ROLL OUT

MagazineIssue 04

Jul 22

Manila-based multi-disciplinary performing artist Hazel – aka Blaze Revlon – spells out her journey as a Queer Filipina bridging the rollerskate and ballroom community in the Philippines.

Text Sami See
Photography Angelou Luque

From Hella Pinay 04: The Fashion Issue. Get your copy here.

A Sagittarius Sun with a Pisces Moon and Capricorn Rising, Hazel’s piercing almond eyes, slickly shaven head, and fierce makeup would tell you that she is not one to be f*cked with. Yet, behind a confident and strong stature is a warm, community-minded creative who channels her erotic power into organizing prowess. Whether she is skate dancing, voguing, or generally being a baddie on TikTok (@missblazerevlon), it’s impossible to not take notice of her skill and long-limbed grace.

A lifelong artist, musician and performer, Hazel played violin professionally for five years in the Manila Symphony Orchestra. Then in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic cast its long shadow on the world, her life as a performer as she knew it halted. Recounting that tumultuous time, Hazel says, “You know how crazy it was then, we didn’t know anything. So I really thought, damn, I’m never going to be able to perform again.”Depressed in grief and sheltered in place, Hazel scrolled across her social feed and became interested in the online community of roller skaters. During the pandemic, the longtime tradition of roller skating (yes, the ones with eight wheels; no, not inline roller blades) surged in popularity across the U.S. and Europe, in part due to more skaters across the world sharing their journeys online. Moved to act, Hazel armed herself with a pair of skates and what she lovingly calls her “gay audacity to learn anything alone,” and rolled right into a creative rebirth: as a roller skater.

Blaze (right) with friend and fellow rollerskater/model Chek (left). **Photography** Angelou Luque.

In the 1970’s on the eastern shore of the Manila Bay, one of the very few roller skate rinks in the Philippines opened up at Luneta Park. There, excitable Filipino youth would flock to the historic site to make their rounds and strut to the beat of disco music (or at least try).

After the initial pulse of interest, skating’s popularity fizzled down, until new skate hobbyists – aptly called “pandemic skaters” – started rolling out into the streets of Manila in search of social outdoor activities. As more skaters tapped in across Luzon, Cebu and other Philippine islands, the demand for skates and safe skate spaces started growing. So when Rolyo Sk8 House, a skate shop and roller rink in Makati, asked Hazel to help grow their business, she stepped in to seamlessly merge her creative passion into a full time gig.

As one of the first Filipinas to share her skate journey so candidly online, Hazel built a reputation as a skater championing authenticity, self-expression and education through her social media channels. For many skaters like Hazel, gliding across the waves of life on eight wheels is a ritual to stay well that harnesses the power of moving in joy. In her case, the way she rolls is with precision, to create a pathway that queers expectations of modesty and conservatism that historically have kept Filipinas, Queers, Trans and gender nonconforming (TGNC) people subjugated, at risk, and intentionally unheard.

A naturally gifted space maker and community builder, Hazel helped Rolyo create a one-of-a-kind venue where newbies and returning skaters alike could play, connect and learn to skate. There, Hazel began honing her dance skating (aka rhythm skating), a tradition born from Black skate communities in rinks across New York, Chicago, Cleveland, Philly, Atlanta, California (to name a few) who had been perfecting innovative styles across generations.

Yet, in the island context, rhythm skating was a new style that hit a different beat. Some conservative skaters in the community responded to Hazel’s growing platform, style, and position with criticism. Hazel explains, “OG’s have criticized us for wanting to teach, because we are new ‘pandemic skaters,’ some of our peers judge us because we wear sexy clothes and are loud and proud in our self-expression, and think we shouldn’t be teaching the kids.” Yet as an organizer, Hazel understands the critical importance of teaching and mentorship to build power. She counters criticisms with questions, asking, “How do you go out and actually make the community strong though? The whole country? You have to be willing to teach. Not even fancy skate moves for advanced skaters. This is teaching 25-year-olds with anxiety, this is a 45-year-old woman who’s getting a bit fragile but is still very strong. You gotta have patience. If we’re not teaching people, we’re not building community. We’re just keeping it to ourselves and hoarding.”

Her vision to hold space where young people like her feel safe to create remains an unstoppable force. She’s proud that her identity as a queer, Filipino, pansexual femme influences how she thinks about making space at the rink. “No matter how many rinks we build in the future in the Philippines, if we still keep the same mindset, it’s all for nothing,” Hazel shares candidly. “What does it even mean if everyone can skate and spin and the rinks are as big as the Mall of Asia, but it’s not a safe space for minorities? You’ll just perpetuate misogynistic, patriarchal, conservative mindsets on another platform.”

In a country where the fight for LGBTQ+ rights is ongoing, building safe spaces for young queer people is a key part of the push against dying structures of coloniality, patriarchy, and hetero-cisgendered normativity towards a more equitable future. The haunting epidemic of violence against transgender and gender nonconforming people continues to rise, and the Philippines is at the frontline of many of these tragic and unjust killings. From the internationally seen 2014 murder of Jennifer Laude, a Filipina trans woman by an American soldier, to the daily acts of violence that are intentionally unheard, underreported and undocumented, TGNC folks are forced to fight for their lives and loved ones every day.

Generations of Filipinos and diaspora have stared into the ugly face of traumatic imperial violence, human rights violations, and Philippine political inaction to protect TGNC, LGBTQ+, and vulnerable Filipino people as a whole.

Wrapped up inside these horrors is an innate and divine pull to find joy in the struggle: to dance for our survival, dress in joy, sing in community, and parade together is to affix the mind's eye on the prospect of a more prosperous future. It’s in this divine pull that the genius that comes from within Filipino, Queer, and so many fringe communities converge.

The Rebirth of Blaze

On any of the bustling days at the roller rink where Hazel worked, music and style is as essential as the actual act of skating. So when an exquisitely dressed group of femmes came to skate and asked to queue up their own playlist, she happily passed over the AUX cord waiting to catch the vibes. Vogue music pulsed through the walls and floor and the girls took off their skates only to start gliding across the floor voguing.

Before they left, Hazel extended an invitation: “Do you think we can collaborate or something? We have this space, we can use it anytime.” Some time passed, and the girls got back to her. After introducing themselves as the Kiki House of Neverland, they made their proposal: a ball in the roller skate rink. The Ballroom subculture, similar to roller skating, also has roots in Black and Brown communities where drag pageant circles were creating ‘houses’ or chosen families to build necessary community and safe spaces for LGBTQ+ people to live their best lives in a society committed to erasing their presence. The Ballroom community in the Philippines, like other places across the globe, centers elaborate fashion, performance, and dance that gives astute commentary on race, class, and gender in battles between ‘houses’ competing for trophies and awards.

Conceptualized by the Kiki House of Neverland, “The Disco Ball” was an event thematically inspired by 70’s glam and featuring other local Philippine kiki houses serving their best in categories including Face, Best Dressed, Realness, and Vogue Femme in front of local judges to win trophies and prizes. Hazel joyously agreed to host, and they went ahead to organize. As the event approached, the organizers invited her to not only to grace the event with a roller skate performance, but also to debut in her first ball by walking in the Sex Siren category.

Honored by the invitation, Hazel shares about the origin of the category saying, “Sex Siren category comes from Black and Latinx trans women and sex workers who would walk in the most seductive way to reclaim their power and sexuality in a world that is constantly objectifying them.” So on the day of the ball, Hazel chose to glide in on skates, radiating a goddess-like allure that captivated the room and tapped into a space of liberation, breaking out of the confines and labels that exoticize Filipinas for male gaze. She describes, “being in the ball made me feel like it’s okay to exude my intense sexual energy. It’s a safe space. I’m celebrated for that like nowhere else will celebrate me.”

This was the birth of Blaze. Hazel’s Ballroom identity took over, opening up the space for her to worship the erotic god/goddess within; where freedom is within the walk, and where validation emerges from the inside and ripples out. For the first time, Blaze reveled in the embrace of kindred spirits of queer artists, performers, and space makers using art both as their weapon for battle and medicine towards liberation.

Cultural Stewardship & Filipino Identity

Nunoy Revlon of the House of Revlon, a respected figure and parent in the Philippine and international Ballroom community, clocked Blaze’s potential and invited her into the fold of their family. Later, he would debut her at The Revlon Ball, the first ball in the Philippines where all the judges are from the House of Revlon and internationally recognized outside of Asia.

As a steward and student of both Ballroom and roller skating, fringe cultures that come from places that she has not yet been, Blaze reflects about the origins of culture, identity, and how knowledge and styles are shared. She shares, “Nunoy and other folks in the Ballroom community like Xyza Mizrahi spent time abroad, walked balls in the US and New York, so when they stewarded the culture here in the Philippines, they brought this super valuable knowledge of the culture.” Beyond sharing and studying moves and protocols of the culture, stewards like Nunoy and Blaze Revlon are opening pathways for Filipinos and others in the region to stay connected with the lives, stories, and struggles of the Black and Latinx Trans brothers and sisters who continue to struggle for equity and dignity in a world that is still working to enforce ways to protect the sacredness of their lives.

Within the roller skating community, Blaze is using her platform to share how the moves from rhythm skating are rooted in the history of Black resistance to white supremacy and discrimination. On TikTok Blaze shares, “This is important to me because big brands and companies are noticing our [skate] communities, starting to publish articles, posts or videos and make it seem like roller skating just popped out here in the Philippines and the moves that we do come from social media.” While she doesn’t blame the media companies, she does say that “We have the responsibility to share where this comes from and why it’s like this.”

In 2023, Blaze and the growing Manila skate community co-hosted the Black Rebel Nomads, a Philadelphia-based group of roller skaters and creatives who came to immerse in the Manila skate scene. After trading stories about the origins of different skate styles from the Philadelphia, Delaware and New Jersey area, it was clear that many Manila skaters were driven to learn these regional styles.

Yet, the point of a conversation she had that day stuck with her: trading knowledge and sharing the lineage of movements is key in building the skate community; at the same time, creating a language through skating that is uniquely Filipino is also a deeply worthy work-in-progress. “Our skating doesn’t have to be a copy of Chicago, or LA, you know?” Looking ahead, Blaze imagines what comes next for her community. “I really look forward to what identity we might create here in the future, but it’s hard, because of the ways that our original identity has really been ripped out from us.”

In the Philippine context, where 300 years of Spanish rule and 50 years of American colonization have forced communities to reassemble their identities and traditions to survive, the act of creating art and movement that is inherently Filipino is an act of resilience, recovery and re-membering.

As Blaze reflects on the journey of finding herself and living fully at the intersection of her passion, purpose, and art with chosen family, she shares a message for anyone who feels they haven’t yet found their place: “I don’t think there’s ever one path. As Filipinos, we’re expected to go to college, study hard and follow the prescriptions of our families. What I learned from my journey is that nothing is set in stone, everything will change, and regardless, you’re going to be fine.”

Blaze hopes that through stewarding events, safe spaces for skaters, artists and Queer community to gather, she is helping to grow a stronger community of people who can see each other and know how to move, be together, and make an impact on the issues that matter to them. “I really want my people to find themselves in community, no matter what kind. Roller skating, Ballroom, sports, dancing, whatever! I just want people to find freedom to be their authentic selves.”

Artists and community leaders who are building bridges across histories, geographies, and movements are needed now more than ever. Yet, what’s critical in our hyper-connected information age, is how we choose to relate to and honor the lineage of these cultures. Creators like Blaze, those who have taught her, and those who learn from her are tracing the thread of their crafts to the root, where they find a shared vision for historically marginalized communities to live a safe, dignified life, filled with joy, sensuality, creativity and community.

From Hella Pinay 04: The Fashion Issue. Get your copy here.