Outside a large industrial building in the Ivanhoe Village neighborhood of Orlando, a group of people donned in glitter cowboy boots, rodeo-ready hats, flannels, bolo ties, and Western belt buckles giggle and converse in the sticky Florida night air. The muffled twang of big stadium country music emanates through the building’s walls.
As both a Midwesterner and a Floridian, I’m used to being somewhat vigilant and on edge in settings exactly like this. The kinds of people in this country scene don’t always warmly welcome folks like me: queer, brown, generally liberal in all aspects. On this night in Orlando, it almost looks like I could be waiting in line for a Blake Shelton or Toby Keith concert.
There are some key differences though, and they become even more pronounced as I enter the space. Above the oval stage-turned-bar, rainbow lights flash. A rhinestoned horse greets us. And as I look around, everyone dancing, drinking, and laughing is so obviously and freely queer.
“Welcome to the country’s only gay country bar!” the MC proclaims. This is BOOTS, a 360 live show and queer Western extravaganza that has taken Orlando by storm.
The space’s usual two-tiered black box theater has been transformed into a distressed wood saloon that looks like its doors have swung open to queer wranglers for years rather than just a matter of weeks. A large heptagonal bar with sticky countertops is wide enough to dance on. On stage, the cast dances professionally choreographed numbers to the hoot and hollering crowd. A small staircase leads performers to a raised platform, the center stage, where the country magic happens. Under a flashing giant sign reading BOOTS, there’s another small stage that houses the live band and a pole reaching from the balcony seats down to the general admission floor. Cast and crew from Orlando’s Renaissance Theater, the nonprofit theater organization that runs BOOTS and other local programming, hand-crafted the stage, experience, setlist, and whirlwind concept plank-by-plank under the executive direction of Donald Rupe.
A Cowboy Reclamation
One of the biggest inspirations for this space was “Beyonce’s reclaiming of country music, and the Ren had kind of been intertwined with her and her music since we opened in 2021,” Rupe explains. The show is an all-around collaborative effort, but sitting at the heart of BOOTS is a reclamation of how Rupe grew up with country. Having grown up on a cattle farm, country music was the soundtrack to his childhood. In a similar vein to my apprehension in certain country spaces, Rupe was “bullied by the people who traditionally ‘own’ country music.” At the same time, it reminds him of his late father. Driven by Beyonce’s new era of country, he set out to reframe country to “create an alternate universe where country music actually celebrates queer people and diversity.”
Shout-singing The Chicks’ “Wide Open Spaces” and “Cowboy Take Me Away” at BOOTS took me back to the time I came out in my small Midwestern town. The only way I knew how to cope was to drive to the nearest field and run around until golden hour gave way to a “blanket made of stars,” as Natalie Maines sings. Only this time I was actually free. I had found my Wide Open Space. I was completely and entirely myself. BOOTS isn’t just a country night out or a queer variety show. For a Midwestern, country-loving queer like myself, it’s like going to church. As Rupe puts it, the country music of BOOTS I”makes people feel like they’re at home with family; in our case, it’s a queer family.”
The drag queens of BOOTS are a cornerstone of the BOOTS family. Coco Cavalli —AKA “The Sex Siren of Orlando” —offers an eye-catching hyper-femme take on Lady Gaga’s “John Wayne.” “I find heavy inspiration in femme fatales of pop culture and music,” she shares.
Performer Beatrixx Oddity channels her inner badass bandit with a performance of Elle King’s “America’s Sweetheart.” Lyrics like “You try and change me, you can go to hell / ‘Cause I don’t want to be nobody else” take on new meaning in this all-queer space. “Queerness exists in all forms of music,” Beatrixx shares. “With society today, they try to claim which music belongs to which people, and I feel like BOOTS broke that stigma.”
Skeptical of the country premise, Latinx drag performer Orusha San Miguel wasn’t too thrilled about the concept of BOOTS at first, until the organizers asked her to do a Selena number, something she felt really reflected her identity. Her second number pays tribute to Beyoncé, with La Mami Bowl, a spin on Cowboy Carter performances. “In my mind, country music was for white people,” she shares, “until Beyonce’s album.” The kickoff of The Cowboy Carter era was certainly the inspiration for the entire production of BOOTS, but “what we’re doing in Orlando you won’t see anywhere else […] we’re doing something big,” Orusha adds.
“Country music raised a lot of queer individuals in the South,” Coco Cavalli reiterates. She takes pride in watching the “genre grow into something that can be for a larger community.”
Bring In the Sapphics
During the planning process, Rupe realized they hadn’t done enough to specifically cater to a wider swatch of the LGBTQ+ community — namely, the sapphics —so they expanded their vision to feature nights for ladies who love ladies.
Enter: Sapphic Saddles.
Sapphic Saddles is a special WLW-focused edition of BOOTS featuring Les Vixens, Orlando’s LGTBQ+ femme burlesque troupe. Every single Saturday, Les Vixens hold court at the most popular and longest continuously running lesbian nightlife event in Orlando: Girl the Party, located at LGBTQ+ bar and dance club Southern Nights. They’re a staple in sapphic nightlife in Central Florida, so bringing them onto the BOOTS train was a natural way to incorporate existing lesbian community and performance into the scene.
Ivy Les Vixens, the troupe’s producer and director, is the queer heiress of Sapphic Saddles. She describes Sapphic Saddles as a space highlighting sapphic performers where they get to bring their “own flavor of performance art, burlesque teasing & pleasing, and queer joy to the stage.” She shares in Rupe’s vision of “taking something stereotypically thought of to be the music and community of bigots, and instead showing that queerness and queer joy go perfectly with the storytelling and sounds of country music.”
Her high femme, uber-glam burlesque performance offers a moment to slow down and get a bit more intimate amid the 360 spectacle of BOOTS; “I like to make it feel like it’s just you and me, baby,” she says.
Ivy is a beloved figure in Orlando’s sapphic community, so it only made sense to include her in a “queer jamboree that’s non-stop singing, dancing, and queer joy!” “Raised by a wild pack of drag queens,” she grew up in gay bars with male go-go dancers, but nothing ever seemed to be for women, by women. She started Les Vixens “as a way to give queer women entertainment, empowerment, and representation for and by other queer women.”
Les Vixens, as Ivy puts it, are committed to being “fierce advocates, fierce performers, fierce femmes on a mission to keep creating safe, sapphic spaces where queer women are not just considered, but the priority.” BOOTS gave them the platform to continue to “make sure at every show the girls are in the front rows, seeing themselves represented in powerful ways.”
As I speak with other sapphics in the BOOTS crowd, it’s clear Ivy’s mission had already been a success. Beth and Slater have both been three times and can’t wait to attend again. “I’m perpetually blown away! I love being in such a fun queer country space,” Slater shares. Beth adds, “I always have fun and feel super safe.”
Y’all Means All
In addition to calling the show “gorgeous and beautiful and entertaining as F,” Ivy tells me it was exactly what she needed. I, too, was thrilled to see cowgirls kissing other cowgirls, and in the process of gathering interviews during Sapphic Saddles, I even helped wingman a stranger hoping to get her girl.
It’s no wonder why they recently announced they’re extending shows from May until July. We needed this space, we showed up, and we continue to show up. It’s a safe haven for Midwestern, Southern, and rural country queers who might have complicated relationships with home and with the genre.
“Florida is the queerest state in the US,” Ivy says, bucking the dominant narrative that Florida is defined by its bigotry. “That’s why it’s under such a microscope and attack. And that’s why I’m keeping my sparkly boots planted right here and keeping fighting to create spaces, because the queers are here, m’dear!” The entire premise of BOOTS, indeed, challenges ideas of who country is for, who Florida is for.
If you’re in or near Orlando or have been thinking about coming here, I’m telling you: This show is worth it. After spamming my best friends with video after video of BOOTS footage, they’re now trying to come down from Chicago —not just to see for themselves but to really be in it, to experience it. Because it’s so much more than a show. It’s a completely immersive and dynamic space. For many, it feels like a homecoming.
Whether you’re a gay country fan or skeptic, you will find yourself healed by the liberation of breaking norms —in assumptions, expectations, and even gay culture. In the words of Coco Cavalli: “How many shows have you been to where drag queens and dancers are doing full productions on bar-tops and 7-foot, 360-degree stages, all to live country music?”
What The Renaissance Theater is doing is revitalizing, innovative, and authentic. How they do it —paying all of their artists, creating a collaborative atmosphere, giving artists creative freedom —is expensive. I would obviously encourage you to come see BOOTS running now through July, but for the majority of us who can’t, I would ask you to consider showing up for Florida queers in a different way. A donor recently gave them a matching gift of $50,000, meaning a donation received by the Ren will be matched dollar-for-dollar up to $50,000. If you can’t make it out to Orlando to come see BOOTS (or even if you can), you can support what they’re doing in Florida: creating safety, empowering our community, and honoring art. You can make a donation at rentheatre.com/donate.
Visit their website to learn more about the cast, crew and to buy tickets.
