Belgium's first transsexual performs at Club PuSh
ON STAGE / Vanessa Van Durme one of few queer artists at 2013 festival
Erin Flegg / Vancouver / Friday, January 11, 2013

http://www.xtra.ca/public/Vancouver/Belgiums_first_transsexual_performs_at_Club_PuSh-13016.aspx

Vanessa Van Durme, Belgian writer and performer, has a knack for picking the right word. After all, she's had some practice. Van Durme became Belgium's first transsexual before the vocabulary for the transition existed.

"It wasn't that simple then," she says over the phone from Belgium. "It was a big, big struggle because you couldn't even pronounce the word, because it didn't exist at that time."

Now, at the age of 64, she has told her story in three different languages all over the world.

Van Durme will perform her one-woman show, Look Mummy, I'm Dancing, at this year's PuSh International Performing Arts Festival in Vancouver.

The performance is a 90-minute monologue that tells the story of a young boy who was happiest when dressed in his mother's clothes, wearing red lipstick and dancing.