By Luné Ariel Maldonado, Class of 2027, She/Her
Studying abroad is not as easy of a matter as it appears within stories or even testimonies from other students, and I had been really feeling the brunt of that by the time I was a month into my studies in the city of Melbourne in Australia. Being a triple major, I was not getting any relief from my classes, as I took two classes for two of my majors each and thus had no room for a random one-off elective like most of my peers. While students going on exchange to Australian universities are warned that most universities here operate as the equivalent of “commuter schools” in the U.S., this underplays the work one truly has to invest in socializing with students based locally. As is natural with homesickness, I started to miss very specific aspects of what I had at home, and a couple of these aspects that most weighed on me were not having the Queer friends I was in community with and a critical engagement with dance around me.
Eventually I would quell some of these abroad stresses as I made an Australian friend, Ana, through a meeting of a club where people gathered to watch the Queer cult classic movie But I’m a Cheerleader (1999). After I replied to one of her Instagram stories in the days after we connected, in which I praised her choice of music in the story, she invited me out for a night out on the town. Obviously, I did not decline, as I was very eager to make and meet new friends as well as to participate in local queer communities guided by someone more local to the city.
On Thursday, September 4th, which was about a month and a half into my time abroad in Melbourne, I met Ana’s friends, who all took us to Yah Yah’s—a club where the local queer community gathered regularly on Thursdays, as it was “Thursgay” at the club. A night of Thursgay activities usually includes regular drag performances on the stages of the club’s 1st and 2nd floors as onlookers cheer the performers on, and some lucky individuals even get picked for lip-sync battles. However, this is not the only location for fans of drag to get their fix in the city. Right next door was Sircuit Bar, admittedly more catered to a gay male audience, but Ana and her friends had become regulars there, as they had multiple drag shows every night between Thursday and Saturday. To me, these first viewings of drag were very special, as not only were Ana and her friends letting me into their world, but I was also getting to know the local drag scene and community.
As we connected more through these outings, I started to get closer to Ana’s friends Harriet and Jemima and felt like we had started to become real friends. These outings specifically became a mostly once-a-week tradition where we were able to decompress from a hard week of school and socialize with queer strangers through dance and discussion. Eventually, we also began to see each other even outside of these outings, such as a day out in the park when it was nice out, or I would study with Ana sometimes, as she lived right up the block from me. We even began a group chat on Instagram, which was particularly heartwarming, as although they had been friends beforehand, they included me in this real friendship as we sent each other media back and forth constantly.
However, while a regular tradition of a night out social dancing (and drag viewing) was nice, I still yearned to work on some kind of personal project related to dance. This is where I have to praise the vibrant Melbourne suburb of Prahran, full of graffiti artwork, cool stores to hop into, and where the dance studio I called a second home for a couple months was. After some back-and-forth emailing in the second week of September, I entered a hired studio space for the first time on Wednesday, September 17th. This specific studio in the larger dance complex was aptly named “The Secret Lab,” compact but with so much space for just me as an individual to play and move around. Finding a space for solo studio play that was affordable was a relief to me, as I feel like I could tap into a different part of myself again. It is through hearing the effort people were putting into their work by the sounds leaking out of other studios of the facility that I had the realization about the gratification that comes from putting yourself in a space that motivates you through self-determination.
While the studio was a space in which I was able to unravel progress and engagement in one of my passions, this unraveling quality of the space was something I felt solace in. It provided a disruption to the monotonous cycle of attending class, doing schoolwork, eating, and sleeping and became even more important in the absence of the large social importance student groups have in universities like Wesleyan. Although I would have to cease my regular trips to the studio as a result of sustaining a wrist injury a month and a half before the end of my time in Australia, I had opened an alternative pathway of learning how I operate in different circumstances thanks to my engagement in movement and produced at least one original choreography I could be proud of. However, I still felt tapped into a similar energy, which my near-weekly tradition of going out with my Australian friends to view drag and be in community with other queer people gave me. Upon further reflection, I found that that space had the same aforementioned unraveling quality despite being more of an engagement of relief versus a critical engagement of something.
Screenshot from a video of Luné working on an unreleased and more emotional second choreography project which was never completed fully while in Australia due to sustaining her aforementioned wrist injury. 10/7/25
The unraveling that had taken place in spaces like Yah Yah’s is an unraveling of a presentation of Queer art and an extending of a needed hand for self-expression to the community. I found that on a social level, being welcome into these spaces allowed me to unravel by growing more confident and comfortable in the way I approached new people on multiple positive levels. This particularly meant a lot to me as a contrast to the way I had quite bluntly learned how to deal with people on multiple negative levels if necessary (albeit most of this learning came from my time abroad in a separate program in the summer). There was true solace in this space because the comfort it provided to the queer community was adaptable—for me that comfort resonated with a healing between art and friendship.
I would be remiss to end without mentioning the great drag artists local to the Melbourne scene whom my friends had introduced me to. Queens such as Max Drag Queen, Rubi Taboo, Lynnduh, Sindel Storm, The Birthday Girl, Orion, and more were some of the Queens core and local to the scene who I saw regularly on these outings. They truly have been iconic to the Queer Melbourne community with their performances and love giving back to their community with their art. In fact, when out, my friends and I were often able to talk to them on a personal and artistic level after a round of performances, with some of the queens even regularly recognizing Ana, as she had become a regular outstanding supporter of the local drag scene!
Finally, it is also impossible to talk about my time in Australia without immensely praising my friends who showed me community while more than ten thousand miles from home. Ana, Harriet, and Jemima are all amazing girls who showed me so much care, who I will be friends with for a long time. They showed me a method of enjoyment that celebrated who we are as people through these outings and what supporting local artists core to the community around you looks like. The solace I found in these two aforementioned spaces encouraging art and self-expression became memories that I found comfort in during times such as finals or processing the struggles I had while abroad. In this manner, Melbourne, in the spaces and friends I found in it, has begun a form of unraveling within myself that I intend to explore for much longer past my time abroad.
