Ballroom Culture

Ballroom culture is a movement of the US queer scene that developed from the original drag balls in New York City in the 1970s and 80s (cf. Weems 2008, 88). The first drag balls existed in New York City’s Harlem neighborhood in the late 19th century (Cf. Pearlman et al. 2014, 545). By the first decades of the 20th century, they were already enjoying increasing popularity in many major American cities, a popularity that continues today. One of the venues was the world-famous Madison Square Garden in New York City (Cf. Weems 2008, 86; Cf. Beemyn 2014, 504). Due to increasing conservatism during and after World War II, these original drag balls were banned, but the underground queer scene continued to hold gatherings of this kind in private spaces, giving rise to Ballroom Culture in the late 1960s (cf. Weems 2008, 88f.).

International prominence

In the 1980s and 1990s, New York’s Ballroom Culture spread to other major U.S. metropolises, reaching the mainstream and thus international prominence through Jennie Livingston’s documentary Paris Is Burning (1990) and Madonna’s hit song Vogue (1990) (Cf. Beemyn 2014, 514f.). In contrast to drag balls, which are primarily oriented towards beauty contests and primarily offer homosexual men a platform for their travesty art, ballroom culture is aimed at a broader mass of queer people and offers BlBOC in particular the opportunity to represent themselves in different performance categories (cf. ibid.; Beemyn, 514f.). The main goal of these competitions is to present oneself with the greatest possible ‚realness‘ (persuasiveness) in the respective categories. Gender subversion is often played with. The competitions are judged by a jury, which usually consists of respected members of the scene (cf. Pearlman 2014, 545f.). Participants walk a so-called runway in the chosen category and present themselves mostly in ‚voguing‘ (cf. Weems 208, 88). The competitions in the context of the balls also have political significance, since the participants expose gender roles as a construct through their performance (cf. Bailey 2011, 366). Parodies and perso¬nifications are also an essential part of these balls (cf. Pearlman 2014, 545f.). Within ballroom culture, (gender) identity ascriptions are thus understood as malleable and changeable, offering its members the opportunity to free themselves from heteronormative ideas and to live out and celebrate their ‚queerness‘ in a safe space (cf. Bailey 2011, 369f.). Ballroom culture is not only limited to hosting and participating in these balls, but also produces ‚houses‘ in which participants organize themselves (cf. ibid., 367).

Houses

The so-called ‚Houses‘ offer members of the ballroom scene a familial network outside of their biological family of origin, to which they often have no or a poor relationship due to their queerness (Cf. Pearlman 2014, 545). The ‚mothers‘ or ‚fathers‘ of these houses are mostly respected, multiple winners of balls and at the same time eponyms for their houses, with large designer labels or symbolic terms also serving as designations (cf. Bailey 2011, 367). Even if these houses cannot be equated with a physical home in most cases, they still offer their „children“ a family structure, a place to go and a support network (cf. ibid.). Besides the social structure, the houses have the task of organizing and participating in balls and competitions (cf. ibid., 368). It is the task of the ‚house parents‘ to bring up their pupils and prepare them for the competitions so that they can successfully compete for their house (cf. ibid.; Beemyn 2014, 514f.).

Voguing

The original form of ‚voguing‘ dates back to the 19th century and is now an integral part of Ballroom Culture competitions (Cf. Pearlman 2014, 545). Voguing is understood as a dance style that uses the glamorous poses of fashion magazines – especially and therefore eponymously from Vogue (cf. Haider 2018). Within Ballroom Culture, voguing is understood as a sophisticated way of street fighting, where the person with the best choreography wins (Cf. Paris Is Burning 1990, [35:55-37:07]). Generally, there are three subcategories of voguing:

1. old way: refers to the original form, recognizable by „angular movements“.
2. new way: includes „acrobatic forms“.
3. vogue femme: represents an „almost hysterical femininity“. (Aha 2016)

Voguing became known to the masses through Madonna’s world-famous music video, for which she had specifically cast dancers from the ballroom scene (cf. ibid.).

The German Ballroom Culture

Particularly through the above-mentioned products of pop culture, Ballroom Culture achieved a greater degree of recognition. Recent productions such as RuPaul’s Drag Race (World of Wonder, start 2009) or Pose (FX Productions, start 2018) as well as social media also support the spread of the subcultural movement, adapting it internationally (Cf. Haider 2018). In 2011, Georgina Leo Melody founded the first German House in Düsseldorf (‚House of Melody‘) and in 2012 launched the ‚Voguing Out Festival‘ in Berlin, which is similar to the US-American Balls (Cf. Wiedemann 2019). In contrast to the US-American model, the German ballroom scene is not exclusively reserved for the queer community, but also open to cis people (Cf. Aha 2016).

Literature

Aha, L. (2016): Ballroom Culture at Berlin’s HAU. She’s a pretty boy. https://taz.de/Ball-roomCulture-im-Berliner-HAU/!5354047/ [02.09.2020].

Bailey, M. (2011): Gender/Racial Realness: Theorizing the Gender System in Ballroom Cul¬ture. In: Feminist Studies 37(2), 365-386.

Beemyn, G. (2014): US History. In: Erickson-Schroth, Laura (Ed.): Trans Bodies, Trans Selves. A resource for the transgender community. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 501-536.

Haider, A. (2018): How Drag Balls Went Mainstream. https://www.bbc.com/cul-ture/article/20180810-drag-balls-the-glamorous-performances-thatmean-resistance [02.09.2020].

Livingston, J. (Dir.) (1990): Paris Is Burning. Off-White Productions.

Pearlman, L. et al. (2014): Arts and Culture. Erickson-Schroth, Laura (ed.): Trans Bodies, Trans Selves. A resource for the transgender community. Oxford, New York: Oxford Univer¬sity Press, 537-566.

Weems, M. (2008): The Fierce Tribe. Masculine Identity and Performance in the Circuit. Utah State: University Press.