New York City Dancer Murdered In Anti-Gay Hate Crime

The New York Daily News reports:

A professional dancer voguing at a Brooklyn gas station after a trip to the Jersey Shore with his friends was stabbed to death during a confrontation Saturday night with a group of Muslim men who said the victim’s impromptu performance offended their faith, witnesses and friends told the Daily News.

O’Shae Sibley, 28, a professional dancer who has performed at Lincoln Center as part of an all-queer dance group, was blasting music and dancing with his pals at the Midwood Mobil station on Coney Island Ave and Avenue P just after 11 p.m. when their antics drew homophobic protests from a group of men nearby, authorities and witnesses said.

The NYPD is investigating the caught-on-video killing as a possible hate crime. Medics rushed Sibley, stabbed in the torso, to Maimonides Medical Center but he couldn’t be saved. The killer ran off on Coney Island Ave. and has not been caught.

Yahoo News reports:

Sibley was a favorite of director and choregrapher Kemar Jewel, who has worked with the Philidelphia-born dancer for more than a decade and described him as a virtuoso skilled in various forms of modern dance.

“He was really good at adding ballet stuff to a tap number or voguing to a hip hop number,” said Jewel. “You probably can find dancers that are versatile, but you won’t always find dancers that are good at mixing styles seamlessly.”

Jewel notably featured Sibley in his 2021 video “Soft: A Love Letter to Black Queer Men,” a nearly seven-minute performance that the Brooklyn dancer co-choreographed, which uses the art of contemporary dance to portray black feminine energy.

The New York Post reports:

Surveillance video footage obtained by The Post captured the heated exchange between two groups that turned deadly around 11 p.m. Saturday at a Mobil station on Coney Island Avenue, according to cops.

The video shows four shirtless black and Hispanic men gasing up their car — two of them seen dancing in their swim trunks — when another group standing outside the convenience store starts jawing at them.

The encounter grows increasingly tense as the two groups come face to face and exchange words for several minutes. The two sides briefly disperse, but are then seen confronting each other again — with a physical fight breaking out in the background, the footage shows.

O’Shae Sibley, the Brooklyn man slain in a clash over voguing, used his talent as a professional dancer to teach and advocate for social change.

“He was excited to be outside on the front lines, using his body as a way of protest.”https://t.co/YF0J6ZQY4v

— New York Daily News (@NYDailyNews) July 31, 2023

“They murdered him, because he was gay, because he stood up for his friends,” a friend who witnessed the incident says in a Facebook Live video. https://t.co/z3okqkxbOj

— Gothamist (@Gothamist) July 31, 2023

Heartbroken and enraged to learn about O’Shae Sibley’s death this weekend in New York. Despite homophobes’ best efforts, gay joy is not crime. Hate-fueled attacks are.https://t.co/XiPuzEgn6T

— Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal (@bradhoylman) July 31, 2023

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