O’Shae Sibley’s ‘Expression Was Turned Into Resistance’
That a fight over a dancing body, vibrant and free, led to a killing is still hard to believe. No — as a crowd chanted at a Brooklyn gas station on Friday night — vogueing is not a crime.
The memorial ball protest, called “Vogue as an Act of Resistance,” was full of bodies — stylish, of all sizes and shapes, young and old.
But missing was the body that mattered the most: O’Shae Sibley’s. The 28-year-old dancer and choreographer was fatally stabbed July 29 after vogueing to Beyoncé’s “Renaissance” in the gas station’s parking lot when, the police said, several men had told him to stop and yelled homophobic slurs at him. “It is truly painful to have to walk up here, to literally see the area where his blood was taken,” Qween Jean, a costume designer and activist, said, speaking through a megaphone. “The stain is still here!
They do not care what happens to our bodies.” Sibley’s story should be familiar by now: After returning from a day at the beach, Sibley and his friends stopped at the gas station in Midwood to fill up their car; while they pumped gas, they danced to Beyoncé.
