Photo by Marco Ovando.

A few short years later, I spent the summer in San Francisco for another dancing gig. By this time, Lady Camden had been born. It was amazing to see a friend truly find their niche. Yet again, we were unable to predict the magnitude of what would happen, but I knew my gifted friend had found the vehicle for their talents.

Over the past year, RuPaul’s Drag Race has allowed the world to see the beauty of this magical friend of mine. She had a meteoric rise on the show, fueled by her ability as a performer, that took her all the way to being, as I like to say, crowned runner-up of season 14. While in New York for a recent performance, Rex, also known as Lady Camden, took the time to sit down with us to talk about their journey, dance, and their new song featuring Yvie Oddly.

It has been amazing watching you evolve over the years. I’ve seen you grow, question, face challenges, and ultimately succeed. Can you talk to us about your career as a dancer and choreographer and how it led you to drag?

LC: I think choreography was definitely that outlet that I could use my brain and soul and heart a little bit more than what I could with ballet. I felt like I had this sense of humor that I wanted to explore. I loved music so much and I loved the theatrics of putting on a show. The combination of thinking of what the costumes would look like and the lighting, but mostly the way it felt and the music was so enjoyable.

When I first started choreographing, it was all very strictly classical. I didn’t want it to be too much of a departure from what I knew, but then over the years I started to infuse more humor in what I did and more color. The last ballet that I did for Smuin Ballet was super camp and fun and it finally felt like it was a reflection of who I am as a person. And that was when I realized, I have to challenge myself to explore more of who I am, not just what I can do and look like.

I think drag was the opportunity to explore my brain a little bit more and my sense of humor and my love of nostalgia. I know that we have talked about this a lot, but standing in the back of the studio, making people laugh and clowning around started to feel like a bigger part of who I was and a bigger part of who I was hiding or putting away on the shelf. And I wanted to explore more of that little back of the studio sparkle. There are so many challenges that come with dancing, of course, and those challenges never stop. In fact, they get harder as you get older, but when you are called on to show us who you are as a person in your drag, your intellect and your creativity, it’s actually a harder challenge in some ways, because you’re taking risks that you haven’t taken in ballet. 

Many of your fans know you as a fully-formed force of nature. Let’s talk about the early Camden days. How did you become a staple of the San Francisco drag scene and what was the moment you knew there was something special happening?

LC: The beginnings were just as humble as anyone’s. I was buying stuff from Goodwill and making alterations to make things fit. I wasn’t spending a lot of money on drag. I was doing a lot of the wig making and clothes making myself. At first, honestly, I was just this happy little Spice Girl bobbing around San Francisco, trying to have fun and get free drinks and feel like a little bit of a star. I was mainly just getting attention from friends and people at the club, it was a way to have fun and meet people.

I didn’t really have any friends in the gay scene in San Francisco. All of my friends were in the ballet company and a lot of them had their own lives to lead and they had relationships, other jobs, school. So oftentimes in San Francisco, when we were done with work, I would feel quite lonely and that same character of the back of the studio, ballerina that makes everyone giggle, that personality would leave the studio feeling really unsatisfied. So I would go out and I would dress up and, and then, I started to get asked to perform and because I know how to perform it wasn’t something that stressed me out. That was the part that was a fun little treat and to make money from it was just an absolute bonus. Then when I started to take it more seriously, I started to put a lot of pressure on myself because the ballerina mentality seeped in and I started to become competitive with myself.

I didn’t even think I’d ever had a moment of, this is what I want to do. As soon as I started to get into it, I just knew deep down, oh God, this is gonna be a huge problem. 

Performers worldwide faced some serious struggles during lock-down due to Covid. What kind of head-space were you in during that time as a nightlife performer and a choreographer?

In the beginning, I was super pumped to get into online content. I started doing a lot of silly YouTube videos purely because I thought a lot of my close friends would be cheered up by it and it was giving me something to do and I felt like I was still working on drag. And then, I honestly just got massively depressed and I stopped doing drag altogether. I even threatened myself to go get a real job and take a break from drag altogether. By real job, I just mean like a nine to five, which I’ve basically never had. 

I was so down because right before that I got my first hosting gig. I was hosting at the Midnight Sun. It was season 11 of Ru Paul’s Drag Race, episode three, I was getting ready to go and host it. I was so excited. Then I got the mass text from the club owner, that they were sending to all the employees, telling us that we were out of work for two weeks. I remember thinking, what am I gonna do for two weeks? 

During lock-down I was working at Pressed Juicery. I remember, walking home from the juicery after closing the store and on my way home, I would sit at the top of Dolores Park on Gay Beach and just have the most beautiful view of the city. I kept looking at it in this weird nostalgic way. Even though it was beautiful, I felt like I had to leave to protect myself financially and maybe go away and kind of heal or something.

So, I moved to Sacramento. My best friends came to pick me up. They let me stay with them for a month while I figured out my life. I ended up working back in a restaurant and I was simultaneously teaching acting on zoom with my school and occasionally doing drag bingo on zoom. I was basically just working, working, working, and not paying any attention to my drag, not improving my drag at all. At some point, I remember thinking my drag’s never gonna get any better if I don’t spend time on it. In what world does your art ever improve if you neglect it?

How did this impact your audition for RPDR Season 14?

LC: The audition came around for Drag Race and I thought to myself, this is the worst timing ever. I had no new looks. I had no footage of club performances because there weren’t many since the last time I auditioned. It felt like, okay, well this audition has to be done from scratch in a way. 

I thought, well, I could take a lot of the stuff that I’ve made and don’t wanna wear and try to revamp it somehow into something that I would go and wear at the club. That was my gauge; would I go to Beaux(a San Francisco gay bar) in this on a Thursday night? If I looked at it and was like, no, then I would make it into something cute. 

I did all of my runways in my kitchen at two in the morning after work. I did a lot of my interviews with the help of a friend FaceTiming in to make sure that I wasn’t being fake and generic. I shot my lip sync in my friend’s parking lot of his art studio. It was just back to basics in a way. When you don’t have anything, you’ve got to just show who you are and what you have in the most bare sense. 

After filming RPDR but before it aired, your ballet community really rallied around you. Former SFB dancer Luke Willis made some absolutely gorgeous videos with you. Choreographer Myles Thatcher, SFB dancers, Smuin Ballet dancers, and Chris Oullette of Axis Dance Company, all took a creative part in different projects. How did having that support feel and what was the creative process like?

LC: I mean, there’s nothing better than having a literal stampede of people back home that are showing up at 11:30 PM to film a video of me running around pretending to be Shakespeare, things like that. You can’t buy that kind of love and support. It was honestly sometimes overwhelming to feel that people were really rallying behind me when they hadn’t even seen the whole season yet. They didn’t know how I did. They didn’t know how far I got, they didn’t ask any questions. They were just there for me and Drag Queens, too. Drag Queens, DJs, club owners, wig makers, designers, everyone at home was supportive of me. 

When I went on  Drag Race, I fantasized about doing well and coming home to San Francisco, and to London, and Sacramento too, and just making people proud. I think that’s the biggest achievement. The ballet community is one that I was a little surprised by because I felt like I was making a departure from the ballet world when I really invested in drag and made it my priority.

It felt like I was cheating on ballet for a long time. It felt like I was leaving ballet. That’s hard to reckon with when you dedicated your entire life to dance and ballet, and it’s been your dream, you know, since you were 12 or whatever age. It’s hard to reckon with the fact that you’re not fulfilling that dream and still somehow being successful. 

l worried that the ballet community was going to be like, yikes, I don’t want to feature that or I don’t support that because it’s making fun of ballet or something, but I think that they could all see that I was just a bun head that had graduated. They see someone that still loves ballet. I think that everyone resonates with being obsessed with something. I think that it’s clear that I would never make fun of ballet in a derogatory way. I just have always wanted to be Marianela Nunez and here we are.

We talked a little bit about your creative work with Luke Willis. You have a new single coming out with Yvie Oddly with a video by Luke. Can you talk about what it was like stepping into the musical world?

LC: Making music has always been something that I have wanted to do because I know it’s the scariest thing for me to do. I think when you have strong talents, things can seem even scarier to try because you’ve got a certain expectation of how you can perform.  What gave me confidence to do this is knowing that Luke and I work really great together. We’re both bun heads. We both are obsessed with details and a theatrical narrative. I felt like, okay, I’m not really interested in making a song about how great and fabulous and fierce I am as a drag queen. I’m more interested in making a song that is a little bit of a story, even if it’s just loosely said. Luke is a filmmaker first and foremost before a music video maker. He always strives to tell a story whether it’s a documentary, a music video, or a narrative film, which he’s done all of those things. I felt like no matter what, we’d come up with a fierce music video. 

I’m really excited to have Yvie on board. She is such a genius. She’s  brilliant. I feel so lucky to be working with two geniuses. And the songwriter is a friend of mine, EMPRESS. She’s also an ex-ballet dancer and the producer of the track music. Steven Inskeep makes all of my head pieces and headwear in general; he has made costumes for ballet schools and companies his whole life. He was a ballet dancer, too. The costume maker is also a costume maker for dance schools and companies , Kattya Scott. She made my tutu for the tutu runway and the tutus for this video. The video is choreographed by Myles Thatcher. So this whole thing is powered by ballet or ex-ballet dancers! That is amazing.

Last but not least, having worked so hard and accomplished so much across many disciplines, what do you dream of the future holding for you?

LC: I just want to be a star that works forever. I want to be doing my 60th comeback tour. I wanna be like a drag Leslie Jordan. Everyone just loves you. You’re still working even though you don’t want to because everyone just can’t get enough of you. You’re like, let me retire. But everyone’s like, no, we love you like that. I just wanna do it all! I wanna do so much until I’m sick of everything. I wanna be sick of everything because I’ve done it all.

Lady Camden’s new single Surrender, featuring Yvie Oddly, drops on October 4th. You can follow her on social platforms at @ladycamden or at ladycamden.com.