I was very impressed when I saw it in the hiphop culture class last semester. I listened to the podcast during dinner yesterday and talked about the most popular hip-hop shows, including the new lengendary in this street and the United States. The popularity and popularity of street dance in recent years is indeed surprising. The show shows the underground ballroom culture through entertainment, which is far from the original houses. So I immediately thought of this documentary, which recorded the birth and development of the underground ballroom community in New York in the 1990s. At that time, ethnic minorities such as African Americans and Latinos founded houses and drag parties in order to find solace and home in the struggling society, and over time the ballroom community, including the vouging dance, was born. These queers will wear navy uniforms, or modern girls dressed up as the covers of fashion magazines, walk the show in the crowded and noisy underground dance halls. It seems that the last second is still thinking about the food and clothing of the next meal, the next second the old lady puts on brand-new clothes is the brightest model on the stage, can enjoy the attention of flowers, applause and screams. ballroom is a shelter for those marginal figures to live in their fantasies.
What makes me most uncomfortable is a transgender girl named venus xtranvaganza (I don't know if I spell it right?). She said in the film that her dream is to be a spoiled white girl, then she can wear a wedding dress and get married in a church, and live with her husband in a suburban house. But fantasy is fantasy after all, she died of murder in the end, and the body was only discovered four days later. Even now, a lot of trans gender ballroom dancers are killed every year, so every time I see some talent shows that put voguing, houses, and ballrooms on the big screen, I am confused. Of course, I don't like it. After all, as a hip-hop enthusiast, I have been chasing this street for two seasons. But I don't know what these early voguing dancers in the nineties, that is, the predecessors who created voguing, would think after watching this kind of show.
It is said that the suffering they experienced gave birth to art, but this kind of art becomes a channel of sustenance to live in the fantasy, in my opinion, it is really sad. In the show, it is also said that people often say that they are not worthy of teaching voguing if they have not walked through the ballroom, because voguing has some classic movements, such as touching the neck without a Adam’s apple, which all represent the self-expression of that sexual minority, and these street dancers nowadays The form is expressed in such a popular way, and I don’t know if the meaning and story can be understood by the public.
When I was a child in a dance company, I always felt that the dance must be beautiful, and the dancers must have swan necks, slender waists and walk straight. Only when I came into contact with street dance, I discovered that the main point of street dance is to lay down the burden of idols, get rid of what we call "beauty", and find the most authentic, venting, and enthusiastic self-expression of my own. So I sometimes don’t like watching kpop because I think kpop is too restrictive (of course, my hobby doesn’t deny kpop), it’s too rigid, not the street dance I understand. Regardless of the wildness of hiphop and breaking, the sexy of waacking, the unrestrained coquettishness of vouging, there are some stories behind them that need to be understood. Art creation is not easy.
My thoughts are a bit messy, the midterm is very busy these days, so I have ideas to write down at any time. This palace-level documentary is quite recommended.
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