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I think the most difficult moment for me during that time was living in an apartment with a closet full of designer clothes, no furniture, and then going out and trying to try to cop, trying to cop, and so I couldn't afford a couch, but I could afford hope. And there in lives that sad part right making these choices of do I buy furniture for my apartment or do I buy heroin? And the latter unfortunately one.
For a long time, as a gay kid, growing up religious and in the South, I thought being gay was the worst thing I could ever be. Now, as a journalist, I'm trying to unlearn that by seeking out our history, and what I've found are people and stories full of courage, perseverance, and love. In this episode, we'll meet Louise Camacho Extravaganza,
one of the choreographers of Madonna's music video Vogue. We'll learn how his choreography for her would go on to influence generations of queer life and pop culture, and how the fame he was quickly thrust into came with a Dark Side from My Heart podcast. I'm Jordan and Solve and this is what we loved. I have this theory that every time a gay man hears the nineteen ninety song Vogue by Madonna is when he has his gay awakening. I think I was in the eighth grade when I
had mine, and I first heard it. The music just spoke to my soul. Ooh when that bass hits, do doo doo, doo doo doo, It's so good. And when I saw the video, my mouth was on the ground. The way these men were moving their bodies in all the ways I would have been mercilessly bullied for here they were confidently striking a pose. I was too young to have the language to describe how I felt, but now I know it was queer self expression, unabashed and unashamed.
My next guest, Luise Camacho Extravaganza, was one of the choreographers of that music video that, by many accounts, brought voguing from the underground ballroom scene into the mainstream. His work with Madonna would change the world, but much before then, from the time he was a little boy, he knew that he was destined to be a star. Louise, you are a globally known dancer now and very famous for popularizing this incredible art form, voguing. But I wonder was
that always your dream and aspiration as a child. Did you always want to be a dancer.
I don't know if I always wanted to be a dancer. When I was in front of the mirror, you know, with my hairbrush for a microphone and a towel wrapped around my head, I thought I was going to be like, I don't know, boy George or Michael Jackson or something like that, something that was of show right, of show business. And I didn't know if it was going to be dance or not. But I had a lot of energy which my mom saw and to kind of like rein it in, she put me in a boy's movement class,
which wasn't really a dance class per se. It was more like, let's get the energy out of these voices bodies and then that way the parents can take them home and won't be bouncing off the walls. So it was literally run across the room, roll, you know, roll around, jump, you know, things like that. And so the teacher, his name was Frank Ashley, and he had a little dance company, a little junior dance company apparently saw a natural talent in me and asked that I come back for another class.
Eventually it turned into me going to dance classes like four times a week.
Well, what was the moment that you sort of knew that you loved dancing and you loved expressing yourself through moving your body.
I think it was probably the first time I ever performed on stage with the little junior dance group and the lights hit and they put a little outfit on me, and I just loved that. I loved I love the light that shines on me. I loved that the audience was in the dark, and it was almost like I was back in my room by myself. And at the end, just the applause and looking side to side at the other people performing with me, that we kind of did something together and we projected this idea, this art form
that people really liked. Was I just think it was a life changer for me.
Well, fast forwarding a little bit, now, tell me about when you first knew you were gay and how you came out to your parents and your family.
I probably first knew I was gay when I went into high school. I didn't really know what gay or being gay was. And then I get to high school and it was the high school performing arts. For me,
it was like oh, entering the big leagues. Like I didn't know any of these people, and I was alone and we were in the locker room about to like go into our first dance classes and one of the older a junior I think he was a junior at the time, he came in and he looks us over and he goes, okay, uh, you you and you you'll be hanging out with us because you're gay. The rest of around straight, so fuck y'all buy And we were like, okay. I mean he was brash and bold, and he obviously.
Moved he read you.
I just like the fact that he wanted us to kind of hang out with them or you know what's like with his group.
Well, so you have become so famous for bringing voguing to the world stage by all of the work that you've done, especially with Madonna, But how did you first get into voguing? Tell me that story.
It was that guy. He was He was the one that you do used us to the houses and.
The balls, and the guy who had sort of.
He was. He was also a dancer and so you know, he was sassy. And after school we played a game called red Light green Light Vogue, which is like red light green light one, two three, and instead of like you know, freezing before you got to the person to tag them out, you hit a pose. So the main person would turn around, he would say red light green Light Vogue and we would try to run towards him, and then when he turned around, we would strike a pose.
And when we were trying to you know, establish or kind of cultivate our little voguing style, we integrated our technical dance moves into the voging style. So that's what sort of set us apart from the guys that were vote at the time because we injected our classical training into vogue to make it our own. That was my introduction to voguing. It was my introduction to the ballroom house culture.
What's the story of the first time that you went to a ball?
So the first time I went to a ball was a Paris's Burning ball.
Wow.
Yes, And it was in Harlem at the Elks Lodge in Harlem. If you've ever seen pos and you look at the inside of where they do the balls. It was almost exact replica. Building was really really old and it looked like a miniature version of what used to be like an opera house, right, And so it was. The first floor was just a wood floor with tables and chairs on either side, with a dance floor if you will, in the middle, and if you're looking towards
the back, there was a stage. And then if you walk towards the stage and turn around, you'll see that there was a second floor and it was a U shaped balcony that went all the way around with tables and chairs on top of that as well. You smell the wood floor when you go in. It's smelled.
And what did the people look like when you got there?
Two people looked like beautiful exotic birds. To me, it was this plethora of beautifully adorned beings, which really really fascinated me because I know most of them didn't look
like that when they were in the daytime. Right. The drag queens were in sequins and in feathers and you know big you know hairdoes and hats and wow, it was just like Carnival and it was just a parade of really beautifully dressed people because they were trying to, you know, outdo each other, trying to put their best foot forward and trying to emulate a lifestyle that wasn't
our own in the daytime. A lot of them were also sex workers, and so there was a cross section of a lot of people who could project this other level of being at night and in the ballroom and not get judged by it, and to live out that other life in the ballroom and be regalled for it.
I Love the Ballroom was founded in the late nineteen sixties as a response to white drag ball being rigged against black and brown queens. Ballroom was their opportunity to create their own world where they were the stars. Because of stigma, conventional job opportunities weren't often available to these queens, so many were low income or pushed into sex work for survival. Voguing was about aspiration. Ballroom dancers wanted to emulate the persona, the confidence, and the fame of the
models on the covers of Vogue magazine. They dreamed of seeing themselves on the cover, wearing expensive designer clothes and striking a pose. The balls were also competitions chosen families or houses would compete or walk in all kinds of categories for prestige that would reward the best voger, the best model, the best dressed, and so on. Louise competed that first night he attended a ball, but it wasn't
for voguing. It was for drag. He had also just officially become part of the House of Extravaganza and they wanted him to win.
My first category was not vogue. My first category was witch cleanup and drag, which grew up and drag is, I mean, to put it lightly, is just a regular guy getting up in drag and trying to pass as a girl. Because one day I went to school for Halloween as one of the cheerleaders. It was just a floppy, curly wig that I got from somewhere and the school uniform. I don't even think I was tucked at the time, and you know, I put eyeliner, Metscara and lipstick and
it was I was good to go. That was my first category that I ever walked at a ball was between and drag. It was like work, bitch, and all this energy around and I was just looking around like, wow, this is like perfect chaos. Because it was chaos. It was like like I had always been there that first ball. First of all, my sister came with me to the ball because I needed to use her as an excuse to get out of the house, even though she's younger
than me. But our father picked us up from the ball and he came in, and thank goodness, I was already done with my category and had changed back into my boy clothes and stuff like that. I did not, quote unquote like my dad growing up, because you know, he would tell me boys don't bounce balls that way, or a boy is don't hold their books that way, or boys don't stand that way. You know. He was just trying to toughen me up just a little bit. And yeah, he picked us up and took us home,
and we were not in trouble. What's interesting is I didn't know why he didn't, you know, bring down the gauntlet on us, and I never understood. I think my first time is my favorite memory. Every time I think of the ballrooms, I think of the first time that I was at that Paris ball, I really do, because it was like chaotic, It was, you know, the stars a lot like I don't know. It was this moment that when you draw the curtain and you walk through and you know this other world and is before you,
and you feel comfortable in that world. I didn't even feel scared.
Louise had just competed in his first ball and he had even won a category. More importantly, he was now officially a member of the House of Extravaganza. He and his friend Jose Extravaganza, who he went to high school with and who he competed in balls with, honed their voguing technique and they practiced at the balls. They began performing all over New York and around the world. Although voguing was gaining popularity within the gay community, it was
still relatively unknown to the mainstream. But Madonna heard about the dance and she wrote a song about it in nineteen ninety. She began thinking about the music video and she wanted real voguers from the ballroom scene in it. The video would change Louise's life and the world. So it's the late eighties and voguing is still relatively underground, and at the same time, Madonna has pretty much become
the biggest pop star on the planet. What is the story of how you met her and how you became her dancer.
Madonna also was a club kid. I'll start there, because she just wasn't a person who kind of walked in from nowhere and said I want to record a song about voguing. Now. She frequented the clubs, and so when she recorded Vogue, it was a natural progression for her and she wanted voguers. And her friend, Debbie Mazar, who the actress today, was her makeup artist at the time. And Debbie goes, let me introduce you to the House
of Extravaganza. It was like six degrees of separation. Debbie's friend who was friends with my friend's boyfriend, and they were all hairdressers, and so she wanted she wanted to meet us, and we went to Tracks, which is the club that David the Pinos spun at in the middle of the day and he started playing music. They opened up the doors, and you know, we were kind of just voguing, and then a limousine pulls up and out
pops Madonna. And the first thing I said to myself, I was like, oh my god, she is tiny, little, tiny girl. And so she came into the club and she sat down and she was like what you got, and we were like all right, and we just started freaking going off and voguing, and she was like, this is awesome. And before she left, she was like, hey, you guys want to hang out tonight. I was like, yeah, you want to hang out with us tonight? I know when you're hanging out Madonna, but we're hanging out here.
She's like, okay, I'll go with y'all. Everybody started just performing for her, and she sat on the speaker and I stood in between her legs, and you know, we would just vibing that way, and I don't know, we just grew close. And that's how that's how our love of you know, our love of Madonna and started. Wow.
Well, you and Jose Extravaganza choreographed Madonna's video for Vogue. It is something people often say is one of the greatest music videos of all time. What was your favorite memory of that whole music video experience.
It was the wardrobe. What was exciting was getting to the soundstage and getting into hair and makeup, trying on these beautiful clothes, and all the clothes were go ta and and so even though we and Jose were trying to keep our cool about the whole thing, like it was exciting for us because we knew that this was a turning point. I mean it was a real life video shoot with production, and I mean it was like, okay,
so we are now playing with the big dogs. And that whole process of watching all of these departments come together to produce this imagery and this video was really the high point of that whole video experience for us.
How did you feel that day when you walked on set and there was just all of this incredible production and resource and money put behind something that you were leading God, you know I felt, I.
Mean, the little boy Lewis inside was like, yes, this is it. I'm never going back ever again, you know. And but of course I had to like tell myself, rain that shit in, bitch, because you have a job to do and if you want to keep doing what you're doing for a long time, then you can't. You know, you got to be professional. I had to rise to this occasion, even though I was giddy inside and I
felt like, this is it. This is what I this is what all the years in front of the mirror fantasy about and being a person that wanted to entertain others. This is it. It has all culmulated you know has been brought to this point.
Shortly after the video came out, Vogue became the number one song all around the world. Madonna was about to embark on one of the biggest moments of her career, a world tour to support the song and the album it was on. The show would be called the Blonde Ambition Tour. It would become wildly successful and make Madonna the second biggest touring act in history behind Michael Jackson. Louise was asked to join as a dancer. Madonna documented the tour in a groundbreaking film called Truth or Dare,
which Louise was prominently featured in. The show and the documentary are widely credited for introducing queer life to the mainstream openly and unapologetically. At the time it became the highest grossing documentary ever made, Louise had just turned twenty years old. The fame he was emulating in his voguing on the ballroom stage was now a reality on the world stage. Well. In nineteen ninety, Vogue becomes the number
one song in America and really around the world. You end up going on this wildly successful world tour with Madonna starring in her groundbreaking documentary Truth or Dare. Everyone around the world is voguing in nineteen ninety, But what was the moment that you realized voguing had become so much bigger than what you were doing during Red Light Green Light Vogue.
I never really got the graphatas of what we were doing and being our true authentic self until one day a mom came up to me. A mom came up to me after the show, and she said to me that she had a son, and she brought her son to the Blande Division tour. There were many years before that moment her son suffered, and she was just thanking us that we were just being ourselves and that her son could see himself in us and thus be himself and be free of whatever constraints he had within himself
that he was locking away. And at that moment, you know, I knew that this was something that was way beyond not only myself, but it went beyond voting right, It went beyond you know, hitting some fabulous pose. It really vibrated out to a lot of guys and girls who were unable to really express themselves because they didn't really have an outlet to do.
So, wow, what was your favorite memory on that life changing tour?
We were in Chicago because my father is from Chicago. So I flew my father and my sister to Chicago, and you know, I got them a hotel room and I rented him a limo so that way he can see his family, So that way he can have this little moment of you know, my son is fear said, you know this is and I'm pulling up on you. It'll it's very cute. But he took us to meet my uncle, Raffie. And when my uncle answered the door,
I immediately knew why. I immediately knew why my father was unfazed because my uncle answered the door had longer hair, he had long fingernails, and so his brother was a drag queen and performed in clubs. And when he looked at me, it was there was that look like, oh, I get it, I get it. I looked at my dad in different light From then on, it was and we grew so close after that, and it was all unspoken too. It was all unspoken, and that night I
just cried. I cried because I got it. He just probably didn't want me to go through what his brother went through, or he wanted to toughen me up so that way I can survive like his brother survived.
I wonder what it was like for you to go from dancing in school and dancing in the Balls underground in New York to then being thrust onto the global stage so quickly. You were about twenty years old at the time. What was that like for you?
I mean, without sounding too kind of like egotistical or facetious, it felt natural, Jordan, It really did. It felt like, oh, yeah, I'm supposed to be here, and I always go back to that image of myself in front of the mirror in my bedroom, you know, with a hair brush in my hand and a towel for wig, and like that little boy made it all the way here.
After the tour ended, life wasn't so easy for Louise and the other dancers. The backdrop of this time period was the AIDS crisis. By nineteen ninety one, hundred thousand Americans had already died. Shortly after the tour, one of the dancers died from AIDS related complications, two others were diagnosed with HIV. Being so young, Louise was dealing with a lot his community, the ballroom scene, and the dance
family he made on the tour was dying. In addition, he didn't know how to process the end of the tour, the intense high and the adrenaline that would come from night after night of screaming fans. When it ended, all of the hype was over and he was thrust back into the reality of his life. He turned to drugs
to cope. We've talked about a lot of the positives around how you had come to this moment, this amazing moment, But what were some of the negative consequences of achieving this fame so quickly.
A lot of people saying that Madonna had used us for our talent, and then personally, you know, it was a wild ride and and so that included drinking and for me, and I'm only speaking for myself, you know, I lived the rock and roll I lived the rock and roll lifestyle, so you know, it was boos and boys and drugs, and so I lost my way there for minute, I really did. I lost I'm not gonna lie.
I lost my way. And after a while I had to kind of get a handle on that part of my journey, which was leading me down a road that I didn't want to kind of go down.
Well, you've been pretty open about your struggles with addiction and heroin addiction. How did you discover that?
It definitely happened after, you know, after the tour. The beginning, it was just like drinking and smoking pod and stuff like that. Then I got to heroin. It really was me just trying to hold you know, hold on to the last vestiges of what the Blante ambition had given
me that at natural high. It's like it was it was the after party that I never wanted to leave, right And it really was like this calm down of being on such a natural high for so long that you know, trying to trying to get off, trying to get off the drugs was hard, really hard.
I wonder if you would tell us what was the most difficult moment during that struggle for you.
I think the most difficult moment for me during that time was living in an apartment with a closet full of designer clothes, no furniture, a TV on top of a crate, and that's it. And then going out and trying to trying to cop, trying to cop and so I couldn't afford a couch, but I could afford Nope. And therein lies that sad part, right, making these choices of do I buy furniture for my apartment or do I buy heroin? And the latter unfortunately won for a
long time. And you know, it's not enough. It's not enough to have a closet full of pretty designer clothes if the rest of the room doesn't feel as abundant or at least just lived in. And I don't know, it was. It was not good. It was not good.
It sort of sounds as though you had kind of gifted the world this art form voguing, and it exploded. And it sounds like the train that it was on was going so fast that it kind of left you behind in a way. It was a train that you were initially.
It's literally the train that you know, for some reason, I lost my footing and fell off of so you're trying to chase the train and it's just literally going faster than you can run. Thus it left me, you know, it left me behind, you know. And yeah, we were riding that train and it was going faster and faster and faster, but one false move and I fell off the train and literally was trying to gather myself together to get back on the train and could not could not catch it.
Louise was knee deep inside of a heroin addiction and it was taking over his life. It was the dark reality of show business and a twenty year old watching his entire community suffer and die while being thrown onto the world stage. How did you end up overcoming your addiction after the tour?
My mom again being the supportive person that she is and my parents. One Christmas before Christmas, she came to me and she said, I got you a Christmas present and it was a plane ticket to Los Angeles. She said, baby, you need to rest because I was burning the candle at all ends. And I said, oh fabulous, Okay, great, let's go to Los Angeles. And I stayed with Nicki Harris, who was Madonna's backup singer, and it was the holidays, so you know, we cooked, we you know, hung out
by her pool. She had a pool at her house, and so we did that and it was Met and me trying to figure out what I'm going to do with the rest of my life. And it was January seventeenth, that was the day I was I was supposed to come back home. I'm packing my bag and literally, Nikki walks by the room and she says, you don't have to go if you don't want to, that's all she said. And literally I lost it because I knew if I went back, I would be right back where I was.
And I cried. I cried, and I knew it. I knew it. I knew it. I couldn't go back. I called my mom and I said, so I won't be coming back for a while, and she said, I understand again. And I stayed and I tried to to, you know, rebuild, rebuild my life. And so there came another turning point in my life where a friend of mine came up to me and he was like, listen, I haven't seen you in a long time, and I want to tell
you why. And it's because I've been in recovery. He told me his story, and at the end of that conversation, I said, I need I need help. I need whatever you did, I need that too. Because I realized that my addiction would never kill me. It would just drag me along like a can in the back of a Neluetz car, and I would just be dragged along for the rest of my life, and I knew I knew it, and I was tired, Jordan Man, I was effing tired of trying to chase some thing that was no longer
available to me because I was not working at it anymore. So, Yeah, I went to a recovery house and I spent fourteen months in a recovery house and I just turned I just completed twenty years and twenty years sober now.
So wow, congratulations, that's an amazing milestone. You've inspired at this point, multiple generations of people, bringing this art form into the consciousness of so many people. How do you remember this very complex time in your life.
I think it's the best time in my life because it taught me not only to reach for the stars and I'll get it if you work hard I did at that time. It also taught me that if I am not vigilant within my own being in consciousness, that
I can slip and fall. That being said, if I am vigilant and conscious within myself and love myself, that I know that I can rebuild and get back to Lewis so that time, the good and the bad are cherished for me because it lets me have the life that I have today, and I'm really, really, really grateful, and I wouldn't change not one thing.
I love that Now. Voguing is now having a renaissance again, and it's lasted multiple generations. At this point, I don't know what it is about it. Every gay person I know is obsessed. What do you think about it transcends time.
It's the ability to express yourself and not be made to feel shame over it, right, whether it's coming from within you or shame from somebody else, right, bitch on fears, this is me. Boom boom boom. I just got my nails down, you know, like, this is me where I am right now, and I love that.
Well, you are one of the pioneers and so deeply responsible for the explosion of this. As new queer generations discover voguing and inherit voguing, what do you want to pass down to them?
I want to pass down that One. They really should get into the history of vogue and where it came from. It's just not throwing our hands in the air right and feeling fierce. It really comes from a place that holds more gravitas than that. And two, getting out there and expressing yourself is really important. And three support having that support system around you of people saying, yes, this
is fantastic, you are fantastic. You go boy or you go girl or whatever, and you know which makes people feel loved and seen and appreciated.
But We Loved is hosted by me Jordan GONSLVS. New episodes drop every Wednesday. If you want to write it to tell your story, email us at Butweloved at gmail dot com or send us a message on Instagram or TikTok at but We Loved. We are a production of The Outspoken Podcast Network and iHeart Podcasts. But We Loved was originally developed with Pushkin Industries. Our producers Areshena Ozaki, Michael June, Emily Meronoff, and Joey pat Our. Executive producers
are Me and Maya Howard. Original music by Steve Boone. Special thanks to Jay Bronson and Rokel Willis. If you loved this episode, leave us a rating and follow us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and thank you for listening. I'll see you next week.