The hottest ticket this weekend is the queer pas des deux On the Floor (Fri/6 and Sat/7) at The Joe Goode Annex. Created by local performer Maria Silk and French interdisciplinary artist Théophylle Dcx, On the Floor returns to the Bay Area almost a year after its first performance at Counterpulse. Those who missed last year’s debut performance will have the chance to take in the latest evolution of the piece. 48 Hills spoke with Silk, Dcx, and their composer, Izaak Schlossman, about On the Floor’s development, its loving engagement with San Francisco’s queer nightlife past, and its spectral links with the early decades of the AIDS crisis.
Silk and Dcx care deeply about the queer past, especially San Francisco’s. When they met in 2024 their respective research projects dovetailed. Silk’s research on queer nightlife had led her deep into The Stud bar’s archives, while Dcx had come from Marseille to San Francisco seeking out the city’s storied legacies of HI-NRG and disco. Bonding over the collaborations of producer Patrick Cowley and Sylvester, and the defunct queer vistas of The I-Beam and Trocadero Transfer, Silk and Dcx seemed destined to collaborate. After months of discussion they landed a grant, and assembled a team of sound and lighting artists to bring their vision to life.
For four months Silk and Dcx improvised movements and exercises that culminated in the initial slow movement and opening of the piece, which gradually unfolds into a more synchronized sublimation of fast paced euphoric dance. The one complaint Silk heard after that performance was from an acquaintance, “She was so angry that she couldn’t get up and dance on the floor with us.”
Schlossman, one half of San Francisco dark wave outfit Loveshadow, is responsible for On the Floor’s heady musical start and combustive closing act. He had previously collaborated with Silk as a DJ, and the two had long discussed collaborating further. When approached by Silk to craft 30 minutes of music mirroring a specific San Francisco sound, he was game. The score evolves from a slow, steamy interlude fit for a sauna to a full blown HI-NRG-inflected conclusion.
Schlossman told 48 Hills,“It was really cool to work with them on this evolution. I feel like the two of them had a chance to refine their ideas through me.” The lighting by GG Torres successfully met Silk and Dcx’s vision for the piece as a gesture towards being in a disco and in a bathhouse. Having light and sound give space to imagine one’s self back to the past was more important than an exact replication. “We are not LARP-ing the ’80s here,” said Silk. This will surely carry over with this weekend’s performances.
The past devastation of the AIDS crisis has deeply shaped Silk and Dcx’s desire for nightlife history. In our conversation it became apparent that this was a deeply personal project. Last month the New York Times Style Magazine ran an article exploring why Millennial and Gen Z queer artists so heavily focus on AIDS history in their creative work. The potential and the pitfalls with that subject came up in our conversation, as well. For Silk, a self-described formerly abject theater kid, the Jonathan Larsen musical Rent was her introduction to the epidemic’s impact.
When it was revealed to Silk that her mother’s brother died of AIDS complications before she was born, things shifted to a more personal register. Her uncle’s death was not openly discussed in her family. “Stories like that can stoke your anger that it took so long for the government to act, for there to have been appropriate medication, appropriate treatment,” Silk told me. “Just to think if I had this person in my family. Stuff like that does matter when you’re queer and you’re looking around for your lineages.”
San Francisco has been a vital site of inspiration and fantasy for Dcx and enriched his collaboration with Silk. While growing up in France, Dcx could not recall ever seeing the history of AIDS represented in culture. There was no equivalent to some of the touchstones in US culture like Silk’s ability to access Rent. When he tested HIV-positive at nineteen, he felt great urgency in learning as much as he could about the virus on every level. It has also shaped much of his artistic practice that he has described as a “personal diary” and “resolutely memorial.”
In our conversation, Dcx discussed consternating contemporary phenomena around HIV, such as serophobia (irrational fear of people living with HIV), and how the discourse around undetectability can sometimes risk minimizing the epidemic’s past. Dcx seeks to counter this in his projects. “I talk about undetectability in the way of history that also becomes undetectable at some point.” To be in San Francisco, where the epidemic’s past is more readily engaged with due to the diverse age range of queer cultural enclaves, is a poignant experience.
This has made their shared exploration of the epidemic’s history far from merely symbolic or aesthetic. Dcx found San Francisco’s queer nightlife generational diversity inspiring. Attendees perhaps will be in their early 20s and the DJs their early 30s and late 60s. “Even in Paris we don’t have places like The Stud or Aunt Charlies.”
Intergenerational dialogue has proven to be vital in On the Floor’s evolution. Silk had the idea to bring together three people who had been active in San Francisco nightlife at that time and ask them for feedback on their performance. Those three men were Steve Fabus, Brian Freeman, and Greg Cruikshank. Taking place at the Dark Entries shop on Larkin St., each brought a vinyl record with them to share with Silk and Dcx. They were regaled with stories from Cruikshank about The Angels of Light theater troupe and iconic lost spaces like Club 181—and the infamous story of the dead body hidden in that club’s rafters.
Dcx and Silk also spent time with Page Hodel, who was a major presence in queer nightlife in the 1980s that they sought to embody. While Hodel still DJs at Oakland’s White Horse Inn, her residency in Napa County prevented her from readily attending On the Floor. Hodel shared her nightlife memories with the duo at her home. “She really had some amazing stories and I remember she was talking about boys she knew in the Castro who would take like sandpaper to grind down the crotch part of their Levi’s so that it would be thinner, so their bulge would be easier to see. That has really stuck with me.”
As they drove away from Sebastopol after having dinner with Hodel, Dcx was euphoric. “I remember how we were feeling so happy in the car on the way back. It was like… I don’t know that was a really, really nice moment with you,” mused Dcx to Silk. These intergenerational encounters energized Silk and Dcx and they were ready to push the piece further. “Meeting with them gave me a sort of groundedness and accountability to do them proud,” said Silk.
After their conversation with Freeman, Cruikshank, and Habus and spending time with Hodel, Silk and Dcx returned to Schlossman with fresh ideas for another version of the score. At the end of our conversation, the two were readying for their performance dates, when all this fresh energy would premiere. The excitement and confidence between the two was palpable. “All of this has been a precious gift that has super-charged this second round of the performance with meaning for us.” On the Floor is also a gift to the community it honors and for those who are lucky to see it this weekend.
ON THE FLOOR Fri/6 + Sat/7, Joe Goode Annex, SF. Tickets and more info here.
