In the 1980s the boroughs of New York City were best understood as bunkers. A concoction of fiscal crises, racial turmoil and a prolific drug culture had cast a pall on a city once confidently believed to be the roaring center of Americas economy.

New Yorks queer culture was forged, in large part, under these conditions; the inability to comfortably exist in public according to ones identity crowded many queer people out of acceptable society. The result, as is often the case in repressed cultures, was a wave of potent art reflective of that hurt, that frustration and that need for expression and belonging in a world insistent on your erasure.

Cesar Valentino discovered vogue in 1982 and became infatuated with the self-celebratory dance genre while frequenting balls and gay clubs throughout New Yorks West Village and Lower East Side. Valentino joined the ranks of the crafts most celebrated originators soon thereafter, developing namesake moves such as the Valentino Dip.

The style of dancing, in which participants revel in a series of poses as a fashion model might at the end of a runway, has been eagerly embraced in pop culture by everyone from casual dance enthusiasts to the queen of pop herself.

Since his first pose in 1983, Valentino has served as an ambassador for the art form, carrying it through the pages of magazines like Vanity Fair into the hallowed halls of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theaters academy, where he is an instructor, and across the internet, where the dance is immortalized in YouTube videos and GIFs by fans of all ages and walks of life.

HuffPost talked with Valentino about the origins of voguing, what it meant to the gay community at the time and how it feels to see an art form burgeon beyond its humble beginnings into an international phenomenon.