Justin Johnson, styled in a flurry of denim and sparkles, shoots through the halls of an auditorium where his Beyond Belief Dance studio students are performing as part of a competition. “I’m gonna have to bust a Blue’s Clues on this,” he says. A music mishap threatens to penalize one of his dancers, Brooke, who stands to plummet in the rankings if the mistake was made by his studio. With the righteous anger of a scored parent, he confronts the in-house audio team and finds out it was his own studio manager who made the error. Mistake confirmed, he reproaches the screw-up and demands an answer — and, more importantly, for someone to just take ownership of the error. Is that so hard?
Such low-stakes drama is the focus of Dancing Queen, the new Netflix reality show starring Rupaul’s Drag Race star and pageant queen Justin Johnson, better known as Alyssa Edwards. Dancing Queen centers on Justin’s work as the founder and director of the award-snatching Beyond Belief Dance studio, which trains students ages six to 18, as well as various Alyssa Edwards drag appearances. Standard fare for a show, but this one is intentionally overproduced and over-the-top — there’s plenty of Alyssa confessionals and pleasantly overdone video interludes stuffed between scenes like a wedding covered in rhinestones and oily-chested muscled men, which Alyssa, a good Christian in and out of character, officiates in full drag, bedazzled Bible in hand.
It would be strange for the show not to be campy. It doesn’t even have to try. That’s essentially Alyssa Edwards’ modus operandi as a drag persona — “extra,” in her words, with her signature tongue pop and acrobatic, glamorous dance breaks — but juxtaposed with Justin’s natural charm, the real focus of the show (and the clear root of Alyssa’s character) sharpens. We see refreshingly mundane party planning moments — Justin yelping in concern as drag daughter Shangela balances an unnecessarily huge Frosty the Snowman ornament is great — and logistical snafus with his dance students, with one stubborn mom hammering nails into a prop with a wedge heel. Alyssa’s segments are treated more like fun cameos rife with glib but GIF-able moments where she riffs on everything from Justin’s studio clients to dating apps. It speaks to the broader appeal: A lot of these moments aren’t going to stick with you years later, but Justin’s charisma is always worth a few minutes of your time.
Emotionally, the show only throws softballs. There are some moments clearly intended to make you tear up — largely related to a strained relationship with his family — but nothing so blatantly emotionally terroristic as to make you cringe. And despite the fact that the Beyond Belief storyline is a little on the light side narratively, I still found myself emotionally invested in these horrifyingly flexible children and teens, despite the fact that my hips started hurting just from watching them (I stan for affable and talented teens Willow and Gabe, personally). The kids’ heartfelt testimonies during travel team tryouts bordered on pageantry — it was so honest in its manipulations that I could only respect the more cutthroat messages on display, hearkening to Justin’s “if you have it, use it” mantras.
As a queer person starved for queer content, it was a soothing contrast to the bathos of a Queer Eye, with its markedly intentional moments of emotional whiplash and naked insistence on trying too hard to make you cry. (On top of that, it’s easy not to be fond of a show that both stages a black man being pulled over without his knowledge and then turns into a half-thought-out pro-police PSA.) And since RuPaul has hit some extremely sour notes lately, it’s nice to see that the next generation of drag stars is doing more to break out and be seen.
