Ralph Escamillan is an award winning Queer, Canadian-Filipinx performance artist, teacher and community leader based on the unceded territories of the xwməθkwəy̓əm, Skwxwú7mesh, Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh Nations - on so called Vancouver, BC.
Starting at age 14, Ralph trained first in Breakdancing shortly after exploring a multitude of other Street Dance styles such as Hip Hop, Popping, House, Waacking and Locking. His passion for dance expanded to include training in Vogue, Latin Ballroom, Ballet, Modern, Jazz, graduate of Contemporary Training Program Modus Operandi (2015), and is currently training in Flamenco.
Ralph has worked/toured with Vancouver companies: Company 605, Co. Erasga Dance, Kinesis Dance Somatheatro, Out Innerspace Theatre, Wen Wei Dance, Mascall Dance, apprenticed with Kidd Pivot in (2014), and was a guest dancer with Ballet BC (2018-2020).
In the commercial industry, he’s worked with choreographers including AJ Aakomon, Luther Brown, Kenny Ortega, Tucker Barkely and Mandy Moore, and was a guest dancer for Janet Jackson’s “Unbreakable” tour in 2015.
With his company FakeKnot he creates work that strives to understand the complexities of identity using sound, costume, technology and the body. More recently his work has had a focus on textile, using his personal ethnography to inform his works in “PIÑA” (2023), “Croquis” (2023), and his new work “Manila Shawl” (2028).
He has been in the Ballroom Scene since 2014, under the now alias “Posh Gvasalia Basquiat”, he founded his own Kiki House of Gvasalia in Vancouver in 2018, and was deemed Legendary in Kiki Scene in 2024, and is the Canadian Mother of the Mainstream House of Basquiat.
In 2017 he founded Ballroom non-profit organization Vancouver Ballroom Arts Society (previously known as VanVogueJam) and advocated for culture through the funding systems, translating how to support communities that use competition as ways of gathering. He has recently stepped down after 10years of leading the organization, but continues to be a part of the community as chair of the Vancouver Kik Ballroom Alliance.
Ralph has received funding as an individual, and through his non-profits through all sectors of funding in the country, while also participating in juries/assessment committees. He was awarded the Inaugural Miriam Adams Bursary fund at the DCD Hall Of Fame in October 2022 in Toronto, as well as the Inaugural RBC Emerging Artist Award at the 2023 Governor General Performing Arts Awards in Ottawa.