Vancouver, B.C.
The sport of the queer community
“The past year has really divided us. I want to see division turn into an opportunity to connect.”
Teodoro Alcuitas
Editor, Philippine Canadian news.Com (PCN.Com)
In a year that has practically isolated us from each other, Ralph Escamillan comes around to reconnect us through the world of dance, albeit virtually.
To cap Vancouver’s Pride Month, Escamillan is putting up Posh Ball: Online Kiki Ball on July 31 at 6 PM. In partnership with Vancouver Pride Society and sponsored by Lululemon this is a free/by donation ball, with 50% of all donations going to QCHAT, a peer support line and resource database for LGBTQ2S youth in British Columbia, Canada.
Founder of Vancouver’s Van Vogue Jam, the energetic Escamillan takes time for this event even as he is busy with other endeavours – the Piña Project for one, which is ongoing until November 2021.
The Posh Ball is just one of the many ‘births’ he has delivered, being the ‘mother’ of Kiki House of Gvasalia, where he mentors, teach and be a role model to a diverse group of young children as seriously as any mother would – nurturing them along the way.
Ballroom and voguing has its roots in the young, queer Black and Latinx subculture in New York City. Traditionally built around “houses” run by a parent or parents, the ballroom evolves into a “family” and builds its own community.
Escamillan was led to New York after a stint in Toronto, having discovered street dance and waacking in his teen years in Vancouver. There, in 2013, he trained with the legendary Leiomy Maldonado—a transgender Afro-Puerto Rican dance artist known as the Wonder Woman of Vogue—and to become part of her House of Amazon.
The rest is history.
He came back to his hometown of Vancouver, struggling to introduce the dance form – teaching it for free to interested devotees.
The sport of the queer community
What he loves most about ballroom is that “it brings marginalized people from all segments of the queer community together, “ he told the online magazine ‘Stir’ in a recent interview.
“When communities are built, they’ll often break themselves into categories that they’ve been put into by society,” he says, referring to gay men, lesbian, and other groups. “It’s factioned, and it’s unusual to see them all in one place. But I feel like the balls, when we’ve done them, have been the first times where I’ve seen people that would usually never connect or never see each other together.
Ballroom becomes the sport of the queer community.”
Related reading: