The Rouge Academy at Milano Pride 2025

We dreamed about it, desired it, demanded it. Finally, it happened.

For the first time, The Rouge Academy had its own float at Milano Pride.
A political act. A mobile stage built with care, sweat, glitter and sisterhood.

We climbed onto our very own float, together with two organizations that speak our language: Pop Milano and BraveMai podcast.

Together we built Vincenzo — yes, the float has a name —
and filled it with bodies that shine and resist.
With subversive joy, hard-won freedom, shared struggle.

It was the first time.
But now that we’ve climbed aboard, we have no intention of getting off.


 

 
We were many, we were free, we were there.

Rouge Academy's first appearance at Milan Pride

 

Why Pride?

Because burlesque is political.

Because you taught us to be composed, polite, covered up.
To be small. Discreet. Invisible.
And yet here we are: too much. Too loud, too free, too queer.

Our bodies are our manifesto.
When they dance, they don’t ask permission.
When they climb onto a stage or a float, they do so to claim space.

Because if the body is a battlefield, then we are ready to fight.

 

And now?

Rouge Academy’s participation in Milan Pride was not a point of arrival. It is the beginning of something we do not want to stop.
We will continue to be there, to show ourselves, to make ourselves heard.
On stage, on the street, wherever we are needed.

See you at the next Pride. And at all those to come.

 

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Photo Credits: Cristina De Paola e Egon P. Staller. Video shoot: Egon P. Staller.