Brianna Daniels, a Charlotte-born DJ who performs under the name “Black As The Cosmos” says Charlotte still hasn’t recovered the playfulness it had prior to COVID setting in during early 2020.
Her comment brings up a lot of memories: Dance clubs and spaces have long had a lot of value to the city and Charlotte had no shortage of destinations to choose from. Whether on 5th street, jumping between spots like The Roxbury, The Attic or Phoenix, or starting out in First Ward at the Breakfast Club, making stops at the musical hubs of Epicenter and perhaps ending the night at Bar Charlotte, the opportunities were abundant.
Over time, the more queer-centric spots did start to dissolve a bit, or outright disappear. Both The Breakfast Club and The Roxbury shut their doors a decade after one another, and, more recently, the Scorpio Lounge shut down its old location, only to reappear in South End to mixed reception. Even Scott Weaver’s Shiprocked, a queer-centric party fusing music and drag together on Thursday evenings at Snug Harbor started to produce fewer nights, currently leaving fans of the popular event with only one or two sold-out presentations a year.
Time passes, and in order to have more openly inclusive spaces, it is up to the next generation to craft Charlotte’s next dance parties. One of the most recent people in the city answering that call is Alexx Baerwald Simard, the chief architect of Petra’s Ultraviolet Sapphic nights, as well as a few more recent events catered to the LGBTQ+ community.
After being approached in August 2023 by Perry Fowler and Marta Suarez, the owners of Petra’s, the trio worked out details for a quarterly gathering. The following month, Ultraviolet took on its first outing, and many in Charlotte’s community immediately jumped on it.
“It was immediately well attended,” Simard recalled. “We put out … the event promotion on social media, predominantly and then Petra’s posted the flyer in their window like they usually do and we had a good turnout for the very first event. And in addition to the number of people in the room, the energy of the room was palpable. You could really feel that folks showed up to the space, eager to have a space that was by and for queer women, non-binary folks and gender fluid folks. There was this sense of freedom in the room that people had been craving this experience, and they had found it and felt very much at home with it, so then we’ve hosted Ultraviolet every other month since then. Over time, attendance has grown, and so now it’s consistently attended by between 100 to 175 people.”
For locals, or even for those who have lived and become a part of the Charlotte landscape over the years, many might recall a multitude of events that made their start at Petra’s and called it home. Open party formats like those of former event series Le Bang and Mirror Moves and even the ongoing Hazy Sunday happenings allow for every part of the city to let down their guards and enjoy life within the music, especially for the LGBTQ+ community.
It is in the blood for the venue itself, as Petra’s has been recognized as a queer space since its beginning. Starting out as a lesbian bar in 2007, the Plaza-Midwood establishment has only branched out further in catering to other queer-centric identities through its weekly event schedules. Each owner has also hailed from the LGBTQ+ community, from Connie Huddleston and her partner, Petra (for whom the bar is named after), to Jerry Brown, Dean Freeman and Curtis Tutt.
Especially from that angle, Simard’s Ultraviolet plays into an extensive and vitally important legacy. As queer spaces within Charlotte have ebbed and flowed over the years, Simard’s push to establish events like Ultraviolet allows attendees to get to know one another, strengthening the various queer communities in the city.
“I think my favorite part of the feedback that I hear on a regular basis is how many people who attend Ultraviolet meet friends there, connect with people that they have never met before, and form new friendships,” Simard tells Qnotes. “I really get to see the beauty of queer friendships when I see people I know in other spaces together and I ask them how they met, and they’re like, ‘Oh, we met at Ultraviolet actually a few months back, and we’ve been going to other dance parties or doing this thing that we really want together.’ So, in addition to kind of hearing what a meaningful space it’s been for folks [and] learning about … the deepening of queer bonds between people has been really special.”
Daniels has also seen this type of reaction at the events. From September 2023 and on, she has been with Simard in bringing life to each event, crafting the soundscape as the resident DJ. Having seen Charlotte’s transformations through the decades, Daniels sees promise in how Ultraviolet has grown, especially for queer women who don’t have many spaces specifically geared towards them.
“I’m really grateful for it happening, at Petra’s in particular,” Daniels said. “I’m the biggest fan, I love being in the space. I’ve been there for Hazy Sundays since its inception, and it’s become one of the main queer spaces in Charlotte. But the patronage, although it’s diverse, it definitely orients towards gay white men, which is totally fine. I’m still having a great time, but as a black queer … appreciating woman energy, or feminine energy, I’m really delighted by the party, and I know that when I’m having a good time, other people are often having a good time.”
Ultraviolet, from a certain angle, can be seen as Simard’s flagship for these types of spaces to bloom from. Her latest event for Charlotte’s queer community, The Big Gay Picnic has been an all-ages event to gather at since 2023, and as of its start in 2024, the Queer Icon Dance Party at Camp Northend’s Room Service bar has also exploded in popularity.
More than ever, as the newest presidential administration seeks to bring fear to and erase the identities of many in queer communities all over the United States, the availability of events like these offer not just a friendly atmosphere, but also a place where the life-saving skill of organizing is involved. While planning out each happening, Simard is keenly aware of this.
“My stance is that outward acts of queer joy are inherently political, and that in the act of gathering in a space together and maybe engaging in political activities that aren’t inherently political is a political act,” says Simard. “I would say that when I think of political change or resistance, there is policy change, but there’s also a culture change, and that an event like Ultraviolet contributes to, or at least bolsters the cultural change that we need to continue to maintain and build in order to also invest in policy change.
“It’s really important for those people to have a space where they can step out of that kind of high alert … responsive, reactive mode that we get so stuck in every day,” Simard continues. “So, I see it as a place where we get to recharge and make sure that, in that next day or next week, we can wake up and hopefully fight in whatever that means for each person.”