An investigation into the history of voguing

For too many, Madonna’s hit single will be their first and only connection to voguing as dance, fashion and subculture. Others will understand what it is to vogue thanks to the 1990 documentary , or through TV shows such as and. But why is voguing so firmly placed in our cultural consciousness with such little understanding of its origins, and how did it come to be named after this magazine?

The origins of voguing

Most accounts place the origins of voguing in the ballrooms of 1980s New York, birthed by the black and Latinx queer communities of Harlem. Between the 1960s and 1980s, the city’s drag competitions had transformed from pageantry-style balls to voguing battles. Trans, gay and queer contestants would compete for trophies and the reputation of their ‘house family’ by walking categories, including Executive Realness or Town & Country.

Houses were sometimes named after the famous fashion of Paris and Milan, with family members typically taking the house name as their surname (see contemporary voguing stars Asia Balenciaga, Dashaun Lanvin, Tamiyah Mugler and Cesar Valentino). The mothers or fathers of the houses provided a replacement family for many in the community who were socially marginalised either by gender, sexuality and/or race, and who turned to each other for the acceptance and safe space of the ballroom scene, which itself existed on the fringes of the wider gay community of 1980s New York.

The evolution of voguing

Over time, the style of voguing changed from the Old Way, which emphasised solid lines, symmetry and sharp angles (static poses that transition from one to another, as if flicking through the pages of ) to the New Way of the late 1980s. The New Way introduced a fluidity and flexibility to voguing, adding moves like the duckwalk (squatting on your heels, kicking your feet as you move forward on the beat), catwalk, spins and dips (a dramatic or controlled fall to the ground – used like a full stop to punctuate the end of a dance). Today, New Way is more about rigid movements, clicks and locking, while Vogue Femme emphasises the dramatics, with ultra-feminine posturing and stunts like death drops.

As the voguing scene grew, it inevitably attracted a star-studded following. Madonna (above) saw the moves for the first time in 1990, at a club called Sound Factory in New York’s Manhattan. She’d heard about the dance style and wanted to learn more, asking Dominican dancer and member of the House of Xtravaganza, Jose Gutierrez, to show her what it was about. Jose Xtravaganza was asked to choreograph Madonna’s upcoming video and to school her in voguing, he also accompanied her on the world tour. In 1990, Madonna’s single reached number one in 30 countries worldwide and voguing was propelled to international recognition.

Voguing today

Nearly 40 years since its inception, voguing is now enjoying another mainstream renaissance. This month, Jose Xtravaganza will co-judge the Battle of the Legends competition alongside American editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, as part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s month-long celebration of Pride and the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising. And around the world dance schools are teaching the next generation how to vogue, emulating pop stars like FKA Twigs, Rihanna, Ariana Grande and Beyoncé, who have all incorporated voguing into their performances.

The impact of Madonna’s song and its video inevitably spawned debates about appropriation and authorship of marginalised cultures. But despite voguing’s diffusion into the mainstream and its truly global resonance (Paris, Berlin, London and Tokyo are all home to prominent ballroom scenes), the movement has never failed to maintain its distinct language and codes.

Voguing’s power lies in its ability to remain close to its roots, even as new styles and communities emerge. What started in Harlem is now a global, intergenerational community: in 2016, a video of a group of voguers in London, dancing at a vigil for the victims of the Pulse nightclub attack in Orlando, went viral; and in countries where LGBTQ+ rights are under threat, voguing can offer a literal space for queerness to survive. Ultimately, voguing is about the freedom to express your truest self, to tell your story and perform any identity you want. And maybe to throw some shade along the way.

Within the structures of the ballroom came voguing, a dance inspired by model poses inside the covers of magazine, but also influenced by Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics and gymnastic moves. The personae adopted by voguers were often a coded parody of white femininity, both glorifying and subverting ideals of beauty, sexuality and class. As one ball-goer describes in Jennie Livingston’s : “Balls to us are as close to reality as we’re gonna get to all of that fame and fortune and stardom and spotlight.”

Voguing was a tool for the ball-goers to tell their stories, including a way of responding to the AIDS crisis. It was also satirical, playful and comedic, with contestants copying models with freeze frames or moves that replicated making up a face or styling hair. Voguing was a battle, with the winner being the contestant who ‘threw the best shade’.

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