Published on Feb 04, 2023 07:28 AM IST
@VoguingInIndia is an Instagram page and a collective founded in June by model, choreographer and student Krish (who goes by only one name), 19, and Muskan Singh, 22, who is a yoga trainer and an ally. Along with voguer Sunil Bormahela, the collective hosts voguing sessions and teaches attendees, allies and members of the community about the subculture. So what is voguing? It’s a dance form that originated in the 1980s, with roots that go back to the Harlem Renaissance, which sought to give marginalised communities a voice. Between the 1960s and 1980s, then, New York’s drag community developed a thriving “ballroom” culture of contests and face-offs, which in turn spawned “vogue battles”, where participants competed for dance trophies. The dance moves were fierce, defiant; they were often exaggerated forms of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and poses used by female models in high-fashion magazines, all aimed at subverting existing ideas of sexual and class identity. Take a look at a voguing session held by the Indian collective.
