November 16, 2023
Vogue house steps up for transgender fest
The Pasifika Rainbow community is celebrating 10 years of vogue ballroom culture in Aotearoa as part of Transgender Awareness Week.
Vogue house Iman is hosting a dance competition and a showing of the premiere episode of the TVNZ production Mother House at the Māngere Arts Centre on Saturday to close the Pasifika Aotearoa Trust’s annual F’INE (fee-neh) Fest
House mother Jaycee Tanuvasa says vogue houses give rainbow youth a place of refuge and a chosen family.
The movement has its roots in the culture of American Black and Latinx queer communities in the 1970s and ’80s, which resonated with the experience here for brown queer youth.
“Discovering this culture makes so much sense. And so in terms of what we suffer from here, not only being queer, but also being brown. And so ballroom culture is like this incredible initiative and party and community events and creative exploration for us to come together,” Tanuvasa says.
The competition has six categories celebrating trailblazing queens from the local scene.