Wacking, Brian Green, and the House Dance Conference

Basically, wacking is a funk-style dance that emerged in mostly Gay Bars/Dance Clubs in California.

It looks "kinda" like Locking, but, more feminine... for example: instead of the arm movements being strong and really quick and well-defined, they are more flowy. Instead of a real strong boogie-bounce step, you have more of a sashaying movement with your hips.

Wacking is related to "punking" and "vogue-ing."


As per Brian Green and he says that it evolved from locking on the gay club scene. Yes, Wacking incorporates much more jazzy, feminine type movement than locking does. When you do it, and if you know locking, then you can see its roots. Ana "Lollipop" Sanchez just recently gave a wacking and punking workshop through Brian and the video of the workshop will be available in January. Apparently the styles are related if not intertwined.

Voguing developed uptown in New York within the gay club scene as a battle dance in the same way that B-boy is a battle dance - one-up-man (gay or straight)-ship. One takes a series of standing and ground poses similar to poses we might see models making in the fashion media. Transitions have to be smooth, should be elegant (but are not always) and are informed and fueled by personal and communal fantasy. You can see good examples of Voguing and its evolution in the documentary "Paris is Burning", which gives quite a heart wrenching look into the psychological aspects of the movement. Madonna does a well executed rendition of voguing in her performance of her song "Vogue", albeit perhaps jazzed up, streamlined and commercialized - not as raw as by original pracitioners but certainly a beautiful, respectable and accessible homage to the form.

At around three in the morning last May at a monthly party called the House Dance Conference at Demerara's in New York City, there was a locking moment. Remember What's Happening's Fred Berry, big-striped cotton tights, peddle-pushers, big floppy hats, and long-tail tuxedo jackets? Well, there was a big circle of folks on the main floor of Demerara's one early Friday morning in May watching 21st century lockers throw down thousand of miles away on the other side of the country from where Fred Berry and his crew first recorded their locking routines in front of cameras on the set of What's Happening. Folks got down minus the old-school gear—except for one guy staying true to the form. Clad in black and white striped stockings, a black vest, black peddle pushers, and a white top hat, the dancer, in the course of his dance routine, surveyed the floor in front of him, got down on his knees, and, like a coach explaining a play strategy, mapped out his dance move plan by touching points on the floor with his hands.

The locking moment at the Conference was a reminder that what you don't see on TV anymore may still be alive and well somewhere in America's cultural underground; that there is an underside of American cultural life that lives outside the window of the mainstream media; and that African American folklore is not a thing of the past, but is still living and being remade.


Brian "Footwork" Green, the conference's creator, host, and emcee—who's been called one of the best house (club) dancers in New York City—takes his turn in the circle, changing the groove up a little bit with a style of dancing called "wacking." He describes it as "a dance inspired by locking that was created by the gay community of California back in the seventies." Things have apparently moved on in gay Black American dance since Madonna's "Vogue" video, but you may never know by just how much if your only source of information about American music and dance culture are mainstream ports like MTV and BET.

The House Dance Conference is one of those spaces in America where you can plug into a cultural reality that's almost invisible in the mainstream documents of contemporary American culture. Here, poppers, lockers, b-boys and girls, house dancers, perhaps a voguer or two, and even some tappers from the old school may be found throwing down, representing a dance culture that has its roots in pre-colonial West Africa.

Green explains that the conference, which made its debut at Demerara's in August of 1999, is an attempt to recreate the parties that took place at spaces like The Tunnel, The World, Encore, Roseland's, Studio 54, L'Amour East, and Paled's, where he and other dancers used to jam and hone their skills in the early days of New York City's house scene. The purpose was "to bring the scene that we had been through and still apart of forth into the public," Green says, "so the kids can actually see whatever we've seen and gain all the skills that we had."

Green's been seriously involved in house dance in New York since the mid-eighties, he explains. He recalls the early days of the city's developing house scene when, on trains, people "used to call us a lot of different names….cuz we used to dress funny and all that to them." House music and the cultures it spawned were all lumped together by many as products of a gay culture; as a result, this style of dancing—purportedly named after the Warehouse club in Chicago, which was one of the early venues of house music—was stigmatized and conceptually reduced to the dancing that gay folks do. Furthermore, early on, house dancing was not accepted as a dance form worthy of the same respect that b-boyin'/girlin', popping, and locking were getting at the time. Green remembers hearing comments like, "'Why you running around with those faggots—vogueing and all that?'" and being called "grasshoppers" and "homos," especially by poppers, lockers, and b-boys. "There was a big war in New York between b-boys and house dancers for years," Green explains. But by about '97 or '98, he says, the status of house dancing in the city changed. "They found out what we did…" and "…were like, 'Okay, you ain't vogueing. You ain't doing that. You dancing. You getting down.'"

Even at the House Dance Conference, the various styles that represent there don't mix too much. You might find in one moment at the conference a locking cipher, a poppin' one, one of b-boys and b-girls, and another of house happening at the same time—but clearly distinct and separate. The monthly event draws these dancers together into the same space—a laudable accomplishment, no doubt—but what happens naturally is a segregation of the styles. This may not necessarily be a reflection of any kind of tension that exists between the different contingents of dance styles present, but simply an effort to preserve the stylistic integrity of each circle. However, the absence of vogueing, wacking, and punking [a style of dance that Green explained preceded wacking and from which wacking developed] almost entirely from some of the most recent conferences is striking and may, on the other hand, suggest such a tension between dance forms identified with Black gay culture and the homophobia and sexism within segments of the hip hop dance community.

There was, however, one lone voguer in a wife beater t-shirt showing off cut muscles and doing fall outs on the main dance floor at one March conference; and, of course, there's Green, who busted out with some wacking moves of his own in the middle of that locking cipher at the conference last May. He says that he's always told people that "dance and sex are different, and should be looked at as so." When he saw vogueing for the first time years ago, he remembers saying to friends, "'I'm [going to] learn that too. I ain't following you to no bedroom or nothing, but I'm learning it."

Green now teaches a wacking class at Fazil's in Manhattan on Wednesday nights and has been gathering information about the history of African American gay dance forms from old school voguers. Vogueing "is probably the most beautiful dance in the world," he says, and by some accounts, has been around at least since the early 1960s—perhaps as early as the 1940s. In either case, that would make vogueing older than poppin', locking, house, and hip hop dance. Like poppin', locking, and b-boyin/girlin', vogueing is from the street, he explains, and "the funny thing is, voguers was always into poppin' and waving and all that. They love it." It's unfortunate, then, Green says, that the focus by the media and by many in the hip hop dance community is primarily on the gay sexuality that has shaped the dance, rather than its technical characteristics and its relationship to other Black dance forms.

At the House Dance Conference, however, legendary voguer Willi Ninja and other celebrities of African American social dance, such as Don "Campbellock" Campbell, Sam "Boogaloo Sam" Solomon, Greg "Campbellock Jr." Campbell, Jazzy J (popper), Archie Burnett (lofter, voguer, and wacker), Bravo (footwork freestylist), and Steve Glavin (popper and locker), have graced its stage with performances during the regular midnight showcases; and perhaps, as a result, have made explicit to many the connections that exist between the variety of dance styles one may find Black folks doing in clubs and streets across America.
Green recalls that one of the first House Dance Conferences "had every style from the street" performing during the showcase. "Voguers and poppers and lockers and wackers and punkers….and bboys on one stage—sharing the stage." This is what set off "the conference's phenomenon, " he explains.

The House Dance Conference is a fifty to sixty thousand dollar investment. The costs involve rental of the Demerara's nightclub once a month, fliers, and paid help. His partners with the event are Spex Abbiw, a house dancer who does the graphics for the fliers, and Ulli Maier, a student of Green's from Germany who works the door and contributes financially towards the cost of the event.

Initially, he started out organizing the event with a group of dancers he had been running around in the scene with since the early eighties. The collaboration soured and ended about a year ago as a result of a financial dispute that had Green seeking refuge in Los Angeles to deal with an anger he was afraid might lead him to violence if he stuck around in New York any longer. In L.A. he checked out the club scene, hooked up with Millenium Dance Complex, did drugs to deal with the anger, and at the end of it all says he got closer to God. "God could have killed me…..because I went a little crazy. Drugs and everything like that," he explains. "[God] could have just let me go, but He didn't….[W]hile I was going crazy, a lot of people were going….A lot of people were on drugs, were catching AIDS and dying in front of my face with gun shot wounds and all that in L.A. And I was right there at the spot doing the same drugs…" His belief in God was strengthened as a result of that experience, and so now, at the end of emails, of posts on website message boards like bboy.com, of phone conversations, and mic addresses to crowds at the House Dance Conference, you'll usually hear him end with a "God Bless You," or some variation of it.

Green is a rare breed in a business where many would pimp their culture in a minute to make money. Not happy with plans to incorporate West African dance history lessons in dance performances as a marketing ploy, he turned down an opportunity to work with a major hip hop dance company that's enjoyed a great deal of national and international fame in recent years. And while others may look for any opportunity to brag about their one or two thirty-second appearances in someone's video, Green never mentioned in the course of an hour and a half interview the choreography he did for R & B singer Mya's "Free" video, which earned him an American Choreography Award in 2001 for "Outstanding Achievement in a Music Video—Hip Hop"; the numerous videos and concerts of well-known singers and rappers within which he has performed; or that his name has shared space with such legends as Boogaloo Sam and Mr. Wiggles on a top ten list of the best boogalooers today. Although Green, who's only thirty-two, admits that a lot of younger dancers consider him an "O.G."—or master—house dancer, he's uncomfortable with the title. "I don't consider myself an O.G. at all….It's just strange….When I call myself an O.G. is when I feel like I'm completed in a lot of different things. I don't think I am….I have a way to go—a long way to go."

Green was doing some of that "traveling" in a 1987 white Chrysler Le Baron with no shocks and a broken radio that he got from his grandmother. The night of the interview for this article he was driving it all the way to Boston—three hours away—to visit a sick friend. To keep him awake on the long drive, he had a walkman with only one ear of the headphone working. He's taking a newspaper article about herbal treatments for HIV to the friend in Boston; and in the back seat are a bag of shoes he plans to drop off at the Salvation Army. In the car that night, instead of talking a lot about dance, he talks about folks with ulterior motives who tried to get in his pants but who he has said he'd rather smoke a crack pipe than do, the alcohol problem he had, emotional issues connected with his abuse as a child that he's grappled with for years, and the illness his mother's been diagnosed with but that he says he doesn't buy into.

It's family, he explains, that keeps him from traveling as much as he would like. He lives with his mom in Queens and looks after her. She's his "biggest influence ever," he declares. As a child, he studied African dance with her. Knowledgeable not only about dances from a number of different tribes of Africa, she also "knew hustle back and forth," and used to hit the clubs with his aunt all the way up into Green's teen years, he recalls. ("No alcohol and no drugs. Make sure that's known," he adds.) His cousin Tracy inspired him to tap at five years old; and in later years, he studied with such tapping legends as Charles "Honi" Coles, James "Buster" Brown, Phil Black, and for a short time, Fayard Nicholas of the Nicholas Brothers. His brother Oscar was a popper and "burnt the shit out of" him during a junior high school dance contest once when he was eight or nine years old. Green performed a ballet routine and Oscar freestyled. "I'm out there doing tombé, glissade…. and six pirouettes….and he's taking the music and freestyling off of one song—a fifteen minute solo just off the head….I'm sitting there, like—I'm having a problem doing four counts of eight, and this boy is doing the whole song….[H]e was amazing. And he didn't practice that much, which was annoying."

To Brian, talent is something spiritual. At a workshop in Vienna several months ago, he watched a South African man who looked like he might have been in his fifties or sixties do a dance that, roughly translated into English, is called the "bird dance." "[I]t was amazing," he says. "He walked past me, and I was just like, 'Okay, probably [the] closest facsimile of God just walked past me." He believes talent is God working through someone. "God gives everyone a talent," he explains, "And that's what I fall in love with is people's talents…. I always look for God in them through their talent." Last May, Demerara's was full of folks sweating and getting down to funk, house, and hip hop beats, as Brian Green, dressed all in white, and a lot of others, were stepping into cipher circles, making God known.