Voguing.

Ever since I went to my first Vogue party and got my first glimpse of this dance – it was some freezing cold night last winter – I have wanted to try dancing Vogue myself. Last week I finally had a chance to do this when Dance.fi organized a summer camp with different kind of dance styles. I can’t remember when was the last time I have been in a solo dance class, or if I actually have ever really been in one, so this was something different that I have been craving lately after dancing almost only and nothing but Zouk.

Voguing was definitely something that forced me to step out from my comfort zone: big, still and angular hand movements were quite the opposite of the flowing Zouk dancing. For those who don’t know about Voguing, it is a dance style originally from New York’s drag queen scene, so many movements are exaggerated, dramatized and either really feminine or masculine. In addition to dancing Voguing consists of runway walking, posing and battles between other Vougue dancers. There’s three styles called Old Way, New Way and Femme, from which the two latter have taken influences from ballet, acrobatics, jazz dance, yoga etc. All in all, Voguing is an imposing and even militaristic-looking dance that can easily capture the viewer’s attention with the Vogue dancers’ I’m-way-better-than-you-bitch attitudes.

The four beginner classes I took introduced New Way and Femme styles that have quite a different feeling. I’m glad they started with the very basics since it was really hard to keep my arms and wrists in straight lines, hard meaning both challenging and tiring. We started with hand movements keeping rest of the body as still as possible (sounds easier than it was!), did some runway walking and posing, tried dancing in the floor and went even to some acrobatics. All the time we were supposed to imagine someone taking pictures of us, so in every second you had to look gorgeous and give poses to the camera following the music’s beat. Even though I had no idea what I was doing I was having heaps of fun doing it.

Later on, me and Big O., who I dragged along since I was too nervous going alone, tried to combine Vouging into Zouk which worked surprisingly good. He was right saying that solo dancing did me good and that is something I want to start doing after the summer. I was thinking of Ballet but then again Voguing would be something only few could do. I think it would be much more interesting to say that I dance Zouk and Vogue than, let’s say, Salsa and Ballet, don’t you think (or at least it would cause some sorry-but-what?!-responces)? Besides, for an attention-loving girl like me Voguing wouldn’t be that bad idea.