Interview with AUS 'Imperial Ninja' (N.Y.)

Barcelona Dance: 'What is your best experience as a dancer?'

AUS: 'Being able to travel everywhere and to meet different dancers and pick up experience that they have and when I always try to learn something from their culture. If I go to China I try to learn some traditional Chinese dances and when I go to Japan I have my martial instructor in Kyoto.'

Barcelona Dance: 'Do you think the 'Vogue' style is evolving?'

AUS: 'Yes it is evolving but the thing with the 'Vogue' is that there are so many different styles because of the numerous houses that this dance tends to 'recycle' itself. I think there are very little you can do to make it new. It can seem new only to people who didn't anything about it before but for the ones who know it from the early 70s-80s there's nothing new really.'

Barcelona Dance: 'Why are there so many Houses now, is Vogue more popular?'

AUS: 'It's always been popular, it's just that people outside the underground community didn't know about it. The community didn't want people to know about it, because the ballroom scene was a place where people didn't have where else to go, for some people who wanted to be movie stars for instance and couldn't for the situation there were in, they said 'forget it, we'll make our own'.

The ballroom scene is made of functions in different venues organized once a week or twice a month. There are different balls like the mini balls that are used to get prepared to the big balls like the Latex Ball' I think the biggest one in the US. People compete in the different categories to win trophies and fame in that community'

Barcelona Dance: 'What can you do to be part of a house?'

AUS: 'First you would have to go to the ballroom scene. There are more people that want to be involved now because it is getting global recognition but what people need to realize is that they should respect the history of Vogue which have a very deep history and when someone create a 'house' without really knowing about it, this is deemed disrespectful to the ones for whom Vogue is a lifestyle.'

The ballroom scene is made of functions in different venues organized once a week or twice a month. There are different balls like the mini balls that are used to get prepared to the big balls like the 'Latex Ball' I think the biggest one in the US. People compete in the different categories to win trophies and fame in that community



Barcelona Dance: 'Can you tell us about your future plans?'

AUS: 'I am working on a project with some of the old school Voguers in order to gather all the information about the Vogue culture in to bring into the schools, starting from the 1920's starting with the 'Masquerade Balls'. I have a clothing company called WaackNation, is clothing for waacking freestyle and hip hop dancers. Im putting together a stage show, and also choreographing for some major singing artist.'

'VOGUING' Y 'WAACKING': A LIFE STYLE!

Some of the dancers didn't do anything else but going out to clubs almost every night only living for dancing. Tyrone Proctor mentioned that when he arrived in LA, didn't have a job and was sleeping on the floor with other dancers until he actually managed to start getting some money while dancing.

Regarding the underground community and the development of 'Houses' when 'Vogue' came up in the early 80s, these houses where also a refuge place to many gays who come out with their sexuality to their families and were kicked out from their home as a result.

Vogue is Not a Gay Dance, but it was made famous in Gay Clubs

REFERENCE
House of Ninja: www.myspace.com/elementsofninja