in Ballroom culture in Ballroom ouses provide a source of family of colour who face forms of oppression nurturing that a lot of kids often based on race, class, gender and sexuality. don’t get at home’, said Prada of LGBTQ+ youth of colour are among the the House of Escada in Detroit. most structurally vulnerable sectors of the Structures of Prada‘ H describes one of the most important US population. In today’s Ballroom scene roles that houses play in Ballroom culture, in the US, most people are working class as a space of queer kinship, performance or poor, and disproportionately suffer from and care. Ballroom communities create an racism/white supremacy, homophobia and alternative world that consists of a kinship transphobia, as well as dispossession, structure that critiques and revises exclusion and marginalisation in their dominant notions of gender, sexuality, communities of origin. More specifically, family and community. they are more vulnerable to unstable In recent years, the community has gone housing and homelessness, violence, mental global. There is a Ballroom scene in nearly health problems, suicide, substance use and every major city in North America and cities HIV/AIDS. According to sociologist throughout Europe, such as Paris, London Brandon Andrew Robinson, LGBTQ+ youth and Amsterdam, to name but a few. Notably, of colour ‘face the harshest consequences the FX cable network series Pose has given of structural racism, racial profiling and Houses and practices of care in Ballroom culture are predicated the Ballroom community, and Black and over-policing, surveillance and punishment’. kinship Latinx LGBTQ+ people, new international In the face of this violence, Ballroom on protection, precarity and prejudice, writes Marlon Bailey visibility, as has the recent HBO series culture structures provide social and Legendary. Yet, beyond Pose and familial support. Houses are the means by Legendary, and films such asParis is which members of the Ballroom community Burning (1990), The Aggressives (2005) and experience cultural belonging and care in Kiki (2016), not much is widely known about ways that are often more supportive and Ballroom culture and its rich and resilient affirming than in their families and history that spans more than five decades. communities of origin. The house is an Beginning in the late 1960s and early ’70s alternative family formation underpinned by in Harlem, New York, Ballroom culture a distinct system of genders and sexualities.

DUSTIN THIERRY DUSTIN (sometimes referred to as house, ball or drag What is referred to as the gender system ball culture) is a Black and Latinx LGBTQ+ in Ballroom culture consists of gender cultural formation. The House of LaBeija, and sexual identity categories that do not founded in 1970, was one of the first houses exactly coincide with dominant gender and in the scene. Although the modern Ballroom sexual identities; for example, in Ballroom scene began more than fifty years ago, some culture, Butches are trans men, Femme dimensions of this cultural formation date Queens are trans women, and Butch Queens back to the Harlem Renaissance in the are gay men. Ballroom members recognise 1920s; for instance, drag performances were that all gender and sexual categories exist a staple at Black LGBTQ+ underground on a continuum. venues, such as private parties, speakeasies Ballroom houses, as alternative families, and nightclubs in Harlem, as well as other consist of parents and siblings which urban centres throughout the US. There are part of an expansive network of kin is also a long history of Black queer people throughout the scene including aunts, forging alternative kin and families of choice uncles, grandparents and other extended to survive the twin oppressions of white family roles. In Ballroom, your sex supremacy and homophobia in the US; in assignment or gender identity does not her celebrated documentary, Living with necessarily determine the role you play in Pride: Ruth Ellis @ 100 (1999), Yvonne the family. Ballroom members reconfigure Welbon chronicles the life of Ruth Ellis, what genders perform certain gender roles highlighting how, from in this kin unit. Hence, Butch 1946 to ’71, Ruth Queens can be mothers and fathers, and her some Butches are fathers, and many Femme Queens are house mothers. House parents, whom I refer to as ‘platonic parents’, provide guidance for their partner ‘children’, who are typically poor or working Babe had a class, of various ages, race and ethnicities house in Detroit (usually Black and Latinx), genders and where Black LGBTQ+ sexualities, and from cities and regions people would congregate throughout North America. Unlike their and socialise: a space of refuge heteronormative families of origin, house Dustin Thierry captured and familial and community care for parents are usually friends and not sexually one such space: the people who had nowhere else to go. Like or romantically involved. These Ballroom Concrete Kiki Ball (opposite) on the roof many queer communities of colour in the members join together to lead and provide of a multi-storey car early mid-20th century, Ballroom culture guidance for their house members – park in Berlin in 2019 has been deeply underground, while also engaging in domestic activities and was hosted by German serving as a safe space for LGBTQ+ people celebrations – and to create a ‘powerhouse’ Mother Zueira Angels

17 for performance competitions at balls. (although some gay bar districts have House members see While they often provide social and a diverse patronage); these areas and the themselves as a family emotional safety, houses are not usually buildings in them are dominated and owned and reinforce their kin ties with activities such as concrete spaces and buildings; yet, by white people. trips, holding family sometimes houses do serve as actual homes. Ballroom communities deploy innovative reunions, celebrating Like Ruth and Babe’s ‘gay spot’ in Detroit, strategies to address their spatial birthdays, shopping for members of the Ballroom community hang marginalisation in urban centres. Despite a ball, bailing each other out at the house mother or house father’s its recent global exposure, the scene out of jail and fighting home. For instance, in the early 2000s, remains a mostly clandestine community with and for one another, as depicted in 2017 TV Mother Goddess, the overall mother of the in the US. The popular representation of series Pose (opposite) House of Rodeo, lived in a house with other Ballroom culture is the spectacle: public members of the scene called Lakewood performances for all to see. In reality, balls Estates, on Detroit’s East Side. Prada are held in the dead of night at clubs and Escada suggested that houses are not just sometimes hotel ballrooms, often on late social units of family but sometimes serve Sunday nights. The time of day protects as actual physical shelters for members members from violence and ridicule that to ‘cohabitate’. Hence, in Ballroom culture members of the community might houses serve as families and shelters experience in public spaces during the day. of choice and sometimes of necessity. Balls are also held off the beaten track, so to Houses not only provide familial care and speak, for financial reasons. Houses rent the social support, but they also organise ball space at which they will host a ball but do events. Houses and balls are two core social not have the funds to pay up front, beyond dimensions of Ballroom culture that are paying a deposit. The full hall rental fee inextricably linked; typically, there are no is paid with the proceeds from the ball houses without balls and there are no balls admissions fee paid by all attendees and without houses. Ballroom communities are participants. This is another practice of transient and hold balls at different places; collective care that the Ballroom community, the transformation of spaces for balls mostly houses, provides for its members. is linked to the kinship and supportive Currently, Ballroom culture is in structures that Ballroom members produce a paradoxical situation. The community has and enjoy. Balls are the events where the evolved into a global cultural phenomenon essence of the community is expressed. that was created by Black and Latinx House parents recruit, socialise LGBTQ+ people in Harlem. However, and prepare their children to compete there is a downside to Ballroom’s expansion successfully in categories based on throughout the globe. The Black and Latinx performative gender and sexual identities, communities who created this cultural vogue and theatrical performances, and the phenomenon have not gained the effective presentation of fashion and recognition they deserve. Systemic racism physical attributes. Rather than in and white supremacy, homophobia, Madonna’s Vogue music video in the ’90s, cissexism and transphobia continue to this combination of dance and performance structure the conditions and experiences practices from the African diaspora is of Black and Latinx LGBTQ+ communities a total creation of the Ballroom community. throughout the world, particularly in the Participants vigorously compete against one US. Ballroom community members are another on behalf of their respective houses, hyper-visible in the media, but the and, at times, as individuals. Ballroom producers and directors of the films, kin-making and performance are all TV series and shows are, generally, not a part of the cultural labour in which the members of the communities they depict. participants of Ballroom communities are While the community’s increased engaged to alter or contend with the social popularity and exposure have garnered conditions in which they live. much-needed professional opportunities In Detroit and other urban centres like it, for LGBTQ+ people of colour, particularly at best, Black and Latinx people, in general, Black and Latinx queer people, this have a vexed relationship to architecture hypervisibility also obscures the racism, and built environments, in which spatial white supremacy, homophobia and arrangements are structured by and through transphobia that they face day to day in ‘Inequitable socio- racial inequality. However, albeit less urban social geographies. Nonetheless, the obvious, the inequitable socio-economic practices and structures of Ballroom culture economic realities realities and their spatial expressions help to mitigate the dangers faced by the and their spatial impact Black and Latinx gender and members of the community. Securing sexually minoritised people in pernicious spaces that are off the beaten path and expressions impact ways. Typically, LGBTQ+ people of colour less expensive to rent, holding ball events Black and Latinx do not have the luxury of safe, permanent in them in the dead of night and forging and reliable spaces in which to congregate alternative kin-ties are examples of how gender and sexually and socialise, such as bars and clubs in gay Ballroom members protect and affirm minoritised people districts. These are afforded to primarily themselves and their, still underground, white gay and lesbian communities cultural and spatial practices. in pernicious ways’

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