia, hip hop—I never know what’s coming next but I know I’mgonna like it. And dang, do people dance their asses off at Wildness!I’ve seen breaking, grinding, ballroom, crumping, tapping, raving and actualbouncing off the walls. From Hecuba to We Are The World to Hard Place,performers who’ve taken the Wildness stage run the gamut from straight couplesperforming the darkest music this side of Saturn to avant-queer choreographersto naked people in Saran Wrap sawing the head off a teddy bear and spraying fakeblood all over each other, the audience and the walls (not cool).Last week, guest DJ Kingdom conducted an orchestra of bodies in motion as Ihopped around a gaggle of giggling lesbians and two women dressed as skeletonsholding hands and pumping their fists in the air. All this on a rainy night inL.A.? Do you have any idea what it takes to get Los Angelenos out in the rain?You’d think they were in danger of melting. But as this historic delugetransforms our city into a concrete swamp, Wildness thrives.