Public Art Project
Collaborators Vicki Moulder, Richard O'Donnell, David C. Jones, Gayway,AIDS Vancouver and Celebrities Night Club
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Super Dot Party, 2007
The Super Dot Party was a Pride event designed to promote Gayway's profile, emphasizing their new location and creating opportunities for the community to participate in a celebration. Through a two hour brainstorming session 'The Dot Party's and it's historical context to the Vancouver Queer Community (see history below) became an over arching theme.
We held polka dot theatre and costume making workshops. Richard O'Donnell designed the mythic Polka puppets that towered over the crowds. In keeping with the original DOT party practice leading up the event we roved up and down Davie Street going into restaurants, clubs and offices sticking polka dots onto people and handing out invitations to attend the party. In conjunction with the street performances
On the day of the event hundreds of people attended the vaudevillian event at Celebrities Night Club, dressed in polka dot costumes. Stage performances produced by David C. Jones centered around the DOT party theme and the Original DOT Party member, Peter Bidlake awarded the winners of the costume contest, passing on the tradition of becoming DOT.
Dot Party History - a brief history
Originally a house party was in a Shawnessy Tudor duplex, it became known as "Dot's Diner"; all the inhabitants worked in the early gay hospitality industry. Over the next couple of years we held many incarnations of the parties at the diner including the outrageous 'Children's Party" and "The post Coronation Ball. When Easter and Chris Peterson were inaugurated the Emperor and Empress Party was the party to end all at Dot's Diner as we were all moving on.
In 1984 a lot of the people involved decided that we should have a reunion party, it started out as a small thing but ended up being the catalyst for what the Dot Party would become.
The community of our friends got involved, cutting out thousands of multi colored paper, fabric anything we could lay our hands on making a multitude of dots for décor, making posters, invitations as this was a free event. My favorite thing was getting a group of us together in dots, drive around the city doing a bar crawl and using small green sticky dots we would dot everybody or anything in sight, cars, coats, cigarette packages and most importantly, people.
Our party was simply that, "a party". The plan was in honor of Dot's Diner in that you had to wear any form of Dots to gain entrance to the party. NO DOTS NO ENTRY, that was the motto. It was called "Polka Dot", was a huge success with well over 300 attending. Fabulous. We won a couple of awards from community organizations. We had a costume contest winner that wound being a good friend; he was named "Miss Diner" and all was forgotten with no plans for further Dot Party functions.
Peter Bidlake AKA "DOT" one of the original members of the household moved to Toronto for a spell, but upon returning to Vancouver discovered that Miss Diner, the costume contest winner had a Polka Dot fundraiser during expo 86 for Aids related groups; after that the mould was set to have an annual fund raiser with a Polka Dot themes; the last of which was held I believe in 2004.
During it's history the Dot Party raised considerable funds for charity. I think the reason for the demise of the party was, so many of the early supporters and later passed on, no one was excited like they once were as when the dot party was near, Dress Sew and Value Village sold out of every stitch of polka dots, everything they would run out.
It was an exciting time.
The Original DOT, Peter Bidlake
The Super Dot Party was a Pride event designed to promote Gayway's profile, emphasizing their new location and creating opportunities for the community to participate in a celebration. Through a two hour brainstorming session 'The Dot Party's and it's historical context to the Vancouver Queer Community (see history below) became an over arching theme.
We held polka dot theatre and costume making workshops. Richard O'Donnell designed the mythic Polka puppets that towered over the crowds. In keeping with the original DOT party practice leading up the event we roved up and down Davie Street going into restaurants, clubs and offices sticking polka dots onto people and handing out invitations to attend the party. In conjunction with the street performances
On the day of the event hundreds of people attended the vaudevillian event at Celebrities Night Club, dressed in polka dot costumes. Stage performances produced by David C. Jones centered around the DOT party theme and the Original DOT Party member, Peter Bidlake awarded the winners of the costume contest, passing on the tradition of becoming DOT.
Dot Party History - a brief history
Originally a house party was in a Shawnessy Tudor duplex, it became known as "Dot's Diner"; all the inhabitants worked in the early gay hospitality industry. Over the next couple of years we held many incarnations of the parties at the diner including the outrageous 'Children's Party" and "The post Coronation Ball. When Easter and Chris Peterson were inaugurated the Emperor and Empress Party was the party to end all at Dot's Diner as we were all moving on.
In 1984 a lot of the people involved decided that we should have a reunion party, it started out as a small thing but ended up being the catalyst for what the Dot Party would become.
The community of our friends got involved, cutting out thousands of multi colored paper, fabric anything we could lay our hands on making a multitude of dots for décor, making posters, invitations as this was a free event. My favorite thing was getting a group of us together in dots, drive around the city doing a bar crawl and using small green sticky dots we would dot everybody or anything in sight, cars, coats, cigarette packages and most importantly, people.
Our party was simply that, "a party". The plan was in honor of Dot's Diner in that you had to wear any form of Dots to gain entrance to the party. NO DOTS NO ENTRY, that was the motto. It was called "Polka Dot", was a huge success with well over 300 attending. Fabulous. We won a couple of awards from community organizations. We had a costume contest winner that wound being a good friend; he was named "Miss Diner" and all was forgotten with no plans for further Dot Party functions.
Peter Bidlake AKA "DOT" one of the original members of the household moved to Toronto for a spell, but upon returning to Vancouver discovered that Miss Diner, the costume contest winner had a Polka Dot fundraiser during expo 86 for Aids related groups; after that the mould was set to have an annual fund raiser with a Polka Dot themes; the last of which was held I believe in 2004.
During it's history the Dot Party raised considerable funds for charity. I think the reason for the demise of the party was, so many of the early supporters and later passed on, no one was excited like they once were as when the dot party was near, Dress Sew and Value Village sold out of every stitch of polka dots, everything they would run out.
It was an exciting time.
The Original DOT, Peter Bidlake