Getty Images “They don’t even know what they’re looking at!” was meant to comfort me, but couldn’t quite eclipse my concern about extracting Blackness in performance for New York’s art patrons—a concern that echoes loudly at this year’s Met Gala. The retort spoke volumes. During an Off-Broadway workshop, the creative leadership asked us, a Black femme cast, to embody abstracted Baptist church ladies–the sharp, dandy, culturally subversive women of my memory. When prompted to reflect on the work, my checking account begged for my silence. But the spirit of Mamacita—my late, Black Baptist great-grandmama, a colleague of dandy theorists W.E.B....