Frédéric Nauczyciel can’t remember when he learned about voguing, the dance form characterized by the poses that emulate those in the pages of Vogue, or the first time he saw “Paris Is Burning,” the iconic 1990 documentary on New York’s ball dance culture that touched on the city’s vogue scene. “It’s like it’s always been there for me,” he says. But three years ago, contemporary voguers in two cities an ocean apart began to captivate Nauczyciel so much that they are now the subject of his first New York exhibition, “The Fire Flies (Baltimore / Paris),” which opens tomorrow at Julie Meneret Contemporary Art.
As the son of middle-class Jewish parents who grew up in the Paris suburbs, Nauczyciel had no direct connection to the genre. It was an interest in “Banjee Realness,” the term used to describe the style of a homosexual African-American from the inner city who passes as a straight person — as well as in the gay character Omar from the HBO series “The Wire,” who Nauczyciel felt embodied the term — that led to his fascination with Baltimore. In 2011, he had the opportunity to travel to the United States on a fellowship. “I’m saying to myself instead of going to New York,” he explains, “or going to Atlanta or going to Los Angeles or Chicago, I will go to Baltimore and I will write a project where I will try to understand and find how Omar could only be invented in a city like Baltimore, and why Baltimore.”
Nauczyciel planned to be in Charm City for only two months, but ended up staying more than twice as long after encountering a group of vogue dancers at Club Bunns. “It’s performing the attitude of a man in the ghetto,” he says. “I could recognize Omar in each of them.” He immersed himself in their scene, photographing and filming them throughout the city.
Ironically, the voguers from Nauczyciel’s native France weren’t as welcoming, until the summer of 2012 when the Musée d’Art Contemporain du Val de Marne in Vitry-sur-Seine screened his footage and hosted a workshop featuring Baltimore voguers, including the legendary Marquis “Revlon” Clanton. “Suddenly all the little vogue scene of Paris came out,” says Nauczyciel, who went on to explore the performative aspect of the dance last year with the help of the House of HMU, a conceptual voguing laboratory hosted by the Centre Pompidou in Paris.
“The Fire Flies (Baltimore / Paris)” consists of two sections: “It’s All About Omar” and “Paris Brûle.” The exhibition spans photography, video and performance, featuring poetic portraits of the Baltimore dancers striking poses with the city’s rough exterior as the backdrop, as well as “Solos,” a piece co-written by the performers, and videos from Centre Pompidou. For Nauczyciel, the exhibition is an opportunity for the dance form to come home. “I’m very happy for the work to come back to the origins of voguing,” he says.
“The Fire Flies (Baltimore / Paris)” will be on display at Julie Meneret Contemporary Art, 133 Orchard Street in New York City through May 18; juliemeneret.com.
This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php#publishers.
No comments:
Post a Comment