Jose Xtravaganza

Jose Gutierez Xtravaganza
Born	José Gutiérez New York City
Nationality	American
Alma mater	Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, New York City
Occupation	Dancer, choreographer, recording artist

Jose Gutierez Xtravaganza (né José Gutiérrez, sometimes called Jose Xtravaganza / Extravaganza) is a dancer, choreographer, recording artist and New York City nightlife personality. He is one of the most widely recognized personalities to emerge from the NYC ballroom scene of the 1980s. He is best known for his work with Madonna.

Jose Gutierez was born and raised in the Lower East Side area of New York City; his parents having emigrated from the Dominican Republic . During his youth the neighborhood was a hotbed of raw creative energy, giving rise to the new wave music scene, the emergence of DJ culture, the development of the graffiti / street art movement, and the growing popularity of drag culture and entertainment. This creative environment would influence the way Jose perceived the world around him and the opportunities it presented for his own creative energy. As a child he was recognized for his natural dance ability and enrolled in a program of formal dance education, sponsored through the New York City Department of Education. He would continue his study of ballet and other dance styles throughout his teenage years, going on to attend the prestigious NYC Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts and studying under master choreographer Eliot Feld.

While in high school, Jose began to socialize among the Latino and African American LGBTQ community that regularly gathered along the West Side waterfront of New York City’s West Village area, commonly known as “the piers”. It was there that he first became aware of the gestural vocabulary and projected attitude of voguing. The dance style first emerged as part of the NYC underground ballroom scene, in which the dancers transition through a series of poses that emulate those of fashion models. Much like break dancing (which developed in parallel during the same period), there is an inherent competitive aspect to voguing in which the dancers try to outdo one another through increasingly complex poses and the fluidity of their transition between poses. The underground ball scene and voguing would later be popularized through the 1990 documentary Paris Is Burning, in which Jose appears voguing in competition.

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