In April, three local friends joined forces at Etsi Bravo to showcase their unique style of ballroom vogue dancing for the first time. Now they’re looking forward to more performances together.

“We’re just a group of friends having fun, expressing ourselves as queer men,” said Bryan Ramirez, one of the members of the performance group.

Hannah Myers, a bartender at Etsi Bravo, said she noticed Ramirez, Anthony Browning and Elijah Dimler dancing together and wanted to work with them for one of her art shows.

“I was really attracted to their style,” Myers said. “My idea was more of making a video of them dancing … it turned into a lot more than that.”

Their initial performances were live but short in length, Browning said.

“It’s like this with a lot of choreography, where it turns out a lot differently than you originally intended, but in a good way,” Myers said. “I never thought that they would perform live because I was thinking of the video aspect of it, but they all have really good stage presence.”

The men worked with Myers at the gym multiple days each week to learn and practice the choreography leading up to their performances, Browning said.

“[Myers] mostly specializes in ballet dance but she kind of whipped us into shape,” Browning said. “Then we introduced her to our kind of dance, which is ballroom vogue.”

Ballroom vogue is a style of dance that started in the late 1980s. The group’s performances draw on this influence and combine it with modern moves, Dimler said.

“Our stuff is very drag culture,” Ramirez said. “We’re more performance-based than technical dance.”

In addition to training the group and helping with more technical choreography, Myers also helped the men get comfortable performing in front of an audience since they never did performances before, Dimler said.

“We were already a group of friends,” Ramirez said. “[Myers] made us a group of dancers.”

For their performances, Browning, Ramirez and Dimler coordinated outfits and did each other’s makeup. One of the best parts of performing was getting ready for it as a group Bof friends, Browning said.

The group is planning another performance in November, which will also be at Etsi Bravo, Browning said. The men hope to have a longer and more involved routine for their third performance, he said.

“The bar’s just gonna get higher,” Ramirez said. “Higher heels … more stunts, more technical, actual dance.”