Salsa with bisexual butterflies and tango with drag queens at LatinX Festival this July, as Latin-America invites London to celebrate 50 years of gay pride.
For Pride in London on Saturday, July 2, 2022, LatinX Festival are sending a butterfly-themed float down the parade, before heading to Leak Street for the ‘Exlio Day and Night Party’, a night of salsa, merengue and Latin carnival beats.
Tickets for the event, which culminates with a 12-hour club night at a 1,200 capacity venue, are £10 per person.
Gloria Lizcano, CEO of Exilo, the club event organisers hosting the event, said it felt different being gay and Latin-American. She said: “It’s different because of our roots. We were brought up as Catholics and some of us have suffered a lot, sometimes starting from the home and your own family.
“They might discriminate against you and say they don’t understand you. They might think they can catch it! There is still a stigma.”
The day will begin with Pride in London’s parade from Marble Arch to Embankment, for which LatinX have kitted out a float with giant dancing butterflies, Colombian dancers and a full-blown sound system.
The butterfly theme has been chosen to signify the community’s re-emergence and revitalisation after a tough few years for the LGBT club scene due to Covid-19.
After the parade, the troop will head to Leak Street, Waterloo, where they’ll lay eyes on a butterfly mural, freshly painted by Los Vagos Art.
Following that, from 4pm to 9pm, there will be spoken word, Brazilian drumming, salsa dancers, samba dancers, Colombian cuisine and more. Children are welcome until 8pm.
Night fall will signal the beginning of an all-night Latin-American club night going on until 4am. There will be a drag queen shows, salsa, merengue, bachata, reggaeton, cumbia, Latin pop and Latin house, with tracks mixed and chosen by a host of internationally-recognised Latin DJs.
Gloria says the night isn’t about people “taking their tops off”. “It’s not about that. We’re spicy in a different way and we leave stuff to the imagination. The music is sexy enough”, she said.
As an independent organisation that gets no Arts Council funding, money raised will go towards putting on more events that celebrate Latin-America’s LGBT community in London
Get tickets for the LatinX parade after-party: https://www.exilio.co.uk/about-1
See their full range of events this summer at: https://www.exilio.co.uk/