New York Drag Performer Goes Viral for Using a Stunt Double for Her Dance Breaks: 40-Second Clip Tops 1 Million Views in Under a Day
At ICON, a bar in Astoria, Queens, in New York City, Queens County, New York, the grand finale of Pantheon Season 5, a local drag competition, was held on Sunday night, November 8. Midway through her number, drag performer Sierra La Puerta twirled away into a corner of the stage as a cannon of stage fog went off, and fellow performer Spice Diamond, dressed the same, emerged from the fog to take over the demanding choreography, including floor work and a death drop. On November 10, La Puerta posted the 40-second clip to X with the caption: "Normalize twink stunt doubles!!!!"
According to Queerty, the video racked up more than 1 million views on X in less than 24 hours, had drawn more than 43,000 likes by Thursday morning, November 12, and was shared thousands of times on Instagram. La Puerta tagged her double, Spice Diamond, in the post. Despite going viral, she did not win Pantheon Season 5 that night; the crown went to fellow performer Tiffany Piffany.
La Puerta told Queerty the idea had been in her head since she was cast in Pantheon, and that it mixed two sources: the dance-contest routine of Rose in The Golden Girls, in which a trained dancer doubled for the harder moves, and Canada's Drag Race contestant Silky Nutmeg Ganache, whose gag relied on a body double of drastically different size. She said one worked through a trained dancer and the other through the comic contrast in size, and that mixing the two sold the performance. She has herself played Rose in a drag troupe called The Golden Gays.
According to Ireland's GCN (Gay Community News), it was the first time La Puerta had used Spice, or anyone, as a body double. She said she deliberately wanted someone of comically different size, and that Spice fit the part; Spice had been eliminated from Pantheon a few weeks earlier, and La Puerta had always said she wanted her in the finale with her, so she was thrilled when Spice said yes.
GCN noted that the mid-performance swap echoes an old film technique called the Texas Switch, in which an actor ducks behind cover and a stunt double takes over within the same continuous take, without editing. La Puerta told Queerty she started doing drag during the pandemic and made her stage debut in 2022. After the clip spread, commenters praised it as drag performance at its best, and some said it reminded them of the classic Golden Girls moment.
Source: Queerty
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：变装表演资料图，图中为表演者 Ari Bun 在明尼苏达州 Itasca Pride 活动上演出（Lorie Shaull摄，CC BY 4.0，经Wikimedia Commons；非 Sierra La Puerta 本人、非事发当晚画面），已预裁为精确16:9成品。/ A drag performance in a file photo: performer Ari Bun at Itasca Pride in Minnesota (by Lorie Shaull, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons; not Sierra La Puerta and not the ICON performance), pre-cropped to an exact 16:9 frame.
