The Center’s Got Talent 2024: Meet Your Performers!

August Celestial - by Bryant Mehay

August Celestial, MA, CTRS, the Space Dyke of Denver, has been performing around The Mile High City for over two years. They got their start in drag back in 2017 during a turnabout show benefiting the Southern Indiana AIDS Walk and has maintained a strong belief in the political and healing power of drag. In 2021 they graduated with their Master’s in Drama Therapy from Kansas State University having written their thesis on Drag as Drama Therapy. They then were accepted as a research fellow at the Don Kelly Collection at Texas A&M University, where they studied historical drag as a form of Theatre of the Oppressed. August is thrilled to be combining their professional, educational, and artistic skills to perform at this year's Center's Got Talent!

Bri Dumaya Hole - by Andres Murguia

Bri Dumaya Hole (AKA Andres M.) is a brilliant and quite astonishingly attractive writer of such incendiary tomes as Getting Rid of My Rash: A Success Story and Hot Load 2. An unsuspecting law librarian by day, she spends her nights strutting down Colfax in search of inspiration for her next “seminal work.” She has been spread (and not just her writing) across the pages of world-renowned publications, such as West Werd and Pueblo Vogue. Her life ambition is to marry rich, and to take over the mother-tucking world! What, like it's hard? Don’t be intimidated by her brains or looks, this small-town Texas girl is totally normal. Let’s be friends!

Carlisle Quinn

Carlisle is a transgender musician, advocate for marginalized communities, and peer support specialist for people in recovery with Out Boulder County. They are the lead singer and songwriter for the Boulder-based indie rock band, TransRomantics. Originally from Philly, Carlisle started playing and writing music at the age of 18 and has since developed their songwriting to dive into experiences of heartache, community, friendship, spirituality, recovery and personal perspectives of being LGBTQ+. Music has literally helped them find their voice, and they hope their music can help you find yours too. You can find their band’s single “Thank You” out on Spotify now with more music coming soon!

CowPoke Avi - by Avis Blankenship

My name is Avis (she/her). I accept myself as a woman and a lesbian. At age 5, I impressed the folks at a diner when I sang out "HOORAH, HOORAH" with the song "Long Tall Texan." Next up, I was entertaining the neighbors with my rendition of "The Green, Green Grass Of Home." Do you remember the Rice Krispies commercial, "Where are my Rice Krispies ?!? We're all out of Rice Krispies!!" This was sung to the tune of the tenor aria "Vesti la giubba" from the opera "Pagliacci." Yes. I have tried my hand at opera; not bad. All along, I have kept myself company with fantasies of being a sexy blues singer. Two years ago, I started getting involved at The Center on Colfax where many opportunities to entertain and grow have presented themselves, and I have said YES!

Grace DeVille

Grace DeVille is a singer-songwriter from Longmont, CO. She got her start as a busker in Denver and Boulder, channeling her voice into a blend of RnB and pop. Her work focuses on the darker themes within nightlife, romance, and aspiration.

HEELS UP

heels up is a group of multidisciplinary dancers belonging to the LGBT community proud to share this beautiful art that is dance, our proposal is to show and enforce the rights of the community as well as support each other and raise our voice that we are not alone...

We are all love and respect.

Dancers – Saul linares, Nico Delgado, Peter Intuzi, Khea, Daniela Hernandez

Johnny and the Walkers

John, Laura, and Fran met at SAGE Singers. By happenstance they got together with their instruments, and Johnny and the Walkers came to be.

John, a former school music teacher is an accomplished classical pianist. He plays many instruments including guitar for Johnny and the Walkers. John sings bass in SAGE Singers.

Laura has played guitar since she was nine years old. She picked up ukulele a few years ago to entertain preschoolers during story time.  She sings Soprano with Sage Singers.

Fran picked up the violin at age 7 and hasn’t quit yet! In retirement she sings along with the music she makes on her violin, entertaining seniors in a variety of residences. She sings Soprano for SAGE singers.

Joy Iwancio

Joy Iwancio (pronounced "eye-wan-see-oh") is a multi-instrumentalist singer-songwriter musician, based in Denver, Colorado. She is the founder and was the long time leader of The Baltimore Songwriters Association (501c3 organization). She has won awards for songwriting from COMBO (Colorado Music Association), ASCAP, Common Ground on the Hill and the NewSong Festival.  Recently she came out as a transgender woman, now living her authentic life.

In addition to writing songs, she performs on local stages, joins in and leads music jams, teaches ukulele, and loves to collaborate with fellow musicians.

La Paloma Santa Catalina - by Kathleen Kelleher

Kathleen is a writer and performer. She is a playwright, a 2-time national award-winner for her plays Tell Them Valentino Died and Playgirl of the Western World: An Intimate and Shocking Exposé. Kathleen performs what she writes, and her best-known character that she created and performs is named Muftí. Turns out Muftí is a Secret Agent Lady Operator who operates in the political, nuclear, and sexual underground. Kathleen is one of the first “founding mothers” of Vox Femina – an all-woman, mostly-lesbian performance troupe that performed all up and down The Front Range for many a year. And way back in the day, Kathleen lived for years in Argentina. At this very moment, she has Argentina stirring passionately in her blood…and in her corazón. Here you go: Paloma Santa Catalina!

Larry Wheeler

Larry was born into a Baptist church and there were plenty of hymns to practice in the shower, in the back yard or when he wanted to lead his own celestial procession.

Larry’s ever so lengthy musical resume includes: High school choral, High school musicals, Kansas State Men’s glee club, one of the prima donnas in the Denver Gay Men’s Chorus and locally with the Voices’ West Chorus of Littleton.

Tonight, Larry will salute the best of the Boy Scouts and all the summer camps of the world.

On my honor, I will do my best…

To keep myself physically strong,

Mentally awake, and morally straight.

I guess Larry missed that last one!

Michael van Dalsem

Michael van Dalsem pursued a career in the theatre for 25 years, touring throughout the Midwest in such musicals as The Fantasticks (Matt), Cabaret (Emcee), Fiddler on the Roof (Fyedka), The Sound of Music (Rolf), Annie Get Your Gun (several cameos, including the Wild Horse dance solo) and performing in many other reviews, comedies and dramas in Dallas, Los Angeles and New York. After that he became an applications programmer for a worldwide electronics distributor. Tonight, he is pleased to return to the musical stage after a 27-year hiatus. He lives with a very affectionate cat named Bez.

Star Gazer - by Mary Speegle

Mary Speegle recently retired from a 30-plus-year career with the Postal Service. Now that she doesn't work, she enjoys The Center's West of 50 programming opportunities. She recently participated in The Center's Schule of Drag. This allowed her to build her confidence for tonight's performance. Previously, most of her musical performances were in the shower or serenading her coworkers.

Steve Anne - by Steve Calcango

The year was 1974. I willingly was on the streets of New Orleans’s French Quarter and that is where I met a group of various, strippers, trans women, hookers, and drag queens. That was the beginning. I started performing in Drag as Stella Gay Rose and presented totally feminine in public. I moved to Houston, Texas in 1975 and did my best there to present totally male. Exactly 50 years later I am presenting to you Steve Anne, How Much is That Doggy in the Window? Since 2020, through The Center I have hosted Bingo at Denver Pride, Jeopardy games, Karaoke, and The Center’s Got Talent Show as Steve Anne.

I love you,

Steve Anne

Take Note! A Denver Women's Chorus Ensemble

Take Note! is the (mostly) a cappella, select ensemble of the Denver Women's Chorus and has performed for DWC audiences and at community events throughout the Denver Metro area for more than 35 years. Take Note! will be joining forces with Off Kilter, the auditioned ensemble of the Denver Gay Men’s Chorus, for an evening of aca-stounding vocal music at the Aurora Fox Theater on May 4th.

To come see all these talented individuals perform, attend The Center's Got Talent on Friday, March 29! Doors will open at 6:00 PM, and the show runs from 6:30-8:30 PM. For more information and to get your tickets, click here.