How I fell in love with voguing
It all started in a tiny, dimly lit, notorious basement club in a small town. You descended two sets of steep stairs to enter, then rang a bell and waited. Maxine, who eschewed makeup and pleasantries, opened the door two inches and asked: “Member?” If you weren’t one, bye Felicia. It was to protect the people inside.
Rumours of what happened inside were salacious. This was compounded by the club’s name, Secrets. Shoooosh! Don’t you dare tell anyone your dirty little secret!
Our secret was that we were gay and many, like me, were closeted. The small town was Chatham in Kent, UK – somewhere the Guardian described as having “the general disposition towards gloominess, misery and greyness”. But down in this deep, dark, pokey basement gay club, I discovered the colour, gloss and fabulosity that is voguing.
The first and most important thing to say about voguing – a highly stylised, proudly queer form of dancing – is that is was invented not by Madonna, but by New York’s black and Latino LGBTQI community. It became popular in the 1980s ball scene subculture in Harlem. Admittedly, though, it was later that I discovered its black history, to which I now give thanks and worship.
The ball scene characterised by voguing is captured in the 1990 documentary Paris is Burning, currently on Netflix. Whenever a baby gay says he hasn’t seen it, I rewatch it, to school him and re-delight myself. I must’ve seen it a dozen times. It has a rich linguistic legacy, the impact on today’s vernacular I’ve written about.
Voguing was more than just dance for the black, Hispanic and Asian queer people who attended those Harlem balls. It was fantastical escapism, defiance of social norms and a survival technique for those ostracised due to their race and sexual orientation. “Houses” were formed of surrogate families, headed by a drag, queer or trans “mother” who took care of her “children”, often after they’d been kicked out of home when they came out. Houses were called names like the House of LaBeija, Xtravaganza or Ninja and the mother and children would adopt the surname of their House, creating alter egos in a microcosm where they were accepted and could compete with one another on the level playing field that society denied them.
There’s no way I could compare my lot in life to theirs; I’m especially sensitive to accusations of cultural appropriation which have sometimes been levelled at everyone from Madonna to Paris is Burning’s white, lesbian director Jennie Livingston. But, like Livingston and Madonna, I was deeply inspired by them (while always checking my white privilege).
When I frequented Secrets, it was 2000 and I was 17; the UK’s age of consent hadn’t yet been equalised to 16 so it was technically illegal for anyone to have sex with me. I had to find other ways to use up all that youthful energy.
Although tiny, Secrets still crammed a stage inside its matchbox interior – every gay club, no matter how small, has a stage because all gays must be seen above other gays.
The stage was mainly dominated by Monica, a trans woman who never missed a Saturday night at Secrets.All the makeup Maxine eschewed was compensated for by Monica, who wore enough for them both. In a way, they were the mothers of the House of Chatham: two strong women who shunned society’s expectations of female conventions and lived their respective truths.
Monica would rarely readily relinquish her stage but, as her children grew in confidence, she began to invite them up to showcase their talents to all 23 people watching from the dancefloor. When the Spice Girls’ Who Do You Think You Are played, a chosen few would ascend.
Everyone in Secrets had a song that was theirs. An unwritten rule dictated that the stage would clear and the song was theirs to, unofficially, perform. For Matthew, my best friend, it was Shirley Bassey’s History Repeating. “Steps Lee” had any song by Steps. A man known only as “the Grinch” performed his self-choreographed, homosexually homicidal version of Murder on the Dancefloor.
A screen would slowly unravel
on the stage to display songs which had atmosphere-enhancing live performances when there was no unofficial stage performer. It was on that screen I first saw the 1990 MTV awards performance when Madonna was dressed as Marie Antoinette - the floppy screen dropped tantalisingly to those initial clicks of Madonna’s Vogue. Transfixed, I decided I wanted this to be my song. But I needed to earn it.
I studied every move complete with the concertina fan flicks. I watched every single Madonna performance of Vogue, learned how she varied it each time and created my own melange version.
It became my gay awakening, and my party trick. I loved how it was unapologetically queer – both non-masculine but also comprising strong shapes and tough attitudes. It was choreographed cognitive dissonance.
Willi Ninja, the world’s greatest voguer, became my new hero and benchmark as soon as I learned about its black gay history on the pay-perhour internet at my local library. He described voguing as “fighting through the medium of dance: it’s like taking two knives and cutting each other up through dance”.
I’ve since had vogue-offs in gay nightclubs in London, New York and Sydney. There are some promising voguers out there. My children are learning.
Madonna’s famed troupe of black, Latino and Asian dancers on her Blonde Ambition tour included José Gutiérez, also known as José Xtravaganza from the House of Xtravaganza. He went on to feature in Strike a Pose, a documentary which follows all those dancers since that 1990 tour. And he cameos in what is, for my money, the best program of the last five years, Pose, which has injected fresh interest in voguing. Every trans character is played by a trans actor, which is revolutionary, but shouldn’t be.
Many talented dancers and voguers of the 1980s Harlem ball scene were killed by the HIV crisis. Some were murdered in transphobic hate crimes. To continue their legacy feels, I hope, less like appropriation and more like appreciation. We’re all part of the same LGBTQI family.
I do wonder, though, how old I can legitimately be to jump up on stage at a gay club to Vogue before I start looking tragic. So far, it hasn’t happened. Or if it has, I’m having too much fun to care.
To continue their legacy feels, I hope, less like appropriation and more like appreciation