Beyonce’s Renaissance (Act 1) album was a dedication to the house music and ballroom scene. On her Renaissance World Tour there was a part of the show where her dancers engaged in voguing. She brought it to the stages in the U.S. and in Europe, forcing the people to get comfortable with a lifestyle many still have not accepted in this world. This tour happened in 2023, 17 years after a man known as Willi Ninja passed away.
Willi Ninja was born William Roscoe Leake. He identified as a gay man and was an advocate for the LGBTQ+ community in the 1980’s until his death in 2006. He is known as the “Godfather of Voguing.” Voguing is a form of dance described as a “way of throwing shade.” Ninja, didn’t create the dance which orignated in Harlem, New York in the 1960’s, but he helped transform it. These are quick movements of the hands and contortions of the legs,with spins, duckwalks, and catwalks. There is ancient hieroglyphic dance, gymnastics, and lindy hop intergrated into it. Also, Willi Ninja created the House of Ninja. It’s was a place for members of the community to have as a home. It’s also a dance troupe for the ballroom that still lives on today.
Here are some of the other things Willi Ninja did…
- He appeared in the docu-film “Paris is Burning.” This introduced voguing to the world along with the ballroom scene which featured many of the LGBTQ+ community.
- He influenced the style of walking of many high fashion models in the late 80’s and early 90’s. This included Iman and Naomi Campbell when they walked for designers such as Chanel and Karl Lagerfeld.
- Madonna saw his influence on the runways, creating the song “Vogue.” She recruited some of the members of Ninja’s House of Ninja to choreograph her dance routines for the music.
So, in seeing the dance continued to be used today and expand to other cultures outside the Black and Brown communities. Know that Ninja along with many of the other kings and queens of the ballroom helped in making it what it is today.