Hello World,
This is Elegance and this is my new portal ReneGayze. It's a blog dedicated to underground culture. I am starting it because I just don't see enough writing about the things that I hold dear. What are those thing, you ask? Precious to me are those hidden places and spaces where people seek refuge from what's expected, the norm,so that they can become themselves. Vogue Knights at Escuelita's is one of those places.
Tucked away in a basement in Times Square NYC, on 8th Ave between 39th and 38th street is The Event. Its a weekly competition where primarily black and Latino gay and people of trans experience compete in Vogue dancing battles according to categories (More on this in the following blog with videos). More than that though Vogue Knights is the lone environment in New York City where if you are young black wearing a hoodie and jeans you will be granted admission with no hassles. I know this because of how I came to find out about the existence of the event.
For the past three years I've been making a documentary called Pier Kids: The Life. Its a story about how I come to make peace with ten years in exile spent homeless after my mother pushed me away because I am a homosexual. I come to understand this troublesome past through following Casper, Krystal, and DeSean three young black queer folks who I met while they were homeless in the summer of 2011. They were homeless on the Piers at the end of Chrisopher Street in Manhattan's West Village. The same place I went to in the mid-1990s after my initial break with my family. At the center of my film is a very simple question, "Where and what is home?" Theologian John O'Donohue in his AnamCaro:The Book of Celtic Wisdom answers this question. He says, "Where you are understood, you are at home. Understanding nourishes
belonging. When you really feel understood, you feel free to release
yourself into the trust and shelter of the other person's soul” (Anam Caro). With this in mind, my film is really about me coming to terms that the Piers represented home for me and countless other queers of color because this is one of the few places in the world where the streets are filled with people who look like you, love like you, and most importantly, show up in this space because of blood familial rejection. I guess its impossible to avoid that when we begin to think about home we invariably end up on the subject of Family.
Blood family are your heterosexual family. Fr me, Casper, Krystal, and Desean our blood families let us down in massive and unexpected ways. However, the family we found on the Piers, our gay families picked us up and gave us new folks to belong to. For nearly four years I have attempted to locate to place this gay family on the piers but thanks to Krystal La'beija I became exposed to the inner workings of her various House Ball Room families. Ahhhhh this phrase again. Specifically, I was first brought to Vogue Knights by Krystal "Labeija" Dixon, who if you catch the T (see terminology page) with the name in quotes is a member of the House Ballroom Scene. The Iconic House of Labeija as featured in Jenni Livingston film Paris is Burning was started by Krystal Labeija in the 1960s after the brouhaha that you can see in this clip. Basically, the gay world back then was totally underground and almost unilaterally a white institution. Back in the day you were either a fairy cross-dressing (inverted) bottom or pervert, male identifiable top. So the drag competition that we see Krystal involved in had all sorts of extra pageant meaning. These guys were expected to dress in such ways to signal their sexual orientation so that their men could be seen with them in public without being clocked (found out). However, with the standard of realistic femininity being so heavily slanted towards a white norm, folks like Krsytal and her girl ( who I live for) were always already not the model. Hence comes the Ball room.
Ahh this is so terrifying. To go out on a limb and describe something as deeply nuanced and layered as the House Ballroom scene and the community that make it what it is, is quite literally the hardest thing in the world to do in writing. These bitches will come for me if Iam wrong. Worse yet, they'll all come across this page to finally see the images I have taken of them. Lord here Goes
Imagine you are at yur local department store you walk into th women's section or even the men's section. You are presented with a series of mannequins dressed to appeal to the different types of men and women who will enter the store to purchase close. You have items for the soccer mom and the businessman. Outfits for the executive woman and the sexy girl. Each one of these dressings is coded in a certain way. They exists so that the wearer can communicate something intrinsic about themselves to the world in a believable way. http://youtu.be/_UxYj9GR9tE
Now take the journey a step further. You have picked out your outfit and you are going to your local black Baptist Church's Sunday supper. After church everyone is fired up in the spirit. They feel elated, they grab their plate, and proceeed to fellowship with one another. They dance, they clap their, hands, and every once in a while you might hear Mother Johnson shout out loud "Yass Lawd."
Even a step further now the congregation meeting room has turned into a BET Hip-Hop Awards after party. Here you have facsimiles of the latest in and greatest in black entertainment. There's a guy in the center of the Runway who reminds you of 50 Cent, and the girl fixing her make-up in the mirror reminds you of Nicki Minaj. No you are almost there. The last piece of this puzzle is that each of these individuals you have conjured are not what they necessarily seem. The women are actually Femme Queens (women of trans-gendered experience) or Butch Queens up in drags (transvestites). that dude who looks like 50 Cent, he's actually the most popular bottom in all of black gay porn.
All of these locations are generally hostile to you if you are poor,
queer, and colored. The black church is notorious in its dispensation of
gay demons that lead wayward boys to the world of homosexual sin. http://youtu.be/1CJgHC15DBw, http://youtu.be/LNGLJspgNIw
And God knows if you are black and shopping.... well just watch your back http://youtu.be/MTQx8O0dOCY
And well if you can't dance and sing like this at the same timehttp://youtu.be/Vy5yeEa1dLs well forget about the BET Awards!
I'll define the Ballroom as a competitive environment where the limits of self gender identification are tested to see whether or not the carrier of said gender title or performance is credible within it. You say you are a sex siren? http://youtu.be/epzk0NPtBcQ Well are you real? http://youtu.be/yAiVAZSM79I Would any straight man look at you in the daylight and not clock that you were born with male genitalia. You a thug?http://youtu.be/yAiVAZSM79I Well, go roll up on that group of corner niggas, and walk past them without them clocking that switch at the end of your Bop.
Here's some history from the grand dame himself Paris Dupree http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMggFxR3YaM&feature=share&list=PLq_pDh-aqJYWVzz8CaLKtDF5YHcC0omDo
There's so much more and in the following pages I will attempt to make the categories clear for you, but nonetheless, these are the concepts I had to understand in order to tell Krystal's story. Rather it became clear after Krystal insisted I follow her to Vogue Knights two years ago, that to understand how she has coped and grown to understand herself as a woman that I had to make Vogue Knights a part of my life. Krystal is in the ballroom scene. When her family rejected her for being what they believed to be a black gay male-teen, the ballroom scene took her in, and with her new gay ballroom family she became the woman that you will soon see on the big screen.
I spent so much time filming at Vogue Knights that it was easy to convince myself that I was only here for work, but it would be less than honest to leave you with that impression. Watching this event unfold and seeing these young black and brown people overcome the laws of physics has imbued my soul with the fortitude I need to complete my film. If Leyomi Mizrahi can launch herself 10 feet into the air and land on her neck and get back up and do it again, well then a gay black boy like me can finish his first feature length.
I spent to years looking at the femme queens, the butch queens, the voguers, and especially at the thug realness categories. It wasn't until this my senior year at Columbia that I even noticed that I continually tapped my feet. Well, when your ethno-musicology professor says to you "Write a thesis about music." I guess you'll start to notice the sounds that surround you. In this case the music of Mike Q and Vaughn Allure began to envelop me.In three years of filming on Christopher Street, at Vogue Knights, and really where ever I was with people who vogued their sounds filled the footage. My professor challenged me to develop a research question.
To ask that question I had to take what I already knew into account.
The music sounds like House Music
Its really fast and beat heavy.
While it contains so many different references to other popular forms of black music (hip-Hop, R&B, & Soul) it sounds unique.
This is the music you Vogue to.
This music is made by Black People
I've listened to hundreds of hours of this music and I have never heard a House Ballroom Ballad.
It was readily apparent that this is a novel form of black music. It might even be developing into a new genre of black music, but there was one missing element.
Why isn't there a HouseBallRoom Music Ballad?
To answer this question I have consulted with the Mike Q, and Vaughn Allure two of the forms pioneering artists. They told me because the music is for vogue battling. You can't have a vogue battle with slow music. It's a competition.
The next question then became, "Why is the music so many folks listen to outside of the ballroom, the soundtrack to competition," and "What does this tell us about their life.
For the foreseeable future I will deploy this blog to answer this question. For now I will provide introductory information. We will trace the development of the musical form through the interviews with Mike Q and Vaughn Allure. My intention is to develop this conversation out into an oral history. If you are passionate about this music please contact me and feel free to correct me. Here we go.
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