Kumari Suraj

Kumari Suraj is a choreographer, performer, educator and cultural documentarian who emerged as a significant figure in the early-2000s resurgence of Waacking, a form rooted in queer Los Angeles club culture of the 1970s. Suraj's work developed within a broader community of dancers reconstructing, debating and transmitting Punking, Whacking and Waacking histories, becoming one important carrier and organizer within that resurgence.

In 2010, Suraj launched the International Waack/Punk/Pose Festival, also known as Waackfest, as a platform for performance, education and cultural preservation. The following year they choreographed Waacking on the U.S. television series *So You Think You Can Dance*, a milestone credited with introducing the style to a large American broadcast audience.

Suraj's work combines Waacking with House, Vogue, Hip-Hop, Dancehall and South Asian popular-dance references while maintaining distinctions among those forms. Their choreography and performances have circulated through personal videos, commercial dance platforms and international events, including a 2015 presentation at World of Dance Los Angeles.

In 2016, Suraj released a short documentary on Punking, Whacking and Waacking based on thirteen years of research and lived experience. That same year, House of Suraj developed as a training and community framework focused on movement practice, history, musicality, freestyle and queer and Global Majority participation.

By the 2020s, Suraj's practice expanded through faculty appointments, interviews and online community teaching. Their work spans performance, choreography, fashion, music, multimedia curation and cultural production, with teaching reaching across multiple countries and ongoing development of structured Waacking pedagogy.