Fauxnique, aka Monique Jenkinson, contemplates aging as an artist in “How Do I Look?”
Courtesy of Robbie Sweeny
Somewhere within the undulating fabric is Monique Jenkinson.
During a recent rehearsal at a studio in the ODC Annex, she manipulated swaths of cloth as combination set pieces-dance elements preparing for her new work, “Fauxnique: How Do I Look?”
“Fauxnique: How Do I Look?”: 7:30 p.m. Friday-Sunday, April 17-19. $10-$100. Brenda Way Theatre, 3153 17th St., S.F. www.odc.dance/fauxnique
The expanse of magenta polyester flowed behind her as she lifted it aloft like childhood parachute time, letting it fill with air and dome upward. Or her body would stretch it from within, limbs pressing into the textile in the modern dance style of Martha Graham. In another moment, her arms flap the fabric like a butterfly.
Article continues below this ad
“Yes, I’m making shapes for you right now,” said Jenkinson, 55, who also performs in drag as Fauxnique. “But part of the under-the-fabric section is me having my own private moment of abstraction.”
“Fauxnique: How Do I Look?,” at ODC on Friday-Sunday, April 17-19, is the performer’s “sister” to her 2025 cabaret show “Fauxnique. So Relevant,” which had two sold-out runs at Oasis. Both works deal with questions about aging as an artist, audience perception and how we form our identities.
San Francisco Chronicle Logo
Make us a Preferred Source to get more of our news when you search.
Add Preferred Source
Part of what “How Do I Look?” is asking, however, is who Jenkinson is as an aging artist, and whether she can separate her sense of self from “being a dancer.”
At rehearsal, Jenkinson next gathered a mossy-green and shocking-pink cape from the floor. She twirled it around her body like a toreador, first forming a skirt and finally drooping into “Dying Swan”-like wings at her side. The costume was made for another performance by San Francisco drag couturier Mr. David Glamamore, a longtime collaborator of Jenkinson whom she credits with helping form Fauxnique’s visual identity.
Article continues below this ad
“Fauxnique: How Do I Look?” by Monique Jenkinson is the sister work to the performer’s 2025 cabaret show “Fauxnique. So Relevant.”
Courtesy of Robbie Sweeny
In line with the theme of aging, “How Do I Look?” is also the San Francisco artist’s first movement-heavy solo work since her double hip replacement in 2022.
“A teacher I had told me, ‘Learning is chaos,’ and I think aging is chaos,” said Jenkinson. “There have been things about aging I’ve haven’t been prepared for, like being called ‘an aged-out old art f—,’ which is something at the root of both pieces.”
Jenkinson has been creating performances at the intersection of dance, drag and experimental theater for three decades. Although she still considers ballet “the country I defected from,” Jenkinson is a modern dancer who graduated from the prestigious program at Bennington College in Vermont. In that field, she’s worked with choreographers including Kathleen Hermesdorf and Sara Shelton Mann.
On the other side of her work, Fauxnique was also the first cisgender woman to win a major drag pageant, crowned Miss Trannyshack in 2003. Jenkinson writes about her dual art forms, which eventually merged into one artistic practice in her 2022 memoir: “Faux Queen: A Life in Drag.”
Article continues below this ad
Her 50s, she admitted, have been “the very Gen X desire to get the f— over myself, as I said in my Guggenheim grant application.” “So Relevant” and “How Do I Look?” tackle that theme with Fauxnique’s signature absurdity and humor. In both projects, Jenkinson employed the drag trope of impersonation, exaggerating the signature vocal traits and physicality of a celebrity. She did it in song in “So Relevant,” and in “How Do I Look?” plans to do it in dance.
Monique Jenkinson’s “Fauxnique: How Do I Look?” is the performer’s first solo dance work since a double hip replacement surgery in 2022.
Courtesy of Robbie Sweeny
The new work, in particular, “gets very meta,” said Jenkinson. Not only do the fabric pieces onstage reference previous performances, but there’s also a section of the dance that turns a conversation Jenkinson had with her dramaturg, Jesse Hewit, about separating Monique the aging dancer and Monique the person, into a recorded soundtrack.
“There’s this lore in culture when we imagine our 80-year-old self on a rocker in Sonoma County that we no longer care what people think about us,” said Hewit. “In a way, we’re all waiting for that to happen. But it’s really tricky for performing artists. What people think about them literally is their business.”
Article continues below this ad
Hewit said that a large part of his work with Jenkinson on “How Do I Look?” has been about addressing that quandary.
“What feels so gratifying as an artist of a certain age is that the work is feeding itself,” said Jenkinson. “All my previous work informed the memoir, and then the memoir informed ‘So Relevant,’ which informs ‘How Do I Look?’ It’s like the work tells me what it needs.”