Cherdonna Shinatra


Cherdonna Shinatra is the stage name of Jody Kuehner, a Seattle-based, American dancer, drag queen and performance artist. Kuehner won the Stranger Genius Award in Performance in 2015. Kuehner has been called a "female impersonator impersonator" and describes her own performance as Cherdonna as "a female-bodied person, presenting as a male-bodied person, presenting as a female". She has been mistaken for a man by some audience members who don't expect to see the "exaggerat femininity" displayed by a drag persona to be a biological woman. After a performance in Seattle she had her breasts grabbed by a person who expected to find a prosthetic, and she performed onstage several times with a male partner before he realized she was not also male.
Kuehner was artist in residence and instructor at Velocity Dance Center in 2014 and part of a 2014-2015 multidisciplinary exhibition at Frye Art Museum in Seattle. Kuehner describes herself as queer.