Inspiration can come from some very unexpected places. Not sure how this popped up but I recently stumbled across this clip of the late Willi Ninja taken from the great documentary Paris is Burning.
Willi Ninja was one of the leading and most respected practitioners of voguing. If you don’t know what I mean by that, go back to whatever you were doing before you clicked on this blog.
I was just a teenager when Willi Ninja was the mother of the House of Ninja. Never mind that I was too young to enter clubs, not gay, not black, and my neighborhood of Jackson Heights, Queens was a world away from Harlem. But, I heard much about Harlem’s drag ball houses from some friends and was made to understand that what was happening inside was original and exciting way before Madonna borrowed their style and music.
I started clubbing soon after this movement hit, but the rave scene I somehow fell into while in college in Boston mainly consisted of white middle class kids from the suburbs and one did not vogue at these get togethers. And by the time I rented this documentary as a sophomore, voguing was almost only done by white middle class kids from the suburbs. And, only during high school dances I bet.
Still, dancing is dancing and some are high practitioners. Willi Ninja wanted to be the best voguer out. “Hit hard, hit fast… and come out to assassinate.” Like him, with whatever it is that we’re doing, we should strive to be on top. I know I’d like to be known worldwide someday.
Sadly, Willi Ninja died of AIDS-related heart failure in New York City in 2006 at the age of 45.
Paris is Burning. Directed by Jennie Livingston. 1990.
Hey Chad Extraveganza!