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Abstract

This paper explores queer people’s experience within the context of Queer Nightlife in Colorado Springs after the Club Q shooting of November 2022. Through participant observation, interviews, and autoethnography I explore themes of joy, safety, and risk on the dance floor of four different dance clubs in the downtown area. I focus on experience in three straight clubs (Mansion, Blondies, and Cowboys), and an openly queer club named La Burla Bee. My central question is: What is the range of experiences of queer patrons on the dance floor of La Burla Bee? And complementarily: How are those experiences complexified by the experience they have in Mansion, Blondie’s, and/or Cowboy's? This research is targeting queer patrons in Colorado Springs in hopes to work as an archive of their queer nightlife experiences, and academics who have an interest in queer nightlife. I contextualize and explore various impacts that the Club Q shooting had on queer patrons. I later explore queer sensual gestures, notions of risk and safety, and the La Burla Bee’s dance floor. Coming from stories of twerking, resiliency, and beauty, I argue that the dance floor acts as a queer emotional island in the queer club, granting freedom and agency to queer and non-queer patrons. Lastly, I explore the potential for queer joy and safety at the three straight clubs. The distinct, diverse stories of experiences on the dance floor speak against homogenizing, reductive discourses that render queer nightlife as sites of violence only.

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