Gay ballroom

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“It primarily dwells deep, deep, deep in the ocean. “It's a kind of resistance, an embodied kind of resistance, to these cultural messages. The five fundamental elements of vogue fem include hands, catwalk, duckwalk, spins and dips (which are often erroneously referred to as “shablams” or “death drops”) and floor performance, according to Glover.

Willi Ninja described voguing as a way of throwing shade, or criticizing, opponents on the dance floor, in the 1990 documentary “Paris is Burning.” But, beyond a dance style and competition, voguing came to represent much more.

“Voguing is very much about telling one's story through movement...

Ballroom culture is still a major part of LGBT+ culture today, and people from as far away as Mexico City, São Paulo, Santiago, New York, Paris, and Berlin find family and community in the ballroom scene. According to Roberson, some believe that Paris Dupree—a pioneer in the house ballroom scene—created vogue, while others believe that it was created by a Black gay or trans person in the New York City jail complex at Rikers Island.

With that, all across the world, people were dancing like they were in Harlem — though they may not have known it at the time.

The iconic documentary Paris is Burning explored ballroom culture in 1980s NYC, with the documentary Kiki more recently exploring the same in 2016. The ballroom term “throwing shade” was even added to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary in 2017.

“And you begin to see the shift again from mother-children to mother-father-children, so men begin to participate. But Livingston, as a queer white woman, has been accused of enabling cultural appropriation through her documentation of house balls. Some now trace vogue to imprisoned gay, trans, and queer people at New York's Rikers Island, TIME reported in 2021.

Denied space and recognition in the white drag scene, together they formed houses and became each other’s support and family.Today, in Paris, that spirit lives on:

Many gay, black and Arab youths — especially those from Paris' less affluent and religiously conservative suburbs — see Vogue dance events as safe places in which their racial and sexual identities can be fully expressed without fear of reprisals.

Why The Harlem Ballroom Scene Was Important To The Black And Latinx LGBTQ+ Community

From the early Masquerade Balls in Harlem through the Harlem Renaissance and finally to the House Ballroom scene, music, dance, and fashion were always central, NME writes.

Crystal agreed, and the House of LaBeija—the first ever ballroom “house”—was born, with Crystal at the helm as the “mother.”

The Birth of House Ballroom

From its inception, ballroom houses offered security for Black and Latinx queer, gay and trans people. "Voguing is very much about telling one's story through movement ...

And that for me, because of who is doing it, is very much an act of resistance to an entire world that not only tells us that our lives are devoid of meaning, but also tells us that we have nothing to contribute,” says Glover. Several participants in the documentary also threatened to sue after not receiving compensation following the success of the film.

Glimpses of house ballroom culture continued to permeate mainstream spaces more prominently since the early 1990s, through television series such as RuPaul’s Drag Race, which premiered in 2009; the MTV series America’s Best Dance Crew, featuring trans Black voguer Leiomy Maldonado in 2009; and Ryan Murphy’s Pose in 2019, which featured a scripted take on the house ballroom scene and included the most trans actors in television history.

Glover says they expect ballroom culture to continue to evolve as a vital element of the Black queer community—and periodically influence broader audiences.

“I think about ballroom as being a whale,” Glover says.

As well as the social ground gained through this movement, one dance in particular called "vogue" or "voguing," became one of House Ballroom's most significant American cultural contributions, and in turn, House Ballroom music and dance is sometimes referred to as "ball" or just "vogue."

Early on, vogue was sometimes called "pop, dip and spin" a cousin of sorts to break dancing.

Moving away from this reliance on one's biological family, and complicating ideas of a family of choice.”

Crystal and Lottie went on to host the first house ball in Harlem in the early 1970s, entitling it “Crystal & Lottie LaBeija presents the first annual House of LaBeija Ball.” The ball, designed exclusively for Black and Latinx trans, gay and queer people, was a success.

And so, ballroom morphs from drag ball to a house ball,” Roberson says.

Instead of the pageant-style of competition in drag balls, house balls held competitions between houses by categories. The ballroom scene was born in Harlem in black and Latinx communities, by those who had been kicked out of their homes and families.

The house ball and the House of Labeija inspired many other prominent figures in the ballroom world to create houses of their own throughout the 1970s and beyond.

“Other trans women—some of them would never call themselves trans—the Pepper LaBeija, the Dorian Corey… Houses begin to be named after these women,” says Michael Roberson, resident of the Center for Race, Religion and Economic Democracy (CRRED) and founder of the House of Marison-Margiela.

House ballroom further differentiated from drag balls in 1973, when Erskine Christian became the first gay man to compete, according to Roberson.

This signified a shift from trans women and female-presenting people in house ballroom to the inclusion of gay men and male-presenting people in houses and house ballroom. Because you’re beautiful and young, you deserve to have the best in life, but you didn’t deserve… I didn’t say she’s not beautiful, but she wasn’t looking beautiful tonight,” LaBeija said about Harlow’s crowning.

LaBeija refused to participate in other drag pageants, but she didn’t exit the ballroom scene altogether.