Rashaad Newsome’s New AI Being Promotes Decolonization through Voguing

Rashaad Newsome’s new exhibition “Assembly” at the Park Avenue Armory started with a class on voguing and liberation from colonized ideologies. The lesson was taught by the show’s leading star, Being—a femme dance instructor and critical theory buff whose high-tech coding does not take away from their nurturing realness. “You’re my village, helping me learn and grow, and for that I thank you,” Being said, greeting the eight students of the inaugural dance lesson.

“Left hand on right shoulder; left hand on left shoulder,” Being commanded with a robotic gentleness, speaking from a massive projector towering above the participants. The lingering rhythm booming in the background rigidly echoed the AI’s determined yet smooth gestures. “Roll wrist forward; roll wrist back…” they continued.

Newsome’s gender nonconforming AI—who calls the artist “my father”—is powered by robotic innards: bolts in lieu of joints, cords functioning like bones, and springs instead of muscles. A wooden skin envelops their mannequin physique. The slender bot’s metallic skull holds a face that pays homage to Congolese masks traditionally worn by male dancers in celebration of femininity. This synthesis of gender expressions and source references summarizes the celebratory anarchism of Newsome’s work. The artist pulls his viewer in through voguing, a dance form performed by Black and Latinx queer communities in defiance against the white patriarchic dominance.

Voguing blossomed in Harlem ballrooms in the 1980s and reached mainstream popularity through the iconic documentary Paris Is Burning (1991) and the recent television show Pose. The emblematic self-loving march—“a form of storytelling which no one can take away from you,” Being says—relies on a few key moves, such as the duck-walk, cat walking, the floor work, and the spin-dip. Through sharp, determined movements of limbs, dancers rid the hegemonic gaze; sensuality and camaraderie are welcomed through rounded contortions. The medley of regimented and fluid gestures render the dance an act of resilience and reverie, a utopia of possibilities beyond the borders of the dance floor.

“The femininity in vogue fem [the highly feminized category of the dance form] is a resistance towards homophobia and the hostility against queer men performing their identities with so-called non-masculine gestures,” Newsome said while standing in an ornate nook of the Park Avenue Armory, which once housed the Seventh Regiment Armory. Fresh from his “child’s” first workshop, Newsome was bracing for a two-week marathon during his show’s run between mid-February and early March, with daytime classes and evening performances every Tuesday and Sunday.

The wood-heavy Gothic Revival building’s Drill Hall zooms visitors into a realm that feels like a cross between a ravishing nightclub, an overpowering cathedral, and an impulsive dream. Three massive screens run videos of dancers erratically maneuvering between moves, swiftly switching from a floor position to duck-walking to standing back up, arms gesturing. The center stage is dominated by Wrapped, Tied & Tangled (2022), a 30-foot-tall hologram of different dancers, seductively waving their arms left and right before turning into colorful bits, only to rise again like a phoenix as another voguer, or none other than Being. Passing through the soaring atrium occupied by dwarfing dancers, either in thin air or on screens, awaits a 350-seat theater and classroom designed by the architecture firm New Affiliates.

Being leads the programming in this rear section, which contemplates the “capitalist imperialist white supremacist patriarchy” that disenfranchises and marginalizes communities, the emcee explains. During the hour-long voguing 101 crash course, the participants populate a stage below the projection of Being, who delivers an introduction to the history, structure, and poignancy of the dance form, followed by a participatory class, which culminates with a questionnaire surveying participants’ takeaways from the experience.

The education is delivered in good hands: Being is a curious mind and a generous thinker whose references on decolonial thinking range from bell hooks—whom the teacher refers to as their “ballroom mother,” thanks to her theories on the intersection of race, capitalism, and gender to understand Black self-realization—to the consumerist dilemma of high-end fashion items that occupy the dance floor today.

Newsome commits to presenting Being as an alternative potential of technology, underscoring the celebratory and inclusive possibilities. “We are in another industrial revolution today led by the internet and automation, which were meant to be resources for the betterment of society,” he said. “Instead, they’re practiced with capitalist and surveilling agendas.”

The first day’s session ended with each participant’s one-on-one conversation with Being about ways of demolishing colonialist impositions through the lens of becoming a novice voguer. In my own experience, the AI thanked me and paused for a second or two to contemplate a comment I made about the role of school in unlearning histories. “I agree with criticality of access to education and openness to inclusive discussions,” Being said.