![is john travolta gay news is john travolta gay news](https://www.indiewire.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/gotti-john-travolta.jpg)
The father of waacking … Tyrone Proctor on Bandstand with Sharon Hill. But in a club or in a cypher session, I can truly be myself, as feminine or sexy as I would like to be, without judgment from others.”
![is john travolta gay news is john travolta gay news](https://akns-images.eonline.com/eol_images/Entire_Site/2018817/rs_634x1024-180917072951-634-John-Travolta-Kirstie-Alley-Look-Whos-Talking-JR-091718.jpg)
“There’s not much leeway for you to express who you are because you are expected to fulfil certain roles. “In life, many things aren’t under your control,” he says. Waacking gives him a way to explore his sexuality in a city where gay marriage still isn’t recognised. Hong Kong waacker Ryan keeps his sexuality hidden from the school where he teaches for fear of attracting homophobic slurs. It’s danced by people who have to hide their true selves in their daily lives, so when they have the opportunity to be themselves in the club, “the energy explodes”. “The power of waacking comes from the pressure,” says Taiwanese waacker Akuma. Whatever it looks like, waacking is a form of escapism and a defiant rebuttal of conservative norms that is well suited to Asia, where LGBTQ+ rights are not what they are in the west.
![is john travolta gay news is john travolta gay news](https://static.standard.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2019/01/09/10/johntravolta.jpg)
When I dance waacking, I am celebrating myself When I dance other styles, it’s like living in people’s shadow. In places like Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan and Korea, fast hand and arm movements predominate. Nelson George, author of The Hippest Trip in America : Soul Train and the Evolution of Culture and Style, believes the dance morphed from a full-body affair to a waist-up one because Proctor had damaged his hips from years of dancing and began to teach it differently. They travelled the world leading workshops and judging competitions. That is, until the early 2000s, when it saw an unlikely resurgence thanks to “the father of waacking” Proctor, who died last year, and his mentee Princess Lockerooo. Photograph: Soul Train/Getty Imagesīut by the late 1980s, as the disco era came to an end and Aids ravaged the queer community, waacking all but disappeared from popular culture. Let’s waack … Cheryl Song joins Marvin Gaye onstage for a performance on Soul Train. “It was direct, it was a strong movement and it was dramatic,” she says. As a straight Asian woman, Song had little in common with waacking’s LGBTQ+ origins, it being an unapologetic dance born from oppression. In those early days on Soul Train, waacking – an improvised dance done to the beat of disco that incorporated martial arts elements, rapid arm movements, poses and a celebrated attitude – was starting to go mainstream. “No matter what colour you are,” she says, “you’re just there to dance and have fun.” But Song – “the Asian girl with the long hair” – went on to dance on the show for 14 years.
#Is john travolta gay news tv#
W hen Cheryl Song stepped on to the all-black set of Soul Train in 1976, she was met with a deathly silence that was followed by a few threats, then a woman snarling: “Who does that high yellow bitch think she is?” Two friends from school had brought Song along to Don Cornelius’s groundbreaking TV show as something of a practical joke, assuming that she wouldn’t be selected because of her Asian heritage.