O’Shae Sibley, 28, the dancer killed while voguing in NYC, was from Philly and studied at Philadanco
“O’Shae has always been a peacemaker. All he wanted to do was dance,” said his aunt, Tondra Sibley.
Joan Myers Brown, founder of the Philadelphia Dance Company often known as Philadanco, got the call late Saturday night that O’Shae Sibley, one of her former students, had been killed in New York City.
Mr. Sibley, 28, was at a Brooklyn gas station that night with a group of friends. They were returning from a birthday party, Myers Brown said.
While filling the car up with gas at a station only blocks from where Mr. Sibley lived, the friends blasted music by Beyoncé from the car and started voguing, a form of dance that was created and mainly performed by Black and Latinx LGBTQ people and began as an imitation of fashion models.
But a group of men approached and told them to stop dancing and that they did not want to see gay men dancing in their neighborhood, Myers Brown said.
Mr. Sibley’s killing has drawn national attention because he was gay, and the men who fought with him used gay slurs, the New York Times reported.
While no motivation for the killing was determined, the Times said police said the hate crimes unit was involved in the investigation.
Iquail Shaheed, a dance professor and member of the board of the International Association of Blacks in Dance, wrote an email informing the IABD organization of Mr. Sibley’s death and said he was killed “just because he was Black, gay and dancing.
Mr. Sibley “wanted to make a life for himself in and through dance. Yet, his young life was snuffed out by bigotry and hatred,” Shaheed wrote.
“They had their shirts off because it was hot outside,” Myers Brown told The Inquirer. “He told them they were just dancing and having a good time.”
“He was trying to calm them down when the boys jumped on him,” Myers Brown said.
According to the Times, Mr. Sibley confronted the men, words were exchanged, things escalated to a fight, and he was stabbed.
Otis Pena, one of Mr. Sibley’s friends who was with him that night, pressed on the wound to stop the bleeding before he was taken to Maimonides Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead, the Times reported.
“They murdered him because he’s gay, because he stood up for his friends,” Mr. Pena said in a Facebook video that he posted hours after the killing on Coney Island Avenue in Midwood.
Mr. Sibley moved from Philadelphia to New York before the pandemic started, with hopes of having better opportunities to dance there, Tondra Sibley, an aunt, told the Times.
“It was a senseless crime,” she said. “O’Shae has always been a peacemaker. All he wanted to do was dance.”
Mr. Sibley’s killing occurred amid warnings of an increase in anti-LGBTQ+ episodes, attitudes and legislation around the country. In June, the Anti-Defamation League and the LGBTQ+ advocacy group GLADD issued a report documenting more than 350 anti-LGBTQ+ extremist and non-extremist episodes motivated by hate across the United States between June 2022 through April 2023.
From a community school to Philadanco
Myers Brown was still in tears Tuesday morning when asked to talk about Mr. Sibley.
“He came to me when he was 14 years old,” she said.
She recalled that Karen Pendergrass, one of her teachers who worked at a community school, called her one day to ask her whether she would give scholarships to Philadanco for two of her students.
One of them was Mr. Sibley.
He had grown up under difficult circumstances in North Philadelphia, Myers Brown said, and he was teased for being a boy who danced.
“Philadanco was his refuge where he was comfortable, and he was at home,” Myers Brown said. “I would [drive ] him home at night when he didn’t have car fare. He was great.”
She said he came to Philadanco already dancing hip-hop and other popular dances.
“We introduced him to modern dance, to ballet. We gave him formal training so he would be prepared. He was auditioning for Broadway shows and trying to do better.”
She said she believed that while auditioning for shows, Mr. Sibley found some work as a model. Others said he was also a choreographer.
Myers Brown said Mr. Sibley studied with her at Philadanco until he was 22 or 23, and then moved to New York.
He was auditioning for Broadway shows and she encouraged him to continue with his dance lessons in New York. She noted there are few dance opportunities for Black dancers in Philadelphia :
“Most [former students] end up in New York or LA where they have more opportunities. A lot are moving to Atlanta where Tyler Perry is making movies.”
She said she has had some 4,000 students in the years since she opened her dance school in 1960 and the dance company, Philadanco, in 1970.
Some have stayed in touch over the years, and others haven’t. Mr. Sibley was always in touch, she said:
“He called me every week to say, ‘Hey JB, or Hey, Aunt Joan, and he would tell me about his auditions.”
She asked Shaheed, one of her former teachers who now teaches at the Alvin Ailey School in New York, to look out for Mr. Sibley and offer him dance classes.
Myers Brown shared an email that Shaheed sent to the IABD dance association board members about Mr. Sibley:
“I am in pain because he and I just made plans for him to take my classes at Ailey for free as a way to get in shape for auditions. Now he’s gone. One less beautiful soul on the planet just because he was Black gay and dancing,” Shaheed wrote.
Myers Brown said Mr. Sibley once told her, “‘I just want to be famous.’ But he didn’t want to be famous for this.”