Feature: Ragtag's Odd Ball party draws eclectic crowd
Published Oct. 31, 2006
A lanky adolescent boy with a long, shaggy beard and chest padding to give him a more feminine figure rejoices in his newfound identity as a "Victorian bearded lady named Delilah," as he put it.
"I have boobs and a skirt and a beard!" he said.
The costume, an amalgam of random pieces rented from Maude Vintage and other costume shops, was one of many vivid, imaginative personas that guests created at the Odd Ball, Ragtag Cinemacafé's first Halloween party.
The Odd Ball, which took place downtown Friday at the Illumia Gallery, attracted partygoers of all ages, each dressed in an elaborate array of fabrics and wigs, makeup and spandex, props and prosthetics, in a festive celebration of oddity and imagination. The gallery was decorated to match the Victorian Gothic theme of the evening, with eerily dim red lights strung from cobwebbed chandeliers and a wall marked with a giant Day-Glo painted pentacle. An alcove decorated with pillows, cushions and scarves became home to Betsy Bevis and Michael Trapp, dressed in revamped Renaissance garb as fortunetellers, who read tarot cards for inquiring partygoers.
"We've thought about doing an annual Ragtag party for a long time," said David Wilson, a member of the Ragtag Board of Directors. "We wanted something uniquely Ragtag. It's the idea of the 'Odd Ball': Ragtag has always celebrated the unusual, and the people who usually go to Ragtag have an affinity for Halloween."
Since Ragtag has long been Columbia's mecca for offbeat films, the integration of film into the party was important. The festivities began with a screening of the 1920 silent horror film "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari." The Goat's Ear Ensemble, an eclectic world-folk quartet from the Kansas City area, was inspired by Ragtag to write a new score for the film, which they performed as patrons watched the action onscreen.
After the film, Columbia-based trio Pretty Please took the stage and treated the audience to a set of high-energy grunge-meets-glam dance music. The band came dressed in the spirit of the evening with plenty of body paint, glitter and spandex and played against a backdrop painted with a neon glow-in-the-dark landscape lit by a black light.
"We love Halloween," bassist Nick MacArthur said. "It's a celebration of dressing up and being a freak. It's a night about being free."
In between sets, Ragtag board members played DJ under the pseudonym "the DJ from Full House," spinning everything from Tropicalia to funk in an effort to keep the dance party going. But the crowd really got moving for the surprise guest band Deadbeat Club, a tribute to The B-52's with members of a well-established local band, bringing back the '80s with covers of "Rock Lobster" and "Love Shack."
While the bands entertained and patrons danced the night away, the crazy, clever and often over-the-top costumes remained the focal point of the evening.
Some guests dressed as more recognizable pop-culture icons or cartoon characters. Ashley Counts, an employee at Halloween retailer Gotcha!, dressed as Totoro, the cuddly "nature spirit" from the classic Japanese animated film, "My Neighbor Totoro."
Other partygoers chose original and personal ideas. Anna Lingo, toting a spear, sported regal, but tattered, garb and pale makeup as "Dead Prince Charming."
"It symbolizes the death of romance," Lingo said. "It's Halloween. It's a holiday that's all about shifting idea and images, going through a transition or a transformation, and one of these is the shift between life and death, and the death of romance."
Perhaps the most unusual costume of the night came from a two-person team decked out in garbage bags and goggles, with rope tied around their shoulders. They explained that they were elephant gynecologists. The man even carried a large tube of transmission fluid that was supposed to represent a "sample of elephant placenta."
The evening ended with the much-anticipated costume contest. Columbia resident Sheena Coffee won Best Overall, for an ornate floral baby-pink dress that she made herself. The award for best Movie-Related Costume went to a partygoer dressed as Raoul Duke from "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." Winners received a series of free passes to Ragtag and the first of the Ragtag's famous retro couches.
Ragtag hopes to repeat the success of the event next Halloween, in the hopes, according to Wilson, of bringing back the days when KCOU/88.1 FM and other local radio stations threw large, elaborate Halloween parties.