Hollywood star and dance icon Fred Astaire was born into an immigrant German family and started to bring money in by dancing professionally with his sister by the time he was seven. Ginger Rogers, his most famous dance partner, was performing four shows a day in vaudeville when still a teenager and travelling from gig to gig on a child’s half-price fare by showing up at the ticket window carrying a doll.
Should Juicy Love Dion, who at 25 is following in both Fred’s shoes and Ginger’s pumps, one day decide to write an autobiography of a dancer’s life, she too will have tea to spill of her early years and gaining fame on So You Think You Can Dance and RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 18.
We caught up with her during her residency in Mykonos, Greece and, if you are 18 or older, you can see her this December in A Drag Queen Christmas when it makes four stops in Florida, including one at the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts in West Palm Beach.
A star is born
Known today to fans as Miami’s Afro Cuban Dancing Doll, Juicy Love Dion came into this world as Dariel Rodriguez.
“I have a vague memory that my parents did try to put me in a dance studio when I was really, really young, three or four years old maybe, because they saw my interest,” she recalled. “I was, ‘No, I want to dance by myself.’ And look at me now, I’m dancing by myself.”
While his brother and other kids played outside, young Dariel was watching television and finding inspiration.
“When I was around five years old, I stumbled upon Power Rangers. All their moves were super cool and it started there. Then I saw Bring It On, which is a cheerleading movie. That was one of my first interests with slipping and movement and all that crazy stuff. I was young and stretching already, doing splits and dancing for all my aunties.”
He continued to discover the possibilities of movement and theatricality with the 2012 Olympic gymnastics team and the reality show Dance Moms featuring young girls preparing for dance competitions. In sixth grade, he discovered dance idols were closer to home at Hialeah Gardens High School.
“Their dance team was fierce,” she exclaimed. “They were amazing and I was obsessed. They would breathe on the same count. They would all do facials on the same count. Their walk-ins for all the routines were all in sync. They were all perfect little Barbie dolls. I just knew I wanted to be there.”
As fate would have it, he attended feeder schools that led him to that exact high school
where he joined the dance team. He had to leave the team in his senior year due to financial constraints, yet that exit ultimately led Juicy directly into drag.
Stars align in the House of Dion
That path had begun earlier when Juicy became friends with an older student at school, one who would also one day become her mother in the House of Dion: Morphine Love Dion.
“She was one of the first gay people I met when I was 14 years old,” Juicy recalls. “She was already doing makeup at the time and was already Morphine Love. Fast forward to my senior year. She already had graduated, became a drag queen and did her own thing. I missed her and she had a show. I didn’t have interest in drag yet and didn’t think it was for me. I went to the show and I fell in love. I started watching Drag Race and knew I needed to be there.”
Fate stepped in when Morphine invited Juicy to a brunch Athena Dion was hosting.
“I sit through the brunch and I’m like a little gay boy finding drag the first time,” she laughed. “At the end of the brunch, Athena does a little dance off and I’m there with all my high school friends who are telling me to go up there. I went up and Athena saw me. She’s like, ‘Do you want a job? We’re going to put a wig on you and just send you out there.’ I feel like the rest is history.”
In fact, Juicy had left the dance team behind only to begin working at the drag brunch In her senior year and it became her first job coming out of high school.
While these three heavenly bodies in the constellation of the House of Dion remain best friends to this day, it would be a few years before Juicy and Athena would face off in the same season of Drag Race.
Shooting star
Dariel/Juicy’s first experience with TV came when cast in a male role for a quinceañera scene in the Netflix holiday film Christmas With You.
“It was a direct booking and I didn’t have to audition. They weren’t paying for the flight or the hotel. I was 20 years old and used my fake ID to check in to the hotel because you have to be 21. My fake ID that I’ve had since I was 17 came in handy. I remember I cried going to the airport. I was so scared and it was my first time traveling by myself and going to New York. I always told myself I wasn’t going to go to New York unless it was for work and I was going there to be in rehearsals for a movie. It felt like a storybook.”
Back in South Florida, Juicy performed at venues such as R House Wynwood and was named as the 2023 Best Drag Performer in the Best of Miami New Times Awards. The next year she was in front of a national audience in Season 18 of So You Think You Can Dance. Although she was eliminated in the choreography round, she proved her dancing chops when she became a contestant in RuPaul’s Drag Race finishing in the top four and winning the reunion Lip Sync LaLaPaRuZa Smackdown.
“When I was on Drag Race, I was seven months post operation from knee surgery, so I wasn’t at my 100%, but when you catch me on the road now, you will see me at my 100%,” she promised.
While just this past August she performed in front of massive crowds of 3,000 in both Chile and Brazil, it took some hustle to get to this point in her career.
“I started coming to Mykonos in 2022. They opened a new club called the Jackie O Yacht Club and my job was to fill it. I would go on the street and go to the bar next door. I would stand on a table. I would scream at people ‘Come to my show.’ They would literally just come to the club to watch me and then leave. And sometimes the bar wouldn’t fill, right? I was a brat in those days and didn’t want to perform for an empty room. I didn’t want to, but there were moments that I did.”
Empty rooms won’t be an issue when Juicy joins the widely popular A Drag Queen Christmas presented by Murray and Peter. On this tour, she’ll share the stage with Myki Meeks, Nini Coco, Darlene Mitchell, Discord Addams, Crystal Methyd and Silky Ganache in a sexy seasonal spectacular hosted by Nina West.
“This is my first year and I am so nervous but excited,” she said. “It’s going to be great. It’s gonna be so fun.”
Finding her place in the firmament
“I don’t know and I can’t even explain it, but I just always had this love and need to dance. I hear music and I move and it’s been that way since I could walk, I think. I’ve just always had this innate feeling to dance.”
Today, she is sharing the stage with the biggest names in drag having earned her place there.
“I was out at the club yesterday at a cocktail bar and saw a friend that I see once a year who said, ‘Wow, you’ve grown up. You’ve changed so much as a person. You have just stepped into yourself completely.’ To feel all of it come full circle has been amazing. I just feel so grateful to the universe. I believe in manifestation. I believe in dreams. The very, very young me was asking for all of this and would be so proud.”
