House of Suarez Vogue Ball 2024: Heroes vs Villains Takes Over Liverpool’s Invisible Wind Factory for an Unforgettable Night of Dance and Queer Culture

The Vogue Ball is returning to Liverpool’s Invisible Wind Factory this weekend, and organisers House of Suarez are promising it will be the most fabulous yet (going by past Balls, this is no mean feat!).

The Ball invites the best vogue teams (known as ‘Houses’) to battle it out in a fight for ultimate dance supremacy, under this year’s theme: Heroes Vs Villains.

A mainstay of queer culture for decades (and now a mainstay of the North West’s cultural calendar), voguing is an amalgamation of Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and the famous model poses of Vogue magazine. It arose from Harlem ballrooms by African American drag queens of the early 1960s. Over the years, the dance evolved to become more intricate and acrobatic.

It became more well-known internationally thanks to the award-winning 1990 documentary Paris Is Burning (currently available on Netflix) and, of course, Madonna’s hit Vogue from the same year.

The night is pulled together like a couture corset by the Godmother of the Ball, the one and only Rikki Beadle Blair, the master of ceremonies helping the crowds raise the roof.

Trust us when we say there’s no way to oversell the Vogue Ball. It’s an experience you never forget.

Ahead of this year’s event, we caught up with Darren Suarez, the artistic director of House of Suarez, to speak about this year’s Ball, Liverpool’s secret voguing history, and the past, present and future of the House of Suarez.

The Broken Spine: The theme of the Ball is Heroes and Villains. How do you come up with a theme for the Ball each year?

Darren Suarez: I have to identify with a theme that is readable to the audience and also to the participants. By doing that, it opens up the spectrum of creativity from the groups. For Heroes and Villains, obviously everyone has fallen in love with the whole Marvel Universe over the last few years, and I just felt like there were loads of superheroes who have been forgotten. So I wanted the artists to think outside the box and bring back some old legends and their own interpretation of what a superhero is to them. So we’ve got people doing their own versions of that idea, as well as paying homage to the big Marvel heroes. When I was doing my feelers around, a lot of people got excited about the theme as a concept, so I ran with it.

TBS: Obviously all those artists are going to have a unique interpretation of the phrase, but what does it mean to you?

DS: It just takes me right back to being a child. I was really excited by DC and Marvel growing up. And The Hulk, for obvious reasons.

TBS: What Houses are taking part this year?

DS: We’ve got some veteran houses like the House of Suarez, obviously, the House of LaPorta, and House of Korrupt. With the House of LIPA, they’re actually assessed on this every year, so they invest a lot of time into it. Twisted Stitches are another one. We also have some new Houses: Platinum, Paccino and Arch.

TBS: You just said LIPA are assessed every year – how important is it for people to know the history of voguing and the culture surrounding it, starting in New York?

DS: I think it’s great to come from that. If you don’t know where it comes from, there’s no growth or perspective on how you can branch that out and expand. I think it’s really important. Whenever I work with new groups, I educate them about the history, about certain avenues of what the culture is. Even though the Ball culture is quite passionate and strong, there’s a story of people’s journey through it and creativity – through not just vogue, but through classical work, through costume. Whatever it is, all I do is give them a loose guideline to steer them in the right direction so they can participate.

TBS: How much do you think people like Madonna helped bring voguing to the mainstream?

DS: I think people like Grace Jones, Malcolm McLaren, and Madonna – what they did was ambitious and quite risky for that time. What they did was really put it on a platform. Some people will disagree with that and say they robbed the idea, but without Madonna doing Vogue, I wouldn’t have had that influence and it wouldn’t have inspired me to do what I’m doing now. So it was the catalyst for my idea.

TBS: Did you discover it through Madonna?

DS: No, the clubs got me into it. I started voguing in 1988, and Madonna brought out Vogue in 1990.

TBS: So you swooped in there first!

DS: Yeah, it was only a small group of people in Liverpool. We just used to go to the clubs, party, and learn moves from each other. It got heated now and again! But that made me fall in love with it; the escapism, the whole fantasy thing was great.

TBS: Is that how you learnt to vogue?

DS: Yeah, we learnt off each other. In 1990, Paris Is Burning came out, which kind of revolutionised the whole culture and historical point of view of the Ball culture. Not so much the voguing itself, more the lifestyle and the essence. It was quite important to see that at my age when I was young, as it made me realise how much positivity came from something so negative, and that was quite inspirational really. The sequel, How Do I Look?, was ten years after Paris Is Burning, and it basically gives you an outlook of the ballroom scene ten years on. They’re similar, but more people, bigger costumes, more investment, and the popularity grew as well.

TBS: How important do you think it is to have all-inclusive spaces, like the Vogue Ball?

DS: I think they’re important anywhere. I wouldn’t call it an open space, I’d call it a safe space. I think it’s a safe space for everyone to get involved with, and I think with the Ball itself, within the structure we give as a template, it’s open for a lot of people to get involved. So far, our audience members have been so passionate that the energy the participants get, the confidence building alone is fantastic. We’ve got a big demographic of people. We’ve had people in their 60s walking, one was almost 70. Backstage is amazing; you see people helping and supporting each other. The community of it, for me, is very liberal as it is based on community, so they both go hand in hand.

TBS: When did you start the House of Suarez?

DS: In 2006. I stopped a festival director and asked if I could put a piece into his festival. I wanted to fuse vogue with contemporary. It was something I wanted to explore, as I had a handful of friends who are dancers, such as Darren Pritchard and Stuart Bowden, and we got into a studio for about a week and created a piece called Liverpool is Burning. We were there every day, and within a week we had created a three-minute piece of work. It was more of a lab case, and we were exploring the movement, finding out how we could bastardise the technique of vogue and contemporary together, and within that we did a performance in the Unity Theatre. We were expecting about 30 people to turn up, and we had about 180 people, and there were 100 seats. That hype actually created massive interest. We started to get little pockets of money and then we collaborated with Homotopia for the first Liverpool Grand Vogue Ball. For me, Liverpool is Burning was a closing of that three years of story. Being in the Adelphi Hotel for the Liverpool Grand Vogue Ball gave me the confidence to go independent. In 2010, I went to Cream and did the Justice Vogue Ball.

TBS: You also put on a ball in Manchester. Do you plan to branch it out to other cities?

DS: The Vogue Ball is creating hybrid houses so far. For example, the House of Krip are doing their own thing. These hybrid houses are filtering out and doing their own work, which is branching out the creativity and dialogue the Ball culture has created. I am more interested now in building the Manchester Ball as our audiences there have grown rapidly, and I think they’ll soon be up to scratch with the Liverpool Ball.

TBS: Is it mostly professional dancers who take part?

DS: Not all. As we said before, it is a safe space. The two main ‘serious’ categories are solo and choreography. They’re the ones which take a lot of skill. Obviously, the costume category takes a lot of skill, but as far as the dance capability in the vogue style goes, they are judged within the disciplines and then their ability to fuse that with dance theatre or commercial skills. With those ones, I would usually vet the houses to make sure they’re not going to be overwhelmed entering the Ball when the calibre is pretty intense and high from all the houses involved. What we usually do is get people to walk in the Ball under a different category first, like lip-sync, let them get a sense of what the runway is about, and then if they have any dance skills, they will then know the level they’re meant to be at.

TBS: I have zero vogue ability! Do you have any advice for anyone who would like to learn or get involved?

DS: The House of Suarez puts on lessons at the weekend; they’re mixed level. My main dancers started in those classes, and now they teach for me, and they’re choreographers and rehearsal directors for me. With that class, if you persist with the style and the technique of it, when you start to get used to that flavour, you can build from that.

TBS: How long does it take you to plan the Balls? Are you looking at making them more regular?

DS: I only want an annual Ball! The reason I want that is that I don’t want to take for granted that the Houses will be able to invest all that time spent on costumes and everything. I try to keep way ahead of the scheduling. If we were to do too many Balls, it would get too messy.

• The House of Suarez Vogue Ball: Heroes Vs Villains takes place on Saturday 19th October 2024 at Liverpool’s Invisible Wind Factory. Tickets available here.

Photo Credit: Gary Dougherty