Introduce yourself.
My name is Maggie. My pronouns are she and they, and I love it when people use both for me.
How long have you been a student at Sky Sirens? What do you do here?
I am a swing and hula hoop dancer, and I had wanted to try Lyra for years but thought I wasn't strong enough, especially in my upper body.
My wife decided to get classes for me as a Christmas present and searched around for a body-positive, beginner and queer friendly studio. She came up with Sky Sirens and it's been perfect for me.
After my first Babydoll Lyra class, I was obsessed. I have also tried burlesque and different conditioning classes. I would love to try pole.
What do you identify as within the LGBTQIA+ community?
I identify as femme, queer, and bi - where bi means I experience attraction to people with genders similar to and different from my own.
For me being femme means I am intentionally and queerly feminine and feminist.
Femme is a queer gender identity. I have sorted through the box labelled feminine, reclaimed what I love and discarded those aspects that might be anti-queer, misogynistic or exclusionary. For me, body inclusivity is also a key part of that and one of the things that set Sky Sirens apart and make it queer-friendly.
I love reclaiming the power in softness, prettiness, and fluidity, as well as training my body to do hard things without punishing myself. Dancing at Sky Sirens is a glorious way to express all of this.
We owe so much to sex workers, circus artists, burlesques performers and vaudeville for pioneering these arts, that in a way, are also queer in that they are on the margins growing something wonderful in the face of oppression. Sky Sirens is the perfect place to grow in my queer femme feminism.