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Jinkx was likewise floored when she first saw DeLa live, doing an imaginative piece about a queen trying to perform the Charlene song “I’ve Never Been to Me” as a skipping CD thwarted her. (DeLa lip synced not just to the song, but to the edited skips and all the ensuing dialogue with the D.J. as she fought to carry on with the show.)
BenDeLaCreme had studied visual art, but found she had a knack for performance — and, crucially, the organizing and bean-counting that goes into making performances happen. She was already running a production company; Jinkx rushed to audition for one of its shows, and the seeds of a dream team were sown.
Drag has long been an underground art form buoyed by its own lingo, networks and irrepressible joy — crucial elements since its practitioners are often scraping to make a buck in the unstable nightlife business while enduring homophobia or transphobia, and the accompanying emotional impacts.
Nothing has done more to take drag to a wider audience than “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” which started in 2009 and now has international adaptations in Thailand, Brazil, Australia and Sweden, among other places. In 2013, Jinkx won its fifth season and rocketed to national attention. She came home, sat DeLa down and told her she needed to do the show “because I knew that what she would do with the exposure is exactly what she’s done,” she said, “which is build her production company and start doing what she was doing in Seattle worldwide.”
“RuPaul’s Drag Race” helped entrench them as characters: Jinkx as a boozy witch with a big voice and a deep reserve of uproarious impressions; DeLa as a comedic powerhouse with classic pinup looks who never misses her mark. Both have benefited from its spotlight, although “we both had to do two seasons to get where we wanted,” Jinkx pointed out. (They returned for all-star competitions.) Earlier this year, Jinkx fulfilled a dream, starring in Broadway’s “Chicago” as Matron “Mama” Morton, where her arrival onstage each night was met with such rapturous applause, she created a bit where she impatiently glanced at a pocket watch.
Four blocks from the Ambassador Theater, where fans swarmed Jinkx nightly at the stage door, she and BenDeLaCreme concluded their meander through Midtown’s merry landmarks at the Museum of Broadway. After a morning in red velvet suits and wigs piled a mile high, they were dressed down in dark sweaters, a tuft of DeLa’s black hair peeking out from a knit hat, and a scarf twisting around Jinkx’s neck.
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