Curious Festival’s annual Vogue Ball is back and this year the party comes to Dance City!

Curious Festival is an annual celebration of LGBTQ culture across the North East. Following a successful pilot festival in 2016 Curious Arts has returned each year to produce a growing festival which explores and celebrates LGBTQ culture through the arts. Increasing visibility, dialogue and understanding of the LGBTQ community.

The Vogue Ball is the ultimate celebration of North East LGBTQ and Vogue Culture, an evening of Vogue from community participants and professional Vogue Houses from across the North.

Dance City’s 250 seat theatre will be transformed with a purpose built catwalk for the evening on which houses and individuals can walk, dance and perform in a number of categories that will be announced in the coming weeks over social media.

What is Voguing?

Voguing is a highly stylized, modern house dance developed in the 1980’s by LGBTQ people of colour to create and own their own space, becoming a celebration of their culture.

In recent years the subculture has been grabbing mainstream attention and growing in popularity with the help of shows like Ru Paul’s Drag Race, BBC’s Pose and documentary Deep in Vogue which premiered at British Film Institute’s Flare: London LGBT+ Film Festival.

‘There is a noticeable, growing interest in queer arts, particularly Vogue culture. Curious Arts is keen to develop artists, audiences and participants in the North East – everyone is invited to express themselves in a celebratory event.’ – Phil Douglas, Founder and Director of Curious Arts.

Curious Vogue Ball will be open to everyone including those who are new to vogue culture.

For those who want to give performing a go, the festival will be hosting voguing Workshops in the lead up to the event, forming a pop-up house ‘House of Curious’ who will perform on the night.

You can read all about vogue culture and its recent resurgence into mainstream popularity here.

Curious Vogue Ball will be taking place at 9pm on Saturday 6 July at Dance City, find out more and book your tickets at www.dancecity.co.uk.

Curious Festival will be taking place from Sunday 30th June to Tuesday 9th July across a range of North East cultural venues, you can find out more about the festival and stay updated with upcoming events at www.curiousarts.org.uk.