Underground Ballroom Culture From the 1980s to Now: Flowers Still Bloom in the Dark
Graphic by Isabelle Hauf-Pisoni.
“It’s easier to be who you are when what you are is popular”
Superman has nothing on the 80s ballroom scene. These similarly cape-clad and tights-sporting superheroes’ “by-day/by-night” transformation involved a lot more than taking off a pair of dorky glasses. Rather, the late 20th century underground ballroom scene involved a largely black and latinx community of LGBTQ+ people gathering to transform into their billowed, feathered, studded and extravagant true selves. A forced by social convention to walk the city streets as a stereotypically straight-laced masculine man “by day” could indulge in glinting glamor, pearlescent luxury “by night.” Ballrooms spelled a necessary escape, where opulence, grandeur and self-expression could safely congregate. Members received no accolades or attention for their boundary-smashing efforts in self-exploration. On the contrary, prevalent themes in stories of the ballroom circuit are concealment and designated safe spaces for self-expression.
Image Courtesy of the Everett Collection.
For the uninitiated, a ball, also called a drag or house ball, is a celebratory and competitive event in which “houses,” or groups of queer-identifying people, walk in different categories like “Runway,” “Butch” or “Femme Queen” that target grandiosity and unwavering self-expression. These gatherings, though they can be traced back to the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s, rose to prominence in the 80s. They were a place of refuge, a place where instead of worrying about identity-based oppression faced daily, one could concern themselves with being their truest self, blossoming into existence and having the highest of high-velocity hair whips. There, humans who had been rejected everywhere else – many members were teens and young adults who had experienced disownment and homelessness due to their identities – could congregate and bask in mutual radical acceptance. Balls were a place where what usually had to be hidden could be projected to all corners. Light could be shone in a dark place.
Image by Chantal Regnault.
Outside of the opportunity for full individual and collective liberty, ballroom also functioned as a sort of necessary masterclass in “passing,” or being undetectable from dominant (cisgenered and heterosexual) American society. Ballroom attendees did still have to live most of their lives as their indistinguishable alter egos, after all. With categories like “Realness,” which tested your ability to be unrecognized as gay, trans, gender non-conforming, etc., members of the scene were developing mechanisms to survive in places where your impersonation of conformity may determine whether or not you get a certain job, if you will be harassed by police, where you are allowed to live. It seems that the ballroom circuit was simultaneously a safe haven for self-expression and escape, but also a lesson in social longevity and avoiding lasting intolerance from outside of the community.
Though the scene was largely covert throughout the 20th century, ballroom had its fair share of mainstream pop culture trend authorship. One simply cannot talk about 80s balls without mentioning its most profitable brainchild, “Voguing.” Voguing is an enigmatic, expressive and competitive dance style that takes inspiration from Egyptian hieroglyphics, gymnastics and, of course, the elongated and angular snapshots one sees flipping through fashion magazines like its namesake, Vogue. Though there is no debate that the LGBTQ+ members in ballroom originated the trend, Madonna’s larger than life smash hit “Vogue” eclipsed those humble beginnings. Similarly, the iconic 1990 documentary film “Paris is Burning” chronicled legends of the 1980s ball scene in New York City like Pepper LaBeija, Willi Ninja and Dorian Corey. Many had grievances with the tone of the film; it ended on a heartbreaking note, with the murder of Venus Xtravaganza, one of the film’s stars and rising talents in the circuit. The danger and precariousness of these marginalized communities cannot be understated, but members of the community also found it important that both the struggles and the triumphs of their people be highlighted. There was also controversy around the possible exploitation of the ballroom scene by the film’s director who was not previously associated with the community. Generally, there seems to be a theme that when queerness in the form of ballroom culture is represented, it’s from an outside perspective, not in the words of the community members themselves. In these ways, ballroom’s back-alley boundary pushing was, and is, underground by necessity, but when it is propelled to mainstream status, it is very often declined the privilege of credit, acknowledgement or authorship.
As ballroom has been catapulted into the common lexicon over the last three decades, we have improved in telling its stories from queer perspectives, take Ryan Murphy’s Emmy-award winning ballroom series “Pose” that was co-written by trans activist Janet Mock and boasts a wealth of talented trans actors/resses, or take “Kiki,” the real-life zillenial offshoot of the O.G. 80s ballroom scene. There are also artists from outside the community that take inspiration and seem to have done their source material justice. For example, resident queen of camp creativity FKA twigs is not shy about her predecessors, often enlisting help in voguing lessons from in-house experts like Jamel Prodigy. Despite the uptick in positive and accurate representation, though, pop culture is still wont to neglect its queer origins and outsource talent. We still live in an age where a ground-breaking projection of a queer community like HBO’s “Legendary” gets canceled and where every chronically online preteen can recite the Urban Dictionary definitions of ‘slaying,’ ‘mothering,’ ‘reading,’ ‘werking,’ ‘eating,’ and ‘serving,’ but might hesitate in telling you where they come from. As ballroom culture is globalizing, it is important to keep in mind its roots: the largely black and latinx queer people in desperate need of an escape in grandiose defiance of the social norms that condemned them.
Image by Chantal Regnault.