Interview: HMI's Rising Stars Slam Their Backs in Thriving Vogue Culture

The Hetrick-Martin Institute is the oldest and largest LGBTQ youth-focused organization, serving over 2000 youth annually by providing daily meals, health services, academic support, career preparation, artistic enrichment, support for homeless youth and more. It is also the birthplace of the Harvey Milk High School.

The Arts & Culture programs at HMI offer youth a safe space to explore creative outlets that build inspiration and agency. Youth are supported in becoming innovators, capable of contributing to global dialogues and effecting social change.

As a global leader in this model, most recently the CEO of HMI (himself a former dancer) was invited to Sweden to advise European entities on best practices regarding saving young lives through the arts.

Fitness and the arts have both been connected to physical and psychological well-being and one of the most popular programs at HMI is the Kiki Lounge where Vogue dancers, from all backgrounds and experience levels, get to "slam their backs" as part of a thriving dance scene.

Participants have reported benefits such as stress relief, emotional support from a welcoming community, significant professional opportunities and much more.

I had the pleasure of interviewing dancers Kenyatta, Belinda (ballroom name) and one of their teachers, Kemar Jewel, about their experiences at HMI and beyond.

BWW: Tell us a little bit about yourselves and your backgrounds.

Belinda: I'm 20 years old and I'm a dancer, freelancer and a peer education intern at HMI. I've been a member of HMI for about two years now. I went to high school for fashion design but I realized it wasn't for me. So, I'm still figuring out what I want to do with my life.

BWW: And how about you Kenyatta?

Kenyatta: I am a person of indeterminate age. [Everyone laughs] I've been coming to HMI since I was very young and I'm a HYA Youth Advocate here.

I found HMI because one of my friends recommended the paid internships. I liked what I did and did more and more internships.

HMI has given me a lot of useful experience in peer education, harm reduction and prevention, which is why I'm still here. I'm sharpening my skills and adding things to my resume. I decided I want this to be my career.

BWW: I know you both are dancers. Can you tell us about what got you into dance, the style of dance you do and your dance community?

Belinda: Dancing is just kinda in my blood. I've been dancing since I was 4 or 5 years old. When I was still in high school I discovered voguing, which is the style of dance I do now. I learned a lot from YouTube videos. I've been a voguer for about two years now and it's a great stress reliever. It's something that I really enjoy and there's a lot of room for individuality.

Kenyatta: I've been dancing since I was a baby. I've always loved music. I drown out the world with music. I used to watch music videos and teach myself the choreography. Whatever the video didn't show I made up and filled in the blank.

I also did gymnastics as a kid, which ties into my vouging. When I first saw voguing, and I saw people jumping around and falling on the floor, I didn't know what they were doing but it looked like fun. I'd never seen anything like that before.

What I like about vogue is that it's very free. You do what you feel, whatever comes into your head, whatever your body wants to do in that moment. I don't like choreography at all anymore.

I've been slamming my back since 2006.

BWW: Have there ever been any obstacles to expressing yourself through your art?

Kenyatta: For me, it was growing up with a Jamaican mother and assuming I couldn't be myself. I used to never dance or do anything "feminine" around her. I kept certain things to myself because I assumed it would be a big problem. It turns out, she doesn't have a problem with who I am.

Another obstacle is when people, usually cis-heterosexual people, know we can dance and treat us like trained monkeys. They want to promote us for their own benefit. Maybe that's not the intention but that's the way it comes off.

Other than that I haven't had too many barriers when it comes to my dancing, except the fact that I hate choreography.

Belinda: For me I guess I didn't have any real struggle until I was in high school, during my senior year, when I was 17 or 18. I attended a fashion design school and the population was predominantly female.

When I joined the dance team I was one of two boys. We had no choice but to do whatever was being choreographed.

I was already out in terms of my sexuality in high school but, when it comes to my dancing, my family has never really seen how feminine I can be because at home I'm naturally chill and quiet and I keep to myself. I'm not as close to my family as I'd like to be.

The style of voguing I do is Vogue Femme. It's the same style Kenyatta does. We get in drag sometimes. That might not cut it with my parents. Even though they do accept me for who I am, I assume certain things might be a problem. My solution is just to avoid telling them about certain things.

Kenyatta: My mother and my sister love me in drag. My mother finds it fascinating because she knows what I really look like and she will always see me as that. But she finds it intriguing that we can go out in public, and I can be in drag, and no one knows I'm a boy. She'll just sit back and watch people interact with me.

BWW: How are you coping with the struggles you've faced or how did you overcome them?

Belinda: Because of history, people in the LGBTQ are capable of making their own families. Sometimes we have to choose our family. I know I can rely on my gay family to hold on to something for me if I need to hide it. I can rely on someone to hide a trophy I won at a ball until I can find my own place and proudly display it.

But, currently, the way I'm dealing is just by hiding everything. I know my family will not go through my stuff out of respect. And I wouldn't do that to them. So that does make things easier.

My family is more concerned about if I'm working, if I'm going to school, if I'm paying bills that I need to pay. Still, I've set a goal to move out within the next five years.

Kenyatta: I just want to piggyback on what Belinda said about the gay family. And, out of those who are related to me by blood, I really only consider my mother and my sister my family. I think there's a difference between relatives and family. I don't really speak to anyone outside of that. That's partially because my mother doesn't really rely on anyone outside of her household.

Jamaican families tend to be fake and phony. My relatives don't really know anything about me. All they know is that my mother has two kids. They just know that I exist. I'm close to my mother and my sister even though it may not always seem that way.

Even at the time I wasn't really close to my mother and my sister I had my gay family, people who I felt comfortable with and I enjoyed being around. I know that they're there if I need them. I tell them certain things before I tell my mother.

There are certain things my mother wouldn't fully understand sexuality-wise, scene-wise, etc. I can go to my gay family to help me through any kind of struggle but overall I think I didn't have it too bad.

I've never had to hide any trophies or anything like that. When I got my first trophy and my family asked me where it was from I just said it was from a dance competition. Even when boys would ask "Where are you off to?" I'd just say "dance practice." If they asked what kind of dance I did, I'd just say "Freestyle."

BWW: We covered this a little earlier but maybe give us some more specifics about how HMI has affected your artistry and your life in general.

Belinda: HMI was my way of accessing the youth aspect of the ballroom community, called the Kiki scene. The people I was introduced to were automatically accepting and there were some incredible dancers from the vogue scene who gave me great critique about how to make my dancing better but also encouraged me to do my own thing.

There were also other people who were trying to mold me into something I wasn't really feeling. There's always bad with the good and vice versa and there's always some good in the bad. Having those different influences helped me become my own performer and establish who I am as a person.

Kenyatta: For me, HMI gave me a place to slam my back. There was a time when Kiki Lounge was every day. HMI was that place where you could go and just vogue. There are all levels of voguers. So, I could battle but the spirit was still fun and not competitive. I learned a lot by watching other people and competing in a supportive environment. HMI is a great place to network and I met most of the people I still associate with now. It's a place to practice, hone my skills, mess up and get better.

Belinda: HMI is an outlet to find a way to complete myself.

Kenyatta: I always say HMI is a place to mess up. You can let yourself mess up and then find a way to fix it and make yourself better. Outside of my artistry HMI also gave me a place to learn new things. It was a place to get educated about things like STIs, HIV and preventative methods. We don't really learn about that in school. Also, our schools don't really have an in-depth understanding of LGBTQ issues like HMI does.

BWW: So what are your goals as an artist? Any big dreams?

Belinda: I have a plethora of goals. I'm already dancing so I hope to expand on that just like my gay-mother Laomi has. People book her. She travels. I don't know anyone who doesn't want to travel. I don't know anyone who doesn't want to visit other parts of the world. That's something that I would love to do someday.

Currently, at HMI, I'm a Peer-Ed intern. I really like it and I hope to make being an educator part of my career as well.

As I mentioned before, HMI was my outlet into the Kiki scene and my involvement in that helped me blossom into a DJ. So, of course, I want to pursue that too. Who wouldn't want to blast their favorite music and get paid for it? [We all laugh.] But it's all in the spirit of fun.

I'm also interested in cosmetology. I got into that my senior year. I was always going into school with my face done up. I also learned a lot about make-up from the ballroom scene.

Once I move out of my immediate family's house I definitely plan on doing everything I want to do.

Kenyatta: I don't really want anything I do artistically to become my career. I do certain things for fun and the second I have to do them for money, I don't want to do them anymore.

I used to make flyers for people's balls, and it was great when I started getting paid for it, but when I HAD to do it, it stopped being fun for me. I didn't like having to negotiate fees and going back and forth about my work and all that.

Everything I do artistically will probably just stay recreational or, if it does become something I can capitalize on, it will be strictly on my time.

Voguing is something I will always love to do. If I ever got to a point where I was like Laomi, and I got to travel, that might keep me going because having new experiences is fun for me. But I would never want to get to a point where I feel like I HAVE to vouge. I never want to feel like that when it comes to something I love.

Other than that, my goals are probably to drop a mixtape soon, go back to cosmetology school or go to college for graphic design. I don't really see myself having a 9-5.

A big goal I have is to open up an all-trans-girl's school. It's hard for people with certain identities to navigate the regular school system. I want to create a place where people can be themselves, have connections to care, get name changes and legal documentation and have a real sense of sisterhood with no competitiveness.

BWW: Are you working on any specific projects right now that you want people to know about?

Belinda: Besides doing the same thing I do every night, which is trying to take over the world, I'm working on a DJ project. I'm just trying to map it out in my head first.

Kemar Jewel: I also just want to mention that back in late May HMI youth won a dance competition and Kenyatta was on the team that I put together. We were up against some fantastic young hip hop dancers and break dancers from Harlem and the Bronx called Litefeet.

Their director is a really well known hip hop choreographer and I reached out to him to put together this competition.

We ended up taking home a 4 ft trophy and there's a plaque for us at the Union Street Settlement in the Bronx. It was great to show the world what we can do.

BWW: So now, Kemar, tell us about your background and what inspired you to become a dancer.

Kemar: I was born in Jamaica and Jamaican culture is deeply connected to dance. Dance was always around me growing up, especially hip hop and dance hall. As I got older, I started to get into things like ballet and tap. Anything I could get my hands on.

BWW: What made you want to teach dance at HMI or teach the LGBTQ youth population in general?

Kemar: When I was a young person, growing up in Philly, I experienced a lot of struggles. I lived through things like homelessness and family neglect so taking dance classes was the last thing on my mind.

When I found The Attic Youth Center in Philadelphia, I got linked up with their dance program, and I really flourished there.

So when I saw that HMI had an opportunity for a vogue dance instructor, I hopped on it immediately because of my positive experiences at The Attic. I wanted to help recreate that experience for other people.

BWW: What difficulties have you experienced as a dance teacher working with marginalized youth?

Kemar: One of my biggest struggles with teaching is seeing so many young people who are so amazingly talented, some more talented than professional dancers, but who can't thrive because they are trying to survive.

They have to be more concerned with school and work and family issues and if they have a place to live. Dancing becomes the last thing on their minds.

As a teacher it's really frustrating to see. There aren't just amazing dancers but amazing actors, singers, poets and etcetera so it saddens me when I see them struggling so much in other areas of their lives that they can't focus on their art. They may never get to thrive because of the type of society we live in.

BWW: What are some rewarding or memorable moments you have from teaching at HMI?

Kemar: Winning the dance competition, that I talked about, was definitely a memorable moment but, in general, the most rewarding thing as a teacher is seeing the youth learn something in front of me and then seeing them take what they learn and use it in the outside world.

Seeing them win at balls and other competitions is thrilling because I watched them grow and learn and train and I helped nurture that.

And something like the competition or Astor Place LIVE, where I get to put together the routines, and then see them perform in front of hundreds of people is just amazing to me.

It helps to open their eyes and see that their skills are remarkable and worthwhile and marketable. And they should pursue their art because they love it.

I feel like a lot of ballroom people, and a lot of queer people in general, think that these creative things we do can't be translated into a career or that these things should be kept in secrecy.

I know so many kids who think voguing can't be a career and I look at them like they're crazy because I know voguing can be a career if you're creative and you work hard and meet the right people.

BWW: Because that's something you're doing, traveling and being booked as a professional vogue performer.

Kemar: Yes.

BWW: Is there anything you want to add?

Kemar: I would encourage people to follow their dreams, even though I know that's a cliché. I always tell people to go to school for something they love, because it will never bore them. I went to school for theatre and dance and I'm happy I did. Show your talents to the world and someone, somewhere, will see it and help you get to the next level.

BWW: Thank you all so much!

To learn more about the Hetrick-Martin Institute, and the amazing work it does for youth, please visit www.HMI.org. George Takei will be among the honorees at HMI's annual Emery Awards on December 7th, 2016.