An Unexpected Dance Floor
“One of my greatest memories is two years ago, I was performing in a small hick bar.”
There’s a lilt in Rita de Los Angeles’ voice as she recalls this moment during her In the Key of Q interview. It’s not the setting one might expect to hear described with such fondness—particularly from a lesbian who spent her youth in the vibrant queer urban landscape of 1990s Los Angeles.
“At the end of the show, I played a ballad and there was even a trans person dancing cheek to cheek with someone and there were women dancing with each other cheek to cheek, and men and women.”
Her voice carries genuine wonder as she continues: “I’ve never experienced that in my entire life seeing such a mixed group of people slow dancing with each other.”
Beyond the Urban Queer Paradigm
For decades, the dominant narrative of queer liberation has been inextricably linked to cities. From the Stonewall uprising in New York to the Castro in San Francisco, from Soho in London to Le Marais in Paris, metropolitan centers have provided the critical mass necessary for visible queer communities to emerge.
This urban-centric understanding of queerness has created its own orthodoxy: that authentic LGBTQ+ life requires proximity to gay bars, community centers, and Pride parades. Rural spaces are often positioned as places to escape from—hostile territories where queer people live in isolation or secrecy.
Rita’s experience challenges this binary thinking. After a youth spent in Los Angeles—organizing lesbian fashion shows with go-go dancers and participating in direct action with Queer Nation and ACT UP—she now feels most at home performing Country music in rural Germany.
Part of what makes Rita’s approach distinctive is her willingness to engage with those who might seem, at first glance, unlikely allies.
“I am, I’m like kind of an alien in that world,” she acknowledges. “And I see it’s making a difference. Just being myself, being myself, people who have maybe not met a gay woman ever in their life… they ask a lot of questions and I try not to make them feel embarrassed to ask the question.”
This approach represents a marked shift from her activist youth, when direct confrontation was her primary mode of engagement. Now, decades later, she builds connections through music and conversation: “They don’t just scurry away. We will, we’ll talk. It’s an opportunity for me to connect.”
Dancing Across Divisions
What makes the “small hick bar” dance floor so significant in Rita’s telling is precisely its unexpectedness—the rare sight of diverse couples slow dancing together in a space not designated as explicitly queer.
“That’s how you cross over and connect and have peace with each other,” she reflects. “And that my music, my singing, my guitar playing inspired that.”
There’s a profound message here about the potential for art to create temporary autonomous zones where conventional social boundaries become permeable. A Country ballad in a rural bar allowed different worlds to momentarily touch, creating a space neither fully queer nor fully straight, but something more interesting: genuinely mixed.
New Maps of Connection
The traditional geography of queer life has centered on specific neighborhoods in major cities—places where critical mass allows for visible community. This urban concentration has been both protective and generative, creating spaces where LGBTQ+ culture could flourish.
But this geography has left vast areas of the map unmarked—rural regions, small towns, suburbs—often presumed to be uniformly hostile to queer existence. Rita’s story suggests we might need a more nuanced understanding, one that recognizes how individual connections and artistic expressions can create nodes of acceptance in unexpected places.
“I am totally openly lesbian. Everybody knows that anytime some man starts to hit on me, I just show him my wedding ring, ‘Married to a woman, [with] three kids!’”
This matter-of-fact approach—neither hiding nor making her identity the sole focus of her presence—creates space for organic conversation: “We have very interesting conversations after that.”
What emerges isn’t exactly a “gay bar in the countryside,” but something more liminal: spaces where queerness becomes one facet of human connection rather than a bright line of division.
She said: “I feel very much at home playing for, for German hillbillies out in the countryside.” This sense of belonging isn’t despite her lesbian identity but alongside it—a whole person connecting with other whole people.
As Rita puts it: “That’s the kind of stuff I want to see. I don’t want to just see men dancing together or just women dancing together. I’d love to see everybody dancing together.”
It’s a simple wish, but one that offers a compelling alternative to both separatism and assimilation—a genuinely mixed space where differences aren’t erased but also don’t prevent connection. In a world increasingly sorted into ideological and identity-based bubbles, there’s something urgent about creating spaces where slow dancing across differences becomes possible.
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