A ball in gay community

By Lester Fabian Brathwaite. For decades, ballroom, ball or house culture has been a way for queer blacks and Latinos to live their best lives — that is, to figure out how to respond to a society that devalued their lives and attempted to erase their presence. But how does everyone and their grandmother know what throwing shade is?

How come little white girls in Europe are voguing the house down? And how did a show starring predominantly black and brown queer and trans people become one of the most anticipated television events of the year? Because at a time when the rights and freedoms of queer people of color are increasingly at risk, the history of ball and house culture is more vital than ever.

Though held in Harlem, often at the Rockland Palace, the ball attracted people from all over the country. Black queens were expected to whiten their faces if they expected to win prizes, as is implied in the documentary, The Queenby Frank Simon, which follows the All-American Camp Beauty Contest.

A House Is a Home Due to increasing racial tension, both in the ball community and in America as a whole, black queens began seeking out their own spaces.

The rise of LGBTQ ballroom through the ages

Marcel Christian LaBeija is credited with staging the first black drag ball in The House of LaBeija may have been the very first house, founded in either orthough accounts differ. The houses, in an attempt to outdo one another, would throw their own balls. This, according to Kevin OmniMother of the House of Omni, was the first time the categories took precedence at the balls.

Now, the fact that you are not an executive is merely because of the social standing of life. Black people have a hard time getting anywhere and those that do are usually straight. In a ballroom you can be anything you want. Old Way emerged in the s and was basically posing, emulating movements from the fashion magazine from which the dance takes its name.

New Way, developed in the s and was more dynamic, acrobatic, and athletic, often involving contortions and martial arts influences — it is perhaps best exemplified by Willi Ninja, known as the Grandfather of Voguewhose House of Ninja has become synonymous with voguing; the third and most recent form, developed in the mids, is Vogue Fem, which involves hyper-effeminate posturing along with intricate hand and arm movements and dips, often known as deathdrops, The evolution of voguing also coincided with the a ball in gay community aesthetics of ballroom culture, away from pageantry and movie stars to high fashion.

The underground scene in Harlem began finding its way to the mainstream in the lates, when the action of Pose takes place. Infashion designer Patricia Field established the House of Field, the first white downtown house to walk the uptown balls. Ninja would go on to teach runway walking, counting among his students catwalker extraordinaire Naomi Campbell.

Though the film has been subject to any number of criticisms — for reinforcing gender, racial, and social stereotypes, for being shot exclusively from a perspective of white privilege, for not properly compensating its participants — Paris Is Burning remains the encyclopedia for modern ball culture.

In28 transgender people were reported murdered, the majority of whom were trans women of color. As with Venus Xtravaganza, their murders often go unsolved. In addition to suffering higher rates of violence and murder, the trans community also faces discrimination in employment, health care, housing, immigration, and most recently military service, as well as disproportionate rates of imprisonment which leads to further violence and abuse behind bars.

That is not to say, however, that nothing has changed for the better. And despite an increasingly hostile administration, LGBTQ people have far more agency and visibility than in any time in history. Pose — which counts writer and activist Janet Mock as a producerwriter and a director — employs more than LGBTQ actors and crew members and features the largest cast of transgender actors in series regular roles ever.

Not content with just making history, Murphy announced last month that he will donate all of his Pose profits to trans and LGBTQ charities. Posemuch like A ball in gay community Is Burning before it and The Queen before it, is a watershed moment in the representation of ball and house culture.

Where those films were small documentaries that found niche audiences — and eventual cult followings — Pose is about as mainstream as you can get. This is a culture, a community, and a history that deserves the prestige television treatment. And it is also a fulfillment of those defiantly opulent Harlem balls of the 19th and 20th centuries, proving once and for all, that they did, in fact, own everything.