Danity Kane is damaged no more

“New York always calls you back,” Danity Kane's D. Woods says while sitting next to fellow member Aundrea Fimbres in the greenroom of Brooklyn nightclub Paragon.

The two singers have just come from Danity Kane’s sold-out show at Webster Hall, entourage in tow, ready to meet a club full of fans at the official afterparty; the who's who of Brooklyn’s dance music community, like DJ Miss Parker and Juliana Huxtable, are scheduled to play.

It's been a minute since they were last here, in this city, together, as Danity Kane; Woods and Fimbres fell out of contact after the chart-topping girl group first disbanded in 2009, a rupture that was documented on the MTV reality TV show, Making The Band. “Not for any specific reason,” Woods says. “We just went our separate ways.”

That show followed Sean “P. Diddy” Combs as he auditioned, formed and eventually brought the girl group to international stardom off of millennial hits like “Show Stopper” and “Damaged.” Since the band’s disbandment and Combs’ latest court case where he was found guilty on two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution, Woods and her fellow original group members Dawn Richard and Aubrey O’Day have all spoken extensively about the trauma they endured during their years working with Combs. Recently, Woods, Fimbres and O’Day decided to bring Danity Kane back for a month-long reunion tour, called the Untold Chapter, stopping across the east and west coasts of the U.S. for the month of December.

“We’re reclaiming [Danity Kane],” Fimbres says.

At Paragon, and on their reunion tour, Combs is the unspoken elephant in the room. O’Day is noticeably absent tonight due to her own afterparty and “some stuff related to the Netflix documentary [Sean Combs: The Reckoning],” Woods says. (Also missing from the current configuration of Danity Kane are Richard and Shannon Bex, though Bex made a video addressing fans that’s included in the tour). But even as the world grapples with the extent of Combs’s abuse, there is still space to celebrate Danity Kane, whose show earlier this evening inspired a theatre full of fans to belt their hearts out to “Damaged” and “Show Stopper.”

Fimbres has been out of the limelight since 2014, after Danity Kane briefly re-formed and disbanded again, to focus on being a wife and stepmom. She’s spent the past many years living a quieter life in the Fresno suburb, Visalia, but she’s never stopped singing. “It’s empowering to take back what is ours. We can’t change what happened, but that doesn’t mean we didn’t work our butts off to make those albums and create Danity Kane,” she says.

Woods adds, “We performed these songs in 2008, but I didn’t have as much fun as I’m having now. I’m so much more self-assured, self-aware and confident.”

Tonight is Fibres’s first time “being outside-outside in Brooklyn," according to Woods. Woods, on the other hand, has lived much of her adult life in New York City, and cites the recently closed, nearby Bushwick bar Benton’s World Famous as a favorite old haunt. She’s excited to share the borough’s “vibe” with her bandmate.

The collision of mid-aughts pop nostalgia with the steamy Brooklyn underground (alongside a somber awareness of the group’s formative experience in the industry) lends the whole evening a feeling of both heaviness and hedonism.

At first glance, it's a typical night at Paragon. Fabulous young queers rocking sunglasses and mesh tops move through the foggy space with confidence and musicality. An impressive crew of Brooklyn nightlife artists like Cakes Da Killa, LSDXOXO, Memphy, Sausha and FASHION can be seen mozying between Paragon’s other green room and the top floor’s throne-like DJ booth. On both the upstairs and downstairs dance floors, late-night movers gyrate to sounds provided by the evening’s line-up, which, besides the aforementioned DJ Miss Parker and Juliana Huxtable, includes singer Alexis Jae and DJs boyyyish and purp.

Tonight's occasion, however, also carries with it a somber note. “I’ve been listening to Danity Kane since I was a child. Now that I’m older, the music hits different,” says attendee Blaize, a DJ. “Revisiting the music damn near 20 years later, I’m like ‘Oh I actually have fallen in love and I know it feels like to feel ‘damaged.’”

“Knowing what Danity Kane went through just makes me want to support them more,” Blaize adds.

When Woods and Fimbres finally emerge they are met with screams from the club goers, but there’s a trace of communal weariness, too. Since the publicization of Combs' legal trials, much has been said online about the stolen careers and unfulfilled potential of the female victims and artists in his orbit, including Danity Kane. It’s been a long ride for the group, and their fans.

“Thank you all for being down for us and welcoming us back. It’s been healing. We’ve been reclaiming our youth, our music, and celebrating what you all still seem to be in love with,” Woods says from Paragon’s famous central staircase, her voice seemingly imbued with apparent surprise.

Fimbres and Woods cue “Hold Me Down” and "Show Stopper," and the crowd sings along. It’s communal karaoke and the voices, largely made up of dancers in their 20s and early 30s, are loud and raspy. Then, Woods and Fimbres transition into their biggest hit “Damaged,” which Woods prefaces with the comment: “I would like to propose that Danity Kane is no longer 'Damaged.’”

As everyone gets to song’s chorus — “My heart is damaged [...] How you gonna fix it, fix it, fix it?” — a mishmash feeling of nostalgia, joy, melancholy, all mix up in the gel-lit fog. The crowd turns it into a mantra. The people keep dancing. There’s no clear answer, but the music helps.