Creating a Documentary on Club Spaces Helped Me Connect to My Brown Queer Community

Adomako Aman, the New York City-based director of the 2016 indie documentary Dancing in the Dark, was inspired to create his film after a series of unsatisfying romantic relationships that developed within club spaces. Although clubs often serve as safe spaces for marginalized communities, they are also nightlife environments removed from most people’s day-to-day routines. Aman found this to be true in his own experiences as a student leading a relatively stable 9-to-5 existence compared to his partner who worked within the nightlife community.

Dancing in the Dark offers a deeper look into the platonic and romantic relationships that queer men of color develop within club culture. Created over the course of two years and featuring interviews with promoters, dancers and regular clubgoers from clubs around New York City, Dancing in the Dark is a bright and important addition to the queer film canon by focusing on romantic relationships between men of queer men of color. Here, Aman shares how years of his own history of unsatisfying and confusing relationships within club spaces informed the documentary—and how making the film made him a more empathetic member of the LGBTQ+ community.

---

Adomako Aman: I dated my share of weird, crazy guys who weren’t good for my mental state. I would meet these guys who were on the DL or more sexually aggressive and more interested in pursuing a sexual experience than a long-term relationship. I had a lot of problems with that.

I had just exited a relationship–well, I wouldn’t call it a relationship, more like an experience–with a guy who was greatly involved in nightlife culture. He lived a completely different lifestyle than me: he worked at night and I worked during the day. When we stopped talking, I asked, “Oh my god! What did I do? Why does this always happen to me? Why do I get involved with these guys who treat me this way?”

There were questions that I wanted to be answered. I started to look at how, as gay men, we are systematically oppressed. I realized I was having a lot of difficult experiences in the dating world as a brown-skinned gay man. As brown people, to be gay is like another weight on things as a queer person.

There was a language I didn’t understand. With this [documentary], it was an opportunity to meet people, hear their stories, and see what was going on within our community as LGBTQ+ people in terms of how we operate in the space of nightlife. Not only was this a story I was creating for people to understand, it was also a story for me to learn for myself.

I started working on the documentary in December of 2013. I’m a curious person—I wanted to get involved. I went out to clubs, and did all of the music scoring, interviewing, photography, and cinematography. I was really passionate in regards to dissecting the story of being LGBTQ+ people.

I realized people love being filmed. People in this generation love it. When you pull your camera out and start taking pictures, people naturally gravitate toward you and want to talk to you. I started going out and taking pictures and while doing that, I began to talk to people and they would tell me their stories about going out in the club.

In particular, everytime I would go out in a brown-skinned gay space, there were always dancers. I thought that was really interesting. The idea of go-go dancers in the club illuminated the space for people there. I began to talk to the go-go dancers to see what they did and how they felt in the space. And my perceptions changed, talking to them on that personal level.

Those street interviews were important because they were in that space, at that time, unfiltered and in the moment. It made their stories more authentic. My main objective was to tell a story of the black and latino gay man in the club space, but to also tell particular stories to show the diversity that exists within these communities.

I did a lot of research with myself and within the community. I started watching a lot of different movies. My whole objective was to explore the gay male experience. I started looking up films like Getting Go. There was another one: The Boys in the Band. That is a very popular gay film that was made in the 70s. These films were of the [gay] white male experience. The only reference made to the black or brown gay male experience was Paris is Burning. I thought that was really interesting. Paris is Burning is one of my favorite films, but I wanted to take a different direction and explore our experience in nightlife in terms of romance, platonic and otherwise. Is there romance in terms of the nightlife space?

I think making the film was a very spiritual experience, as cliche as that sounds. Before starting this project, I just thought, “Oh, I’m gay and that’s it. There’s no big deal to it. Oh, I’m black and that’s it. We’re human. We’re people.” You know, this, that and the other. But I soon realized, “No, it’s very important to see different stories.”

When I started this project, I thought you really couldn’t find love and community in the club. Like, you’d go to the club and dance and that’s it. Now that I’ve finished it, I believe that anything is possible when you go to the clubs. It’s so much more than the sex and drugs and all that. It’s a safe haven for a lot of people. People go to congregate.

Like you go to work and you’re there with your heterosexual friends. You’re there to make money or to fund your lifestyle but sometimes the people at work don’t really understand your lifestyle. So you find people who relate to that. The club is where people find their gay friends. I know so many people who are not from New York who go to the club because it’s a safe space. You there and you think, “OK, this person is cool. This person has great shoes. Why not become friends?”

There were times before where I would just sit and watch. But now I go and I know people. Now, it is a deep social thing. I was one of those people that got amused by the strippers and the hot guys and things. And I still get amused, but my focus is now on speaking with the people there.

Being a brown-skinned gay man living in the Bronx, you’re kind of like an outsider. You see stories that are about being a heterosexual white man with blonde hair and blue eyes, or being the guy who’s a rapper. There are very few stories that, as a brown-skinned gay man, you can relate to.

Creating this film, I realized these men are going through what I’m going through. In a world that doesn’t really talk about our experience publicly in pop culture, you lose sense of your value. I was enlightened by our community of dancers, promoters and partygoers. These men would tell me their stories, showing me their personal, rich experiences.

When I started to realize there weren’t a lot of narratives being told about brown-skinned gay men, I felt like it was a really important direction to take. Our stories are important. When we see ourselves, we see our beauty. I wanted to make sure I could add on to the narrative of our experience.