Voguing is a highly stylized dance to music that involves imitating the perfect lines and flexibility of models that we often see in magazines such as Vogue.
Influence within Queer Community: Voguing
Voguing started in the Queer community as a tool of empowerment. Its rich history provides a look into the power of media and how voguing has evolved.
Through this timeline, we can explore the path that voguing has taking throughout its origins and see where it has gone to now.
*P.S. the forums are just thoughtful questions, there's no place to respond on this timeline :(
What is Voguing?
Archie Burnett: striking a vogue pose
Beginnings: Emergence From Harlem (1930-1989)
1930s: New York-Harlem venues used to hold diverse parties. These extravagant parties were more white-owned until the 1960's
Did you know?
The parties were named "Spectacles in Color" and were a vital yet forgotten part of the Harlem Renaissance where divergence from the American norms was celebrated through the arts.
1960's: Harlem's gay black community staged their own parties and drag balls become more centralized on empowering those minorities that were being oppressed by American society, such as gay, black, or Latino individuals. This scene experienced backlash and police intimidation throughout the first half of the 20th century. By the early 1960s, the drag ball scene began coincide with the intensification of the Civil Rights movement. Although attended equally by black and white audiences, black queens were expected to “whiten up” their faces if they wanted a chance at winning a title. Frustrated by racial biases, black queens began to stage their own events.
1977: There was an introduction of Houses at balls. Houses are family like collectives of LGBT performers and dancers that competed in formal dance competitions called balls. Crystal LaBeija formed the House of LaBeija in 1972 as a promotional gimmick for a drag ball she was hosting with a friend
Did you know?
Houses originated in balls and this key element of the ball scene carried over to the vogue scene. One of the oldest and best-known houses is the House of Xtravaganza. These houses were social groups that acted as supportive new families for the queer youth who joined them. It would be entirely possible that queer individuals were faced with intolerance and shame from their biological families, so with nowhere to turn they formed their own self-supporting groups. Houses such as the House of Ninja also have some influential members that are sent out internationally to perform and compete.
1980s: AIDS epidemic left many queer men in need of a community that would not persecute them. Balls gained influence as an outlet for the fear and frustration of that decade. At these balls, there began these dance battles between houses or individuals, and that was the birth of VOGUING.
In these vogue battles, rivals tried to pin each other against the floor or wall using hand movements, but no physical contact. The style of the movements was a combined aggressive energy with poses that often included arm and hand movements that framed the face, similar to poses by Vogue models, hence voguing was born.
Caricamento...
A sample of the type of music that one might hear if they were witnessing a voguing battle.
Voguing was created by gay, Black, and Latino men for those individuals who were oppressed. It very specifically was for the queer, transgendered, queer, Black, and Latino community as a way of expressing oneself and empowerment. They were not accepted by society, and having a place where one's sexuality was accepted and through the form of dance was important.
Madonna: Vogue (1989)
On May 10, 1989 in New York, New York, pop artist Madonna was introduced to voguing at the Love Ball, an AIDS charity event.
CONTROVERSY: Madonna introduced voguing to the masses, but some others saw it as a form of cultural appropriation because she profited from a scene that was not hers. She erased the context of what voguing meant to the queer community. For example, there is the line "If makes no difference if you're black or white, if you're a boy or a girl". But the voguing community was intentionally created for the black, Latino queer community and Madonna was gaining immense profit while the queen who had taught Madonna voguing was not in a better state. Madonna was the first major white star to be criticized for appropriating vogue culture.
Did you know?
The balls and voguing nights at clubs were spaces in which a queer individual did not feel isolated, a safe space for free expression without the threat of physical and verbal harassment experienced outside of that space. Vogue culture was an escape from oppression and was a symbol of freedom taking up space with unbound and evocative movement. It is inseparable from the racial and sexual identity of its performers, and the lived experience of a queer person of color. With a white person taking over the scene and letting all take it, like Madonna's vogue, was a destruction of this symbol.
Forum
How do you feel about Madonna taking this culture and singing about it in the pop song, which pushed voguing into mainstream media?