In this episode, I’m joined by Rubyyy Jones (they/them), an artist, performer and space maker who specialises in the body, the bawdyyy and deep feels. As an artist they work in live art, photography and film, creating a spectrum of experiences from silly to sublime. They are an icon in the world's of Drag, Burlesque and Cabaret and a Mxther and mentor to many in the industry.  

Two years after our first interview together, we chat about rediscovering moving for joy in lockdown, neurodivergence and accessibility, moving back to their childhood neighbourhood in Canada, re-parenting ourselves and the queer community, Tony Clifton as a gateway to drag king-ing and lots more!

If you haven't already, be sure to join our Facebook community to connect with other like-minded queer folks and allies.

Find out more about Gem Kennedy and Queers & Co. 

Podcast Artwork by Gemma D’Souza

Resources

Rubyyy and their partner Prinx Lydia created and run The YYY School which includes many different kinds of performance, craft and personal development workshops, both online and in the flesh. Together they share a passion for accessible, atypical and amazing art, The YYY School encompasses all of that.

You can find out more about Rubyyy’s work on the following Instagram accounts:

@rubyyyjones, @lifedrawingrubyyy, @theyyyschool, @prinxlydia

And consider becoming a patron on www.patreon.com/SaveRubyyyJones

Full Transcription

Gem: Welcome to Queers & Co. - the podcast on self-empowerment, body liberation and activism for queer folx and allies. I'm your host, Gem Kennedy. My pronouns are they/them and I'm a transformational practitioner and coach living in the UK.

Hi everyone! Welcome to Series 2 of Queers & Co. I'm so excited to be back and to be able to share all of my brilliant guests with you. I've got 13 guests for this coming series and I've recorded about half of the episodes so far. And honestly, I can't wait to put them all out. I hope you're going to get lots from them and find them interesting, insightful, and maybe share them with anyone that you think might be interested in hearing what my guests have to say as well.

The world is in a pretty different place now from when I recorded the first series in 2020. So I think the last couple of episodes, we'd just gone into lockdown in March 2020 and now here we are in January 2021. The UK has just entered another lockdown. I hope you're all keeping safe and well, no matter where in the world you are.

It felt really meaningful to me to have this guest as my first guest for the second series. I first spoke to them two years ago when I was just starting out with the Queers & Co. project and I interviewed them to find out about their relationship with their body. And since then we have crossed paths multiple times and I just think they are brilliant so I'm really excited to be able to share the interview with you. They are an awesome artist, a performer, a space maker and if you are in need of any kind of cheering up or cool activities to do online, then I'd highly recommend that you check out their work. We talk a bit about that during the episode, but you'll also be able to find out more in the shownotes and I'll point you in the right direction at the end of the episode.

As always, if you enjoy hearing from my guests, please do let them know. It's really nice for them to just know that people out there are listening and that they appreciate what they have to say. And if you'd like to continue the conversation about any of the episodes, please do join the Queers & Co. Facebook group, because we'll be having some discussions in there and also, it's a really great space for anyone wanting to share any projects they're working on, find collaborators or to get any more insights into particular topics that might be of interest to them, to get resources, that kind of thing. So hopefully see you there. And without further ado, I will introduce my first guest of series two - the wonderful Rubyyy Jones.

Hi, Rubyyy, thanks so much for joining me.

Rubyyy: Thanks so much for having me, Gem.

Gem: Not at all. It's exciting, because I was thinking earlier, it's two years since we had our first conversation.

Rubyyy: Oh my gosh, really?

Gem: Yeah, it's gone really quickly. And we've seen each other in between, but like when I interviewed you for the zine, it was two years ago, which is wild. So much has happened since then until now. And I was conscious that the version of the interview that we had before was written so it'd be really cool to have a podcast version and to catch up.

Rubyyy: Well, great. I'm happy to be here. I love chatting with you. So yeah, thanks for asking me to come on the podcast.

Gem: Not at all. And so for anyone who doesn't know who you are, how would you introduce yourself?

Rubyyy: Gosh, well, given these nebulous times we're in at the moment, I feel I don't have as defined a definition of self other than - Hi, I'm Rubyyy (that's with three y's) Jones, and I'm an artist and a space maker.

Gem: Awesome. Yeah, that sounds so different from how you've introduced yourself in other settings before, what shifted there?

Rubyyy: Well, with COVID and all the situations in the world, a big thing that I would have used to describe myself in that interview probably would have been a performer, which of course, I still think of myself as a performer, I always will. But because of how I've had to shift my creative performance aspect of self, it feels a little bit more like I want to use the term artist because it feels like it encompasses more of what I'm doing now. And includes performance as well.

Gem: Yeah, absolutely. And some of the things that you're doing now, people may have come across during lockdown, but they're really exciting. So you have Everybodyyy Move, which you do every weekday, is that right?

Rubyyy: Yes. Well, we do it six days a week because we've added now on Saturday, we do a seated version, because I've done seated versions in the past and they were really popular but I was only doing recorded but now I was like no, we need to do it live. We need that live energy. So we've added that on Saturdays too.

Gem: And how would you describe it for anyone who has no idea what we're talking about?

Rubyyy: Yeah, so Everybodyyy Move is a not-a-workout workout, which is 30 minutes of moving your body, perhaps challenging your body, flexing your body and enjoying your body. A big thing that I feel like I understood last year was I've had different blocks in my life around elective exercise and movement because of my trepidation and trauma from diet culture. And Everybodyyy Move is about supporting each other to move our bodies in a healthy way that is separate to concepts of caloric burn, or abs or any other of that kind of, again, diet culture kind of stuff. It's just about moving your body, improving things like balance, and coordination and all that kind of stuff. It's about supporting each other to do that as well in a way that feels fun and accessible. So it's not a paid class, like you don't have to buy tickets, you just have to be there. And if you want to tip after we gratefully, of course, always accept a little bit of energetic exchange, but we just made it because - we being my partner, Prinx Lydia, and I - we wanted to move more, we wanted to have a kind of support for that. And then we thought, well, probably other people need that too so we just invited other people to join us.

Gem: It's great. And yeah, it's so interesting hearing you say that that was one of the realisations that you've had over lockdown over the past year because I've also had loads of blocks around exercise and movement. And I think we talked before about this - I really used to love dancing and performing and then diet culture kicked in, and like it disappeared - not the love but just I guess the the confidence to do it. And there was something about feeling so uncomfortable with my body getting sweaty, or getting a red face, so many kind of layers upon layers of just not good stuff that I had around exercise. And 2020 was really the year that I actually started to move for enjoyment. And it didn't feel like a punishment any more. So it's really interesting to hear that you've had a similar... I know that you were performing before so obviously you were doing lots of movement anyway, but it's just interesting to hear that you've had a similar kind of realisation or development.

Rubyyy: Yeah, definitely. B