In May 2022 we had a voguing workshop with Dominik Lamovski. We learned some voguing basics and had a really nice time dancing with him.
1. What is Voguing?
The term Vogue resulted from the famous fashion magazine "Vogue". Voguing is a highly stylized, modern house dance, created and shaped by Latino and African American LGBTQ communities. There are currently three distinct styles of vogue: Old Way (pre-1990): Included poses from high fashion and ancient Egyptian art with exaggerated hand gestures to tell a story. New Way (post-1990): Characterized by rigid movements and involves incredible flexibility. Vogue Fem (circa 1995): Added elements like catwalk, duckwalk, spinning, bussey and enhanced hand performance with exaggerated feminine movements influenced by ballet, jazz and modern dance.
2. History
The history of voguing goes back to the 1920's, when the Harlem Renaissance happened. The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural movement by the black community, where many of the leaders were openly gay. But this movement was not exactly the reason voguing emerged, it made Harlem become a vibrant site of art, activism and culture. That's why Harlem became the birthplace of Vogue in the 1960s's. Between the 1960's and the 1980's there were many voguing competitions - known as balls - where the dancers competed for trophies and the reputation of their Houses (part competitive affiliation, part surrogate family).
3. Meet the Artist: Dominik Lamovski
Dominik discovered his passion for dancing at the tender age of six. It quickly became clear that his enthusiasm focused on hip hop dance. Over the years, he became involved with hip hop culture and urban dance arts. His favorite styles include hip hop, voguing and experimental. He also gets further inspiration from jazz funk and contemporary. In addition to many years of dance experience in the fields of stage performance, acting and theater, he has had success at various dance battles.
Now he has established his own voguing house "Kiki House of Twinkle" and enriches his students with his knowledge and experience. To further support the hip hop culture, he created the dance event "Battle 2 Da Next Level" with his event partner Jaclyn Hernandez in 2015. With this event, both of them want to bring the passion and joy of dance to flourish again and bring people closer together.
Source: Instagram @dominiklamovski
We think that Dominik has a really good way of teaching and a powerful and positive energy, which really motivated us. While dancing we felt safe and not judged. After the workshop we were empowered and had good vibes.
4. Our Personal Experience
We did the workshop with four people from our group and the Namibian group, via Zoom and it worked out pretty good. When the workshop started, the first thing we did was not to dance, but to talk a little bit about queernes and the history of the ballroom scene. This was a good thing to do because normally when you try a new dance style you just go to the class and dance, without knowing anything about the history. After our talk, we started to dance. We learned some basics, like the catwalk, the duckwalk, the dip, spinning and some hand and arm work.
We understood really fast that voguing is a freestyle type of dance, where you mostly have to learn the basics and after that you can add anything you want. We also had the possibility to freestyle and after a while everyone became a little bit more confident than before, which was a really nice thing to see.
Furthermore, the workshop was really sweaty, but still so much fun because we had the opportunity to learn new moves and to add some elements of our own choice. We were all connecting with ourselves and it was a safe space.
All in all, it was a really nice workshop, where we learned a lot, got inspired and felt empowered during and after the workshop
Written by: Maya-Sophie Cechrak
Footage of the Namibian group: