The evolution of the art of voguing From Harlem Renaissance to This is Love event by Calvin Klein curated by nss
Vogue is not just an artistic genre, but a living testimony to the history of the LGBQTIA+ community, its resilience and depth of expression. As one of the earliest forms of celebration of queer identities served in the history of the community to the self-assertion of individuals, voguing demonstrates the intersectional power of differences and how it can generate new forms of love, including for oneself, through movement and the transformative capacities of the body. Evolutions on vertiginous heels in time to the music mixed with obvious expressions and striking poses are characteristic elements of the style also adopted in the performances of FKA Twigs, Rihanna, Ariana Grande and Beyoncè. Before being emulated on prominent stages and taught in dance school classrooms around the world, voguing also had a social significance and a rich underlying rituality, all waiting to be discovered.
Having arrived in pop-culture thanks to artists and TV series, the genre borrows its name from the magazine that set the aesthetic standards in the 1980s, Vogue, and is inspired by the freeze-frames of models immortalised in the glossy pages of magazines, but also by silent films and the hieroglyphics of ancient Egypt. The 'voguers' animated those canonical images with exaggerated moves, in order to create a new language where they could finally see themselves represented, adding pathos and irony seasoned with social criticism against gender differences, to show how they themselves were a form of performance, replicable through make-up and movements. Voguing is structured as a competitive art in which performers challenge each other on the dance floor following a hierarchical pattern and a rich rituality, in which dance collectives, also known as 'houses' or 'families' captained by a leader, the 'mother', compete together to win trophies, destined for those who best express their identity through performance.
The brand chose voguing as an expressive tool as the theme of one of the special workshops within the This is Love event curated by nss, an event that aims to amplify the voices of the queer community to be held on 30 June at BASE Milano from 17:00 to 23:00, to celebrate love in all its expressive forms. Thanks to Kenjii Benjii, Italian performer of the iconic Juicy Couture collective and first Italian exponent of black and queer culture in the Italian ballroom scene, it will be possible for a limited number of participants to discover the art of voguing with a step-by-step lesson.
REGISTER HERE
to participate in one of the two available workshop slots, from 17:00 to 18:00 or from 18:30 to 19:30, and enjoy the rest of the evening, with the aim of activating a conversation around love, care and community through artistic mediums such as music, art and other creative forms. Celebrating the Italian queer community and love in all its forms there will also be a talk on queer sexuality and its perception in Italy moderated by Jordan Anderson, curator of MQBMBQ and esteemed personality in the Italian queer community, designed to talk about love and learn how to really understand it.
