J-Boogie Flora with the Kiki House of Flora, right, performs a dip while flailing his hair to the encouragement of Valentino Valentine Flora during a practice session at Cheesman Park in Denver, Friday, July 22, 2022. Two contestants made their way up the runway towards the judges’ table at Meow Wolf, furiously dancing before freezing into a statue-like form at the word of the event host.
Parisse Flora dips to the floor in one of the voguing performance categories of the Nintendo Kiki Ball at Meow Wolf Denver, Sunday, June 12, 2022. “When I was about to graduate , both of my families really wanted to celebrate,” Ruby said. “My mom was actually the first one to say like, ‘Oh, bring your team over.’ … We gave them a full traditional Filipino meal.”
Ruby first discovered Ballroom when they were 15, watching a YouTube video of two dancers who were “voguing,” a dance style that dates back to the beginnings of Ballroom culture in the ’60s . Inspired by ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and models in the magazine Vogue, the most current style of voguing — vogue fem — emphasizes exaggerated feminine movements built around catwalking, duckwalking, hand performance, spins and dips, which are often incorrectly called “death drops.
Valentino Valentine Flora, Boo-Daddy Flora and J-Boogie Flora laugh as they watch a video of themselves practicing voguing at Cheesman Park in Denver, Friday, July 22, 2022. “I wasn’t in an environment that, you know, accepted and fully embraced my femininity,” Valentino said.