Madonna, like all good pop culture icons, was all things to all people. By the early nineties she, or her managers, saw that this could be consolidated by her seeming to embrace and become an avant garden patron saint of the LGBTQ+ community of the time. Madonna was seen on TV wheeling out Sandra Bernhardt as her girlfriend - she was in fact seeing Warren Beatty. She made a mainstream hit of 'Vogue', just a dance craze song in the old tradition but culled from underground gay and drag culture.
Vogue and the Blonde Ambition tour it was part of, required young male dancers from the dance subculture it exploited. Madonna handpicked dancers and soon became the mother hen of an elite inner circle of the mainly gay men.
'Strike A Pose' catches up with the surviving members of Madonna's male dance troupe and discovers some whose lives were changed by it, some for the better, some now worse off.
Archive footage shores up the stridently powerful woman we recall of Vogue era Madonna as a naive and superficial "issues" hound who used - or was advised to - the LGBTQ+ community to expand her market to the "pink dollar". However Madonna actually, personally cared.
Through interview, segments of expressive dance and more than honest reminiscences.
A startling and heartfelt deconstruction of those on the fringes of fame and a true interrogation of the sincerity of commercial pop art.
Vogue and the Blonde Ambition tour it was part of, required young male dancers from the dance subculture it exploited. Madonna handpicked dancers and soon became the mother hen of an elite inner circle of the mainly gay men.
'Strike A Pose' catches up with the surviving members of Madonna's male dance troupe and discovers some whose lives were changed by it, some for the better, some now worse off.
Archive footage shores up the stridently powerful woman we recall of Vogue era Madonna as a naive and superficial "issues" hound who used - or was advised to - the LGBTQ+ community to expand her market to the "pink dollar". However Madonna actually, personally cared.
Through interview, segments of expressive dance and more than honest reminiscences.
A startling and heartfelt deconstruction of those on the fringes of fame and a true interrogation of the sincerity of commercial pop art.