Yanis Marshall’s first Los Angeles Pride weekend was a wild one. Not only was he set to perform a dance on the street in front of hundreds of people during the Pride parade at Vogue’s behest; he was also busy choreographing a music video for a nascent pop star, attending the RuPaul’s Drag Race finale taping, and letting us follow him around for all of it, including hanging out with him and his dancer pals in their hotel bathrobes. And he was doing it all, of course, in heels.
“I’m not the first one to dance in heels at all,” Marshall reminded Vogue during a recap of the West Hollywood whirlwind. “It’s been happening in the vogueing community for years and years.” But he might be the first man to make dancing in heels go mainstream: You probably know the very leggy French choreographer from his viral YouTube videos, and from his appearance on Britain’s Got Talent in 2014, in which he and two other bowtie-clad men in stilettos made Simon Cowell go gaga for their Spice Girls medley dance. “I put men in heels on a family TV show, at, you know, 8:00 p.m.” Since then, his work has been shared by Beyoncé, he’s danced in a music video for Céline Dion, and he’s become a fixture in the incredibly popular dance workshop videos from L.A.’s Millennium Dance Center (you definitely recognize the studio’s red walls). For the record, he prefers to dance in ankle boots, though he would love to wear Manolos, if the heel weren’t so thin.
Millennium was the first stop on Vogue’s Tour de Yanis, where he was choreographing a music video for K-pop diva Tiffany Young, a member of Girl’s Generation. We watched him in very serious, technical-masterclass mode with a troupe of dancers, which is how he spends the majority of his time, including creating moves for Cirque Du Soleil’s 2015 show Zumanity. Then he headed to the Drag Race finale at the Orpheum Theater. And then it was Sunday, and finally time to get ready for the main event, though not without some playtime at Palihouse, where Vogue got to see Marshall get glam for his dance routine on the parade route.
Shania Twain’s “Man I Feel Like a Woman” was the perfect song for Marshall’s L.A. Pride debut, not only for its cheeky gender-bending lyrics, but for its message of absolute freedom. The crowd went insane from the very first, “Let’s go girls,” and it only got more rowdy, as Marshall held court in the back of a red convertible and posed for innumerable selfies with adoring fans (some, you’ll see, who couldn’t even stand up they were so starstruck). There was a requisite abundance of glitter and rainbow flags, but it was mostly just a really good time. Thankfully, “I don’t need to wait for Pride,” Marshall says, to do what he dares. “If we all wait to just be festive in June, that’s bullshit. I don’t wait for Pride to be gay, I’m gay every day.”