Bolly-Illusion, an East London Drag sensation slaying the stage in the world of cabaret for over 4 years. They infuse Indian music and beats to showcase their Southern-Indian heritage, there’s no light bulb moves here but you’ll defo want to get up out of your seat when you see them twirling around in a 6-inch stiletto.

They have been seen dancing in Marvel’s 'Eternals', other accomplishments include being featured in Vogue Italia, I-Weigh and Gay Times.

Twirling alongside them for Anti-Valentines Day is drag beauty Saya Tikka, a drag queen that has been born and raised in India but finds her inner-diva in the heart of Bishopsgate Institute.

At this event, they'll both take you in to a different queer Valentine's Day, A Bollywood Journey into being Anti!

SL Grange is a poet, theatre-maker, artist and researcher of queer history. Recent work includes Difficult Matter, a residency and art exhibition at Triangle, Deptford about shipwright Mary Lacy / William Chandler; Letters of No Moment, a poetry project working with female voices in The National Archives sixteenth and seventeenth century High Court of Admiralty records; We Elizabethans, a collaboration with E.M. Parry on board ONCA Barge for Brighton Fringe; and A Note to Mary Frith, commissioned by Shakespeare’s Globe for Notes to the Forgotten She-Wolves.

SL Grange won the 2021 Poetry Wales pamphlet competition and the resulting pamphlet Bodies and Other Haunted Houses is out now from Seren Books.

East London Strippers Collective is a network of feisty, feminist and fiercely independent women, who also happen to be strippers. Founded in 2014, the ELSC are committed to supporting and promoting self-organisation among strippers and lapdancers, challenging stigma around sex work, standing up to exploitation and fighting for improved safety and harm-reduction in the wider sex industry.

Life Drawing with ELSC is a natural progression from the age-old practice of hiring professional harlots and hussies as models for art. Classes are fast paced and often involve high-octane aerial pole poses. More traditional life drawing poses as well as nods to the “lap dance” encourage a fun, mischievous mood throughout the class.

Aimée Lê is a Vietnamese American writer and performer. She received her PhD in English and Practice-based Research from Royal Holloway, University of London, where she was an associate member of the Poetics Research Centre, and has exhibited and published her work internationally, with writing in Prolit, P-Queue, Muzzle, and elsewhere. Her most recent poetry collection is Erectric Schlock (Broken Sleep Books, 2022).

Aimée will perform work from the forthcoming 2023 anthology Pertinent Actions (Osmosis Press), as well as some unpublished new writing exploring bodily extremity and the consequences of repressed sexuality.

Jamie Hakim is a lecturer in culture, media and creative industries at King’s College, London. His research interests lie at the intersection of digital cultures, intimacy, embodiment and care. His book Work That Body: Male Bodies in Digital Culture was published by Rowman & Littlefield in 2019. He was principle investigator on the ESRC funded ‘Digital Intimacies: how queer men use their smartphones to negotiate their cultures of intimacy’, which is partnered with sexual health organisations the Terrence Higgins Trust, London Friend and Waverley Care. Alongside co-authors James Cummings and Ingrid Young he has a book with the working title Digital Intimacies: Queer Men, Smartphones and Cultures of Intimacy coming out in 2024 with Bloomsbury Academic. As part of the Care Collective he has also co-authored The Care Manifesto: The Politics of Interdependence (Verso, 2020).

Jordan Osserman is a lecturer in the Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies at the University of Essex, UK, and a psychoanalyst in formation. His research interests include the medical humanities, left wing politics, and gender/sexuality studies. His writing has been published in Radical Philosophy, Transgender Studies Quarterly, Viewpoint and Tribune Magazine. His book, Circumcision on the Couch: The Cultural, Psychological, and Gendered Dimensions of the World's Oldest Surgery was published with Bloomsbury Press this year.