Well-Said: Pride Spotlight on Loisada’s Very Own Ellanna St. Lavi

The Center for Wellbeing and Happiness celebrated Pride with a B-I-N-G-O party hosted by Loisada’s very own “Ellanna St. Lavi.” To delve deeper into the multifaceted world of this remarkable drag queen, our intern, Meghna Mhatre, had the pleasure of interviewing Lenin Alevante, the equally vivacious persona behind Ellanna. In this interview, we shine a spotlight on Lenin’s roots, artistry, and vision for the Lower East Side community.

Meghna: Thank you for talking to us. Tell us about you, the communities you come from, and the identities you hold.

Lenin: I was really born in the Dominican Republic. I came here when I was four years old, and learning English was my first stepping stone. Like, I knew if I learned English, I can become more part of American culture. Through music, I ended up expressing myself and learning English faster because once you learn a song, you can then translate all these words in your mind. It became my world. Everything I feel I can almost write into a song, and then that freed me a little bit to understand where I come from to where I have to be now because it’s not easy. 

I had this alter ego in my mind all along that sort of kept me protected. [She told me], ‘See things like this. Just hear, don’t talk. Just listen. Say this.’ I made her a persona, and that’s Ellanna St. Lavi. So, then I started developing this character that became very motherly. I started this house—it was House of Lavi Ducatti Productions. I picked kids from the community, in the building I lived in, and I was a part of Theater for the New City. At some point, I have 14 dancers. I’m doing costumes for them. I’m doing dance choreography for songs. We’re in my house right up the block. We just have the living room space. I found these mirrors in the garbage, and I picked them up and then created this whole wall. But I find all these things the universe gives me, and I find a home.

Meghna: Yes, that’s amazing. How did you become involved in drag and what does it mean to you personally?

Lenin: It was with a friend of mine, Terry Lee King, who works for the Theater for the New City. I said, ‘I need a drag mother. I don’t know anything about anything, and I have this passion inside of me, and I have a look.’

Eventually, he came through, and he made me do my first lip sync. I sing, and I write music, but I’ve never lip-synced, and, to be honest, lip syncing is hard. You got to convey an emotion that’s supernatural. So, I seen him do a couple of things, and he just mimicked the words, and eventually my first drag thing was the lip sync. That made me so comfortable. It’s freedom—you become the words of someone else. You embody the lyrics and the emotion, and you learn the story of that person who wrote it. 

Meghna: What messages do you try to convey through your performances?

Lenin : You need to pick your family, and I think the structure of having a maternal and paternal being in your life is everything. I think that even in gay culture, family is so important and how you grow—without a family in comparison to with a family—is so different. So, I think every drag queen learns to be a mother, and these drag kings learn to be a father, and before you know it, there’s a family like Pose. I just think [Pose] is the most magical story of gay life that really touches the heart of everything because the way [Blanca] picked family in comparison to her mother was totally different. [Her mother] was just selling something or buying something to make her look good. But Blanca—her heart is a lot of what I wear. 

I had a great mom. She’s just a peaceful pacifist, you know? She believes in no war, and that helped me a lot. She allowed her home to be open to what I wanted to do. She was like the grandmother of things, and I am like the mother of things, and before you know [it], that’s our family. It just became the most important thing for me—having a sense of family.

“I learn from everybody as much as they’ll learn from me.”

Meghna: That’s amazing. What are your ideas of family in this community?

Lenin: Get together more. Like I have worked on Sixth Street for five years. I have lived on Eighth Street for over 20 years. I had never met the Sixth Street community, but when I got there, everybody loved Lenin. 

You’re learning something from everybody. And I’m like, ‘Okay, cool. Let’s have this conversation.’ It’s like, you go to the hairdresser, and you’re not going to talk about nothing. I learn from everybody as much as they’ll learn from me, and I always try to have good advice when somebody brings forth something. A lot of people gave me advice, gave me a lot of clothes when I first came here—boxes of things. I’m always giving something away. It’s the most fun I have. I find things from the universe. (motions as if handing a box) ’Well, here you go!’ 

“Having fun is everything we love to do, but we can’t have fun unless we are balanced together – unless we are really an active community, you know, seeing each other.”

Meghna: Would you say there were any significant milestones in your life or in the community or in any part of your journey that have shaped you?

Lenin: I’ll say Green Oasis, the garden, was a big part of where I learned the most how to hands-on build and, in this concrete jungle, feel earth. Actually feel the soil and actually touch the plants that live around us and provide air, so I was very fortunate to have that. 

Then I went to Theater for the New City—that shaped me and gave me a stage. The biggest part of Theater for the New City is that once you’re a part of street theater, you get to use this space for free. So, you’d have four big theaters in one big building and one rehearsal space downstairs. Pianos everywhere! That exchange is wonderful. In TNC, I also learned how to be disciplined—how to go into a space and leave it as you came in because you have to protect the space we have.

Meghna: That’s amazing. It seems like you’re a part of many different communities.

Lenin: I know, I am, and that’s the funny thing. I can really talk to anybody.  There’s one [person] in particular—she writes amazing poetry. I call her mi poeta. She’s very sick and very ill. She wrote me this whole poem, a couple of them now, and I felt like that gives her life. That’s the community exchange. Now I’m trying to get her to record her poetry, so she can have something. My biggest fear is for her to pass, and nobody knows what I know. She writes these funny, quirky, different things that bring you joy, and I’m like, ‘If only you had somebody hear you, believe in you, because the community can see you, and they’d rather deplete you sometimes, in a sense, then build you. And I don’t know why that is. I feel like everybody has a certain light, and you can never be my light. I can never be your light and vice versa. But together, we are brighter.’

Meghna: I’ve loved everything you’ve said. Uplifting and empowering each other is really very helpful. How was this event for you? How did you prepare for it? 

Lenin: I had all this drag stuff I pulled out. I mean, my house looked like an Amazon warehouse. Nothing fit me. So I had to go out there, buy a look. And I was like, ‘Oh my God, how do I do this?’ It was like, no matter what I feel like, I have to make it—as a responsibility to the community and to you guys. And this is a big opportunity. It was just the jitters, but when I got here, I was just like, ‘I love this. This is what I’m supposed to do. I can do this every day.’

Meghna: What is your dream for the community?

Lenin: My dream for the community is unity. I think we spend a lot of time hiding who we are because we’re afraid the next person won’t want to listen or won’t want to connect. I try to throw my natural, authentic self at people, so we can try to connect in a very solid way. My dream is finding a way to unite and being responsible for a little bit of that under the radar. I don’t really like a lot of attention because Ellanna already does that in her own way, so when I’m doing [something] for the community, I just want to help in a sense that nobody knows I’m doing this.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Well-Said is a virtual salon for personal essays, interviews, and reflections from the Lower East Side community. If you are interested in submitting to Well-Said, please email cwbh@girlsclub.org.