Next in Line With Jay Jay Revlon

If you’ve never seen a dancer who’s go-to styles include voguing, waacking, ballet, street and contemporary dance, then you haven’t witnessed the full potential of dance. Just ask Jay Jay Revlon. Now 29, Jay Jay’s been dancing since he was a kid, but it wasn’t ‘til he flexed his feet with Peckham’s dance community The Movement Factory as a teen that he really started to take it seriously. Fast-forward 15 years later and Jay Jay is a pioneer of the UK’s growing ballroom scene, and an advocate dedicated to creating safe spaces for self expression for QPOC and LGBTQ+ communities.

You might be wondering how a kid from South East London in the ‘00s discovered voguing. The answer is social media. “YouTube used to be my favorite thing from those years of 14 years old and up,” Jay Jay shares. I've always had a toe on these [voguing] videos because something about it spoke to me, I just automatically aligned with it. I was obsessed, basically using all my mobile credit to look at all these damn videos!” he laughs. He walked his first ballroom in 2014 and was instantly inspired by the freedom of the voguing community—a mindset that continues to shape his attitude to dance, and life, today

Formal dance training often follows a more traditional structure though, and this can be incredibly restrictive. Jay Jay learned this the hard way after being accepted into one of London’s most prestigious dance schools. Jay Jay wanted to explore dancing in heels, and he wanted to incorporate new, fluid freestyle movements into his routine. He quickly realised that was probably not going to fly at a place like this.

“I had people say to me ‘You can't dance feminine, you only can dance masculine.’ I had artistic directors laughing at me,” Jay Jay reflects. “The stuff I wanted to do in that school was well against their own grade. It just wasn't catering to my expressive nature.” Jay Jay had two options; stay, and do things in a way that didn’t feel authentic to him. Or leave and dance to his own beat.

Want to guess which one he chose? Let’s just say that Jay Jay is out here reinventing what dance should look and feel like. He’s a trailblazer within the voguing movement, as the founder of his own inclusive club night ‘Let’s Have A Kiki #theparty ’and The Men Of Colour Society—a social group for QPOC men* in London. He’s also a volunteer peer-to-peer mentor at Stonewall Housing and a coach to the next generation of dancers who refuse to play by the rules. For Jay Jay, dancing is more than...well, just dancing. He believes that what you learn on the dance floor can set you up for success in life. “Community and competition is really important. How you fight on the floor is how you fight in society,” he explains. “Ballroom teaches you all these lessons.”

This is what dance should be; vibrant, expressive, and ultimately, fun. Free from constraints, rules, and rigidity. “What I always try to push is: know that you know nothing, and that’s perfection,” Jay Jay assures. “So come with your un-knowledgeable self, and let’s learn.”

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