It’s hard to believe that an argument over a dancing body, vibrant and free, could end in murder. No, voguing is not a crime, as the crowd chanted outside a Brooklyn gas station last Friday [le 4 août] for a protest ball*.
Dubbed “Sailing for Resistance,” the event was overflowing with bodies – stylish, of all shapes and sizes, young and old.
However, one was missing, the most important, that of O’Shae Sibley, 28, stabbed to death on July 29 for dancing on Renaissance of Beyoncé in the gas station parking lot.
“They don’t care what happens to our bodies”
“It really hurts to come here, to literally see the place where his blood flowed,” says Qween Jean, a fashion designer and activist, into a megaphone.
“The trace is still there. They don’t care what happens to our bodies.”
Sibley’s story should be known by now: Returning from a day at the beach, this dancer-choreographer and his friends stopped at the gas station in Midwood to fill up. They danced to Beyoncé while they got gas. At that time, according to the police, a group of men asked them to stop, hurling homophobic insults at them. One of them stabbed Sibley, who died overnight. (A 17-year-old has since been charged with murder.)
The bodies Qween Jean refers to are those of LGBTQ people, who still regularly face discrimination. How can they evolve easily in the world, a fortiori while dancing?
It’s heartbreaking that the sight of Sibley — feisty, celebrating the gift of being alive by dancing to Beyoncé, on a hot summer night — results in anything but smiles.
Move freely in the public space
His death reminds us that such a form of expressiveness is sometimes still seen as threatening. Sibley was gay and specialized in “vogue fem”. But men’s dance has unspoken rules about what is acceptable, what may pass and what is dangerous in certain public places.
Sibley obviously didn’t want to veil his light. He didn’t want to lay low, move in the world without being authentic. It was his way of presenting his body and his person, it was part of his elegance, his power and his charm. However, this aura doesn’t mean the same thing now as it did before his death.
Robert Garland, the artistic director of the Harlem Dance Theater, who is from Philadelphia like himself, recently presented a ballet at Lincoln Center, and there is a moment in that performance that reminds him of Sibley: when a dancer pays homage to John Carlos, the runner who stood on the podium with his fist raised during the Olympic Games in Mexico City in 1968. When I question him, Garland declares:
“O’Shae was putting his body on the line. And that expression turned into resistance. It didn’t start like that. He was just who he was.”
Voguing, a way of being yourself
During the O’Shae Sibley tribute rally in Brooklyn on August 4, 2023. JUTHARAT PINYODOONYACHET / The New York Times
Because of the way he died, and the way he danced when he died, his body is now an act of resistance. In large part because of voguing, a language that originated in the Harlem balls of the 1960s. It’s more than a dance: it’s a community, a way of being and of summoning one’s true individuality.
Voguing boldly and beautifully explores issues of race and gender. It is a (chosen) family, a home, a refuge.
Sibley had studied other forms of dance – he had trained at Philadanco, the Philadelphia Dance Company, founded by Joan Myers Brown [et spécialisée dans la danse contemporaine] – and performed at the Ailey Spirit Gala in May [organisé par l’Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, une compagnie de danse moderne new-yorkaise]but he will probably be best remembered as a voguing dancer.
The art and the act of dancing, vectors of pleasure as well as pain, figured majestically at the protest ball. Things started with fond memories, then moved on to slogans for justice and finally a celebration of voguing. We had to insist, but the crowd that had spread through the streets moved away enough to form a corridor or at least small pockets open enough to form a mini-stage.
A powerful and majestic dance
Among those who marched in this hallway, Jason Rodriguez, a voguing dancer who starred in Pose [une série américaine, diffusée en 2018 et 2021, qui a exploré la culture des balls et du voguing]. He had seen Sibley two weeks prior as part of a video shoot he had organized for Adidas.
“It was very empowering for me to be there, as a way to recover what had been stolen, he then confides in an interview. I think it was like washing off what was left there and coming away with new energy, declaring loud and clear that it’s okay to use your body as you want. We chose to use our bodies and move in a feminine way to be responsive and expressive.”
Some members of New York’s experimental dance scene were there to show their support, as well as Honey Balenciaga, the phenom who is currently touring with Beyoncé. The dancers spoke with their bodies, and this mundane gas station, shadowed by the luxury buildings across the street, became a place of catharsis where moving expressively was not only allowed but expected.
It was as if Sibley’s dancing spirit was no longer alone, that the dance that had been stolen from him had become bigger, more powerful, more majestic: it was a collective ode to self-expression, the more outspoken the better.
Sibley shouldn’t have known fame this way, but this commemoration echoed what Josephine Baker once said: “I would like to die, out of breath, exhausted, at the end of a dance.” And it was good that it was so.
* In American queer culture, the term ball (or ballroom) refers to underground parties which, from the end of the 19th century and especially the beginning of the 20th century, began to bring together gays, lesbians, trans and transvestites, all of whom were excluded from clubs at the time. Dance or beauty contests were sometimes organized.
2023-08-13 10:23:57
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