Disabled Drag Artists and Ravers Join Forces for Crip Ecstasy

At their warehouse party last Halloween, Octavia Rose Hingle finally felt free to get lost in the music. They reclined on a daybed on the dance floor, waving their arms as the DJ blended an intoxicating mix of house grooves and sexy lyrics from Charli XCX and Ice Spice. For Hingle, who deals with mobility issues, spaces that allow them to dance comfortably are exceedingly rare. That’s why they created Crip Ecstasy, a dance party and drag night that caters to attendees with different access needs.

The party’s next installment, at The Stud in San Francisco, gets underway on Feb. 20 as part of Rot Festival, an experimental dance and performance showcase. Not only is the legendary queer bar wheelchair-accessible, but the party offers numerous seating options, including beanbags and wide-legged chairs. Masks are required when not drinking. All performances have ASL interpretations and audio descriptions, and blind and visually impaired guests can touch the space and performers’ costumes in a haptic tour organized by Gravity Access Services before the show.

“It’s really magical to experience what it’s like when people’s access needs are centered. I feel like it really shifts the space in so many ways,” says Hingle. “Just to know that you belong and that people are there to support you and your experience, versus you having to fight to get a seat, or [getting] crammed into the back of the club because you need to sit down and your friends are up front dancing.”

By day, Hingle works at AXIS Dance Company, known for stunning choreography that centers performers with diverse body types and physical abilities. They first fell in love with nightlife in the 2010s at parties like Club Chai, a multicultural and trans-inclusive space where the Bay’s different subcultures mingled. After hearing about accessible parties like Crip Rave in Toronto and Remote Access online, they threw the first Crip Ecstasy at San Francisco performing arts space CounterPulse in 2023.

For Hingle, imagining ways to make a party accessible presents an opportunity to get creative. “We were able to bring in visual artists to do sensory room installations for people who needed some space to de-stimulate,” they recall from the first event. Projection designers created psychedelic displays where interpreters typed descriptions of the music, live. “That added an interesting poetic element to the dance music for everybody.”

DJ Fridge, whose real name is Ben Cook, played at that first event, and has since come on as a co-producer of Crip Ecstasy. They became enamored with the Bay Area’s underground electronic music scene as a UC Santa Cruz student when events started back up after COVID shutdowns. But as their chronic pain worsened, they realized they couldn’t always go to raves in far-flung, industrial locations that required laborious treks.

“I think especially in dance music, there’s this attitude of almost embracing like, ‘Yeah, this is a dirty, disgusting warehouse and there’s nowhere to sit down. This is hard for hardcore ravers,’” Cook reflects. “I kind of subscribed to that when I was younger. And then, as my own disability got worse, it totally forced this paradigm shift in me.”

Historically and today, nightlife has been an important way for queer people to find themselves and their community — and Cook and Hingle knew they weren’t the only disabled people yearning for that kind of connection. Many of the performers at the upcoming Feb. 20 Crip Ecstasy party also advocate for accessibility on and off the stage.

Glamputee, for instance, leads disability justice workshops when they’re not lip-syncing in drag. And Iman is the leader of the Deaf Drag Empowerment Residency & Showcase, an incubator for new talent. Contemporary dancer and drag artist JanpiStar works with Hingle at AXIS Dance. Kochina Rude is a regular at Oasis, where, in addition to supplying plenty of punky, glamorous looks, she has championed safer partying practices like free fentanyl test strips and Narcan.

“I’m happy and proud to be a part of what is a bigger movement happening right now in nightlife, both in the Bay Area and beyond,” says Cook.

Ainsley Tharp, co-organizer of Rot Festival, which co-presents this edition of Crip Ecstasy, says she was blown away when she attended the first party two years ago. “It feels important to have events like these where people can feel fully embodied in themselves,” she says, noting that accessibility is one of her organization’s pillars.

Hingle and Cook are dreaming up more parties for the coming year, and reaching out to DJ crews for collaborations. They often seek community input, and humble themselves to the fact that not every event will meet every need. A future goal of theirs is greater COVID safety.

“A big lesson is that it is almost impossible to have a party that’s going to be 100% accessible for every single person,” Hingle says. “And so, wanting to be transparent that we’re trying our best, but we might make mistakes, we’re still learning and we’re always open to feedback.”

Crip Ecstasy takes place at The Stud in San Francisco on Thursday, Feb. 20, 7 p.m.–12 a.m. Tickets and details here.