Catching Up With Madonna’s Truth or Dare Co-Stars in Strike a Pose

In the canon of films documenting gay culture, 1990’s Truth or Dare stands out thanks to its larger-than-life subject, Madonna. It was filmed during her controversial Blonde Ambition tour, arguably at the height of her career. But Truth or Dare is also notable for showing the Queen of Pop’s entourage of mostly gay backup dancers existing with free-spirited ease. As young, talented, handsome men of color plucked from obscurity for their talents and expertise in hip-hop and vogue-style dancing, all seven were catapulted to the spotlight in an era when AIDS disproportionately diminished the gay population and stigma pushed LGBT culture to the margins.

Twenty-five years later, filmmakers Ester Gould and Reijer Zwaan followed up with the six surviving dancers, discussing the impact of Madonna’s tour on their lives. Strike a Pose checks most of the boxes of the run-of-the-mill show-biz doc—the early stages of fame, the fall from grace, experimentation with drugs, the comeback. But Gould and Zwaan elegantly balance each dancer’s narrative and elevate the film to something bigger.

Now in their late 40s, Luis Camacho, Oliver Crumes III, Salim “Slam” Gauwloos, Jose Gutierrez, Kevin Stea and Carlton Wilborn—Gabriel Trupin died of AIDS in 1995 at the age of 26—live low-key lives while being legends in the gay community, still receiving fan mail and getting recognized on the nightclub circuit. In Truth or Dare, when they’re not dancing in formation behind Madonna, they’re shown being carefree, sexy and, most of all, liberated in their gayness, which resonated deeply with gay men at the time, as they were starved for representation in media.

But for all its ’90s vivaciousness and talk of expressing oneself, Strike a Pose illustrates how truly repressed each dancer actually was. The iconic Truth or Dare scene, in which Gabriel open-mouth kisses Salim on a dare outed Gabriel in real life, prompting him to sue Madonna upon the film’s release. Salim and Carlton both held back on disclosing their HIV status and lived secretly in shame. These candid interviews with the men (and Gabriel’s mother, Sue) bring a level of heaviness that hit like a wallop. The interview with Jose and his Dominican mother is particularly heartbreaking, as he ruefully pines over what could have been if he had continued dancing onstage and afforded her a house to live in.

There’s no love lost for Madonna. As the reason for their union and friendship, the dancers each treasure their time spent with her for what it was: “a moment in time.” While her role is complicated, it’s perplexing that the filmmakers don’t address one of the biggest criticisms about the entertainer regarding gay culture. Madonna, a white woman, has been taken to task for appropriating voguing from lower-class black and Latino drag-ball culture. She’s credited for ushering a new style of dance into the mainstream. “Something new and artistic was needed,” Jose says. “It took somebody like Madonna to bring that to the forefront.”

As the film moves forward, it features beautiful sequences of each dancer popping, locking, pirouetting and voguing in their own space, taking them out of the uniformity of a background context and showing them as creative, spiritual beings. While each dancer’s story carries pain and trauma, the brotherly love for one another pervades the film, especially near the end, as they reunite for the first time in decades and partake in a final game of Truth or Dare. Humorously, no one picks “dare,” but it’s this touching, intimate scene that grounds their friendship differently than in Truth or Dare—and evokes the honesty and courage worthy of the film’s credo, “Express Yourself.”

Strike a Pose was directed by Ester Gould and Reijer Zwaan. Opens Fri. at the Frida Cinema, 305 E. Fourth St., Santa Ana, (714) 285-9422; thefridacinema.org. Check website for show times and ticket prices.