He’s the real deal in this scene
BEFORE he went on to strike a pose with Madonna in the 1990 classic “Vogue” video and her subsequent Blond Ambition Tour, José Gutiérrez Xtravaganza made his first fierce moves on the Christopher Street pier at the West Side Highway. It was there, as a 16-year-old, where he discovered the runway-ready dance that twirled out from the underground culture of black and Latin gay men in the ’80s.
“I automatically fell in love with it,” says Gutiérrez, who hit the pier with some older students who were also studying dance at the LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts. “I was like, ‘What is this?’ It was something like a faceoff. The different ‘houses’ would battle each other with this attitude. Voguing is 80 percent attitude.”
That attitude is being celebrated in the new FX series “Pose.” The show’s set in the mid-’80s, during the height of the New York ballroom scene, where “houses” were like families and voguing was the mode of expression. For Gutiérrez, now 48, it wasn’t so much about who would take home the grand prize in the competition; it was about finding himself as a young gay man and being a part of a community.
“It was like discovering this whole world,” says Gutiérrez, who also appeared in the landmark 1991 documentary “Paris Is Burning,” which went inside the ballroom scene. “I was so inspired by people like me, my own kind. It was really welcoming. Seeing that so early on, it opened me up to so many things artistically and personally because I identified.”
Gutiérrez encountered the House of Xtravaganza on the pier, quickly impressed them with his skills, and joined their ranks, adopting their name as his own. “They were like a fashion gang, kind of like a ‘West Side Story’ feel,” he says.
Being of Dominican descent, although he was born and raised in the East Village, Gutiérrez was also drawn to the fact that the House of Xtravaganza was predominantly Latino. “They were looked upon to be so different,” he says. “I wanted to be a part of that.”
But after being discovered by Madonna at Manhattan’s legendary Sound Factory nightclub, Gutiérrez took voguing and ballroom culture to the mainstream in the “Vogue” video and then a world tour. When he returned to New York, though, AIDS had taken its toll on the scene.
“It was really good, and then it got really bad with the AIDS epidemic,” he recalls. “It had such an effect. Everyone got really scared. It was like people dying everywhere, sick in the hospital. I was losing my friends.”
Now, Gutiérrez gets to see some of those who passed away come back to life on “Pose,” thanks to show co-creator Ryan Murphy. “He took the stories of a lot of these people who are no longer here, who appear in ‘Paris Is Burning,’ and somewhat gave them life.”