Hands Performance Workshop

with Father Chraja Kareola

We bid farewell to spring with a wonderful two-hour workshop dedicated to the movement of our hands! Together with Father Chraja Kareola we will explore ballroom, the underground culture born in Harlem in the 1970s by queer pocs, and get a taste of Hands Performance, one of the ballroom categories that originated and is part of Voguing and involves improvisation and dancing with the hands.

In front of a deep red wall poses in profile a young queer-looking man. He wears a soft jockey hat with rhinestone rhinestones, transparent large glasses, a long lime green earring and a silver necklace with rows of round sequins. His naked skinny torso is covered only by a transparent bra with a round hard cup on the chest and a pair of lime green leggings lined with plastic and nylon pieces. His impressively long delicate arms with painted lime green nails weave around his torso and waist forcing his body into a graceful backward bend.

Voguing looks like dancing but it is actually a “language”, a way of expression and revolution created by the ballroom community, i.e. trans and gay people of African American and Latino origin, in response to the oppression they received from society. Hands performance is one of the “components” of voguing and is also found as a stand-alone competitive category in balls, in which, to the sound of music, contestants are asked to perform, improvise and share their story using almost exclusively hand movements.

A few words about Voguing

Vogue or voguing is a modern, stylized house dance that began in the 1980s and is an evolution of the Harlem ballroom scene and culture that has been around since the 1960s. It met with great fame and became mainstream thanks to Madonna’s 1990 “Vogue” video clip, which included dance moves, and was the subject of a study in the award-winning documentary “Paris Is Burning”.

Inspired by the writing style of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics and the famous model photos from the fashion bible “Vogue” (which is where it got its name), voguing is characterized by a series of poses. The movements of the arms and legs include angles, lines and curves while moving quickly from one static position to another. Expressiveness, drama, flexibility and speed are its most important characteristics.

Issues of race, representation and appropriation continue to be addressed and expressed through voguing as a form of liberation for the LGBTQI+ community and beyond.

In Greece, voguing came with the House of Kareola, the first Greek ballroom or vogue house.

👉 Admire here Mother Leiomy Prodigy in an incredible hands performance!

LEGENDARY MOTHER LEIOMY PRODIGY DOING HANDS

Useful information

Design – implementation: Father Chraja Kareola
When: 31st of May, 6-8 pm
Where: liminal Choros (Theatrou sq. 6, Athens)
Registration application at [email protected] under the title “Hands Performance”. Please include your contact information.
Participation with free contribution