STILL STRIKING A POSE
Dancers recall Madonna’s groundbreaking tour
The documentary Strike a Pose, about the male dancers from Madonna’s groundbreaking 1990 Blond Ambition tour, which is available to stream nationwide, reconnects most of the group. Three of the dancers — Jose Guitierez, Kevin Stea and Oliver Crumes — reflect on their moment in the sun.
The interview has been edited and condensed.
Q Jose, you were an active voguer before Madonna hired you. What were those early days in New York City like for you?
Guitierez: (Voguing) was a very gay, urban underground dance in gay clubs and hangouts. Prior to that, it had been around for like 50 or 60 years. (But it took) somebody like Madonna to bring it mainstream. I was able to mix my professional (dance) training into the underground form. Stea: You changed the game. Jose’s a trained dancer so he brought all these technical skills — his elasticity, his flexibility — and that changed it from more showy into an actual dance form. Working with Madonna ... created this really strong gaystraight alliance. It brought the gays dancing with the straights. There’s a common ground in dance and music.
Q When you look back at the Blond Ambition tour, how do you think it compares to today’s arena shows?
Stea: The attention to storytelling, the theatrical arc has never quite been matched ... Guitierez: Now (there’s) 50 dancers, back then it was just seven of us. There was nobody to hide behind. It was more theatre. Now it’s like: the costume, the big head piece and the stage set. It distracts from the dancing and storytelling.
Q Oliver, you were the lone straight guy on the tour. The documentary presents you as this kind of flamboyant tough guy from the hip-hop world hired to give Madonna’s tour some edge. What was it like learning to vogue from scratch?
Crumes: I’d never, ever heard of it until I (listened to Vogue) and saw Jose and Louis (Camacho, another dancer) teaching us. It was like a new way of style — to give attitude, to be sure you’re self-confident. It didn’t come natural, but they made the choreography very easy for us.
Q In the 1991 concert film Madonna: Truth or Dare, you come across as pretty homophobic at times, using a derogatory word to describe your fellow dancers. But in Strike a Pose you have a reckoning with your past views.
Crumes: I never remember saying (those words in the film). I saw it recently and I got scared. ... I could easily get thrown under the bus ... or hated by the community, even though it was done in 1990. (Crumes pulls a piece of paper from his pocket and begins to read): 25 years ago, I was very young and naive ... and being in the entertainment business all my life, working with all types of personalities, I have come to see we are all human beings who have emotions, hearts and feelings. The only thing that makes us different is our choice of different or same genders to love.