Shanghai's 'voguing' dancers step lightly to avoid official gaze

Two hundred people gathered in a club in a basement in China's financial capital, many dressed in red and black latex with corsets and fishnet stockings, to cheer competitors who sashayed and danced down a red carpet under the scrutiny of judges.To get more news shanghai, you can visit citynewsservice.cn official website.

Events like these, known as "balls", celebrate a subculture centred on the LGBTQ community that dates from mid-20th century dance halls in New York's Harlem, before being adopted by queer communities of colour in the 1980s.

"I think the biggest difference in voguing is that you need to dance your own self, the deepest you want to express," said Sui Kawakubo, a member of the Kiki House of Kawakubo, one of the city's key voguing "families", as they describe themselves.
Voguing is a dance style characterised by staccato hand motions and angular arm and body postures punctuated by brief pauses, much in the manner of a model posing for photographs.

"I wouldn't say voguing has made me an extrovert, but it allows a new me to emerge," added Kawakubo, a self-proclaimed introvert who uses a stage name chosen as a tribute to Japanese fashion designer Rei Kawakubo to protect his privacy.
With trophies awarded for categories such as Femme Queen Performance, Couple Realness, and Face and Body, the events are part dance competition, part fashion show and part judged performance art.

Popularised in 1990 by a hit Madonna song and the documentary, Paris is Burning, the trend has drawn adherents in China too, with Shanghai's first such event organised five years ago.VJ Kawakubo, 30, was one of the city's earliest adopters of voguing, being drawn to a dance class seven years ago to eventually become one of its best-known exponents, figuring in marketing for brands such as Calvin Klein and magazine spreads.

Although the performance aspect of voguing is important, he said, its ability to bring people together gave the scene deeper meaning.

"If you are just dancing by yourself, there is no meaning in that," said VJ, who also asked to be identified only by his stage name.As International Pride Day approaches on June 28, the future for such activities looks increasingly uncertain in China, however, as authorities touting socialist values step up censorship of LGBTQ-related content.

Difficult environment
Even in Shanghai, China's most international city, the environment remains complex for the LGBTQ community, says VJ, who grew up in a small village in the eastern province of Zhejiang.

"It's both more inclusive but still quite conservative," he said, as international influences jostle with China's traditional values.In 2020, citing an increasingly difficult environment, Shanghai Pride halted its activities after having run successfully for a decade.

In May, Beijing's 15-year-old LGBTCenter also shuttered for undisclosed reasons.

"The government sees strengthening the national power, the national rejuvenation, as the most important thing," said Hongwei Bao, a researcher in LGBTQ visual and performance culture at the University of Nottingham.

"That disconnects from younger people's desire to express themselves freely, to pursue their lifestyles, personalities, and individualities."