The voguing scene became mainstream after Malcolm McLaren and, shortly afterwards, Madonna co-opted it: in 1989, Willi Ninja, iconic dancer and choreographer from the House of Ninja, appeared indeed in McLaren's track "Deep in Vogue" and danced in the accompanying music video.
Clad in a peplum jacket that vaguely called to mind a doublet matched with skin-tight leggings, Ninja looked as if he had stepped out of a Renaissance painting. Yet this historical vision ended up looking extremely modern thanks to the way Ninja danced with dynamic movements inspired by the static poses of models in the pages of Vogue.
Introduced to voguing by Jose Gutierez Xtravaganza and Luis Camacho Xtravaganza, Madonna released in 1990 her song and video "Vogue", while, the following year, Jennie Livingston's landmark documentary "Paris Is Burning" came out.
Though criticised for the way it reinforced certain stereotypes and for not compensating properly its participants, "Paris Is Burning" remains an important document, since it attempted to chronicle the ballroom scene in the '80s in New York through interviews with some of its main players, such as Pepper LaBeija and Angie Xtravaganza.
At the very beginning of the documentary, an interviewee explains what is a ball: "Gay people, men, gather together under one roof and decide to have a competition amongst themselves, balls. I went to a ball, I got a trophy and now everybody wants to know me."
In a way this wasn't a new tradition as history shows that in the mid-to-late 1800s there were already charity masquerade gala balls for well-to-do African-Americans, with men in female drag and women in male drag.
The tradition developed in the early '60s with Marcel Christian (Crystal), founder and legendary Mother of the House of LaBeija, staging the first proper ball.
For the communities of transgender and gay people of colour, balls became the answer to a society that turned them into outcasts or pretended not to see them, it wasn't the American dream becoming real, but a personal interpretation of the American dream.
Pepper LaBeija defined the balls in "Paris Is Burning" as "our fantasy of being a super star, like the Oscars or whatever or being on a runway, like a model".
The ball community eventually started splitting into more houses - the House of Dupree, the House of Xtravaganza, the House of Dior, the House of Saint Laurent and so on - that became tight groups of people, safe havens for queer black or Latino kids rejected by their own families.
In "Paris Is Burning" a "house" is defined as a street gang fighting not in the street, but on the floor of a club where the members of a house performed, or rather walked, in various "categories".
The balls revolved indeed around the latter, the main idea being that people walking in a specific category had to look genuine, they had to embody the real thing.
While at the beginning of the ball scene most participants would copy Las Vegas showgirls, in the '70s the movie star look prevailed, but in the '80s new categories started arriving, with themes such as military, executive, town and country, butch queen, opulence, and so on. Some of the categories were also inspired by TV series, such as Dynasty, and by fashion and runway models as well.
The categories were usually introduced by a sarcastically caustic emcee, ready to encourage, support, make fun or ridicule the person walking down the dancefloor.
The various categories allowed the people walking in them to fulfil their dreams, adapt their identity and prove they could become anything they wanted if they were given a chance.
In "Paris Is Burning" Dorian Corey, Mother of the House of Corey, states: "In real life you can't get a job as an executive unless you have the educational background and the opportunity. Now, the fact that you are not an executive is merely because of the social standing of life. Black people have a hard time getting anywhere and those that do are usually straight. In a ballroom you can be anything you want. You're not really an executive but you're looking like an executive. You're showing the straight world that I can be an executive if I had the opportunity because can look like one, and that is like a fulfillment."
Voguing was an integral part of the balls: this form of body expression developed from shade, a nonviolent way of fighting during the balls, a form of dance that two people did because they didn't like each other and, instead of fighting, they danced it out on the dancefloor and the best person at throwing shade won.
Shade developed into voguing thanks to people like Willi Ninja who had a talent for creating energetic routines that combined drama, pantomime, lines and shapes borrowed from hieroglyphics and movements taken from gymnastics, with the rigour of ballet and the elegance of a fashion model (Ninja went on to teach runway walking to models, including Naomi Campbell and Christy Turlington).
Six years ago there was a renewed interest in the scene thanks to the ballroom volume Voguing and the House Ballroom Scene City 1989-92, featuring photographs by Chantal Regnault and including a series of interviews with the founders of the House of Xtravaganza, the House of Mugler, LaBeija and Saint Laurent.
Around the same time comic book "Fashion Beast" by Alan Moore and Malcolm McLaren paid homage once again to legendary houses such as LaBeija and Xtravaganza, and now the ballroom scene has become popular once again thanks FX series "Pose".
Set in the 1980s and comprising eight episodes, "Pose" was written by Steven Canals, Brad Falchuk and Ryan Murphy (who also directed the first two episodes); writer and activist Janet Mock and Our Lady J have also been serving as writers and producers, while one of the consultants is legendary House of Xtravaganza Grandfather Hector Xtravaganza.
The transgender lineup shines with five brilliant stars - MJ Rodriguez (Blanca), Dominique Jackson (Elektra), Indya Moore (Angel), Hailie Sahar (Lulu) and Angelica Ross (Candy) - acting alongside Evan Peters (Stan), Kate Mara (Patty), Billy Porter (Pray Tell), Ryan Jamaal Swain (Damon), Dyllón Burnside (Ricky) and Angel Bismark Curiel (Lil Papi).
The ballroom scene becomes the protagonist from the very first episode in which Elektra, Mother of the House of Abundance, and her children steal clothes from a museum for an upcoming ball with a royal theme. In the meantime, a previous Abundance member, Blanca, decides to leave Elektra to become a Mother herself and forms the House of Evangelista.
There are quite a few parallelisms with "Paris Is Burning" in the series, first and foremost the balls that both in the documentary and in the fiction are events where the participants display their arrogance, style, wit and seductiveness. Even brilliant Pray Tell, emcee extraordinaire, evokes in his comments and presentations the real emcees seen in "Paris Is Burning".
The series could be defined as a dance musical based on juxtapositions: the world of the balls Vs the universe of the yuppies working in the Trump Tower; trans women and gay people of colour Vs a white world and a white gay scene that reject them; dishonest fakers Vs honest drag queens (Stan, the young white executive who falls in love with Angel, realises that she is more real and honest than him, while he is living a lie both in his job and at home, in his suburban house with his perfect wife Patty).
The characters will have to fight against stereotypes and archetypes and solve life dilemmas such as finding one's identity through a sex change operation or giving it up to keep a wealthy lover who opposes the idea of a full sex change.
There is fun and there is also solidarity: in between all the glitter, the posing and voguing on the dance floor, the characters highlight the importance of the surrogate family recreated around the "house", while Blanca takes her role of Mother very seriously, encouraging talented yet shy and scared Damon to enter into the dance academy (a very Fame twist to this story).
Yet not eveything is about glamour: the characters sharing their memories of family rejections, evoke the story told by Pepper LaBeija in "Paris is Burning", but there is also the nightmare of discovering of being HIV positive, followed by the hell of dying of AIDS abandoned in a hospital room where not even nurses want to enter for fear of contagion, events that bring to mind the memory of the many players in the ballroom and voguing scene who died too young and too soon.
In a nutshell, there's bleakness and tragedy and a sense of unbearable loss in "Pose", but there is also a strong belief in your dreams and in the potential of people and in doing something good for the other people in your community and group.
As a whole the show looks authentic, besides it offers fashion fans the chance to see some wonderful designs and styles by Lou Eyrich, well-known for her work on "American Horror Story" and "Nip/Tuck": there's extravagant gowns at the balls, quite a few of them evoking French couture; Elektra may look stunningly fierce in high fashion, but she looks even better in an iconic Patrick Kelly number covered in golden buttons; Pray Tell is a flamboyant dandy and talented dressmaker (though he doesn't use bootleg logoed fabrics like Dapper Dan, his skills and passion for making garments will definitely remind viewers of the tailor of Harlem).
Shows such as RuPaul's "Drag Race" and now "Pose" may have brought the LGBTQ+ scenes into the mainstream in very controversial hard times, but there is also something else to say about the TV series.
The dystopia of "The Handmaid's Tale" may echo Trump's draconian and hostile policies, but "Pose" seems to point at human rights and freedoms of queer people of colour being at risk, while it uses the tensions between the white yuppies in the Trump Tower and the ball scene characters to trace the rise of the white power presidency.
While "Pose" is an entertaining series with the power of relaunching the voguing scene worldwide, there is a tangible worry that culture vultures may end up taking more than just inspiration from its stories. Deep down you know indeed that characters à la Pray Tell would have great impact on a real fashion runway and it is probably just a question of time before we see in shows such as Alessandro Michele's ones for Gucci, a voguing contest introduced with the words "Work...Live...Pose!". Somehow you know it will happen. Till then, there's not much we can do but strike a pose, as we wait for the next musician or fashion house ready to jump on the bandwagon and co-opt again the scene.
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