Singing and Dancing

Excerpt of video footage of the Atlanta Gay Men's Chorus performing "The Addams Family" theme song during their movie-themed Pride concert, "Celluloid, Footlights, & Videotape," in June 2000. Excerpt filmed for OutTV. Copyright to this item is owned by Mike Maloney. Courtesy of Georgia State University. Special Collections, LGBTQ Institute's Mike Maloney Collection of OutTV.


Interview with singer/songwriter Doria Roberts discussing Queerstock, a traveling LGBTQ+ music festival Roberts founded in Philadelphia in 1995 before she moved to Atlanta in 1996. Filmed for OutTV. Copyright to this item is owned by Mike Maloney. Courtesy of Georgia State University. Special Collections, LGBTQ Institute's Mike Maloney Collection of OutTV.



Ensemble musical and dance performing groups have allowed LGBTQ+ Georgians to share their talents with diverse audiences for the past thirty years. The Atlanta Gay Men’s Chorus was the first choral group of its kind to be established in the South in 1981 and joined the Gay and Lesbian Association of Choruses in 1982. They undertook their first five-city Georgia tour in 2010, visiting Macon, Savannah, Augusta, and Athens before returning to Atlanta. The Atlanta Feminist Women’s Chorus, a lesbian singing group, was also established in 1981. Although an economic downturn caused the group to disband in 2009, their assets were used to found the Atlanta Women’s Chorus in 2013, becoming the sister company to the Atlanta Gay Men’s Chorus within the umbrella organization Voices of Note. Atlanta also became home to a mixed LGBTQ+ chorus in 2003 with the creation of OurSong. The three choral groups are now members of a broader collaborative, the Atlanta Queer Arts Alliance, which also includes the Atlanta Philharmonic Orchestra and the Atlanta Freedom Bands, the latter of which debuted in 1994 after founder Buzz Car realized that the Atlanta Pride Parade had no marching band. Dance groups for LGBTQ+ Georgians have formed as well: the gay men’s clogging group Buffalo Chips, country-line and square-dancing groups like Hotlanta Squares, Southern Line Atlanta, and the gender-neutral contra group Quicksilver Country Dancers. In recent years, bucking or J-setting, inspired by female HBCU dancelines, has become part of Atlanta’s Black gay culture. Trailblazer Tony Davis began organizing bucking dance teams in the 1990s, a history traced in the recent documentary When the Beat Drops (2018).