From Underground Subculture to Global Phenomenon: An Oral History of Ballroom Within Mainstream Culture

By Jose Criales-Unzueta

Published June 28, 2023

Over the last 40-odd years, the world has taken an almost voyeuristic interest in ballroom culture. You’ve seen its houses and heroes represented on television (My House, Pose, Legendary), in films (Paris Is Burning, How Do I Look?, Kiki) and music videos (Jody Watley’s “Still a Thrill,” Queen Latifah’s “Come to My House,” Madonna’s “Vogue”), and perhaps even during Beyoncé’s Renaissance world tour. Yet for its sprawling—and historically Black, brown, and queer—community, ballroom is more than a passing fancy. “Ballroom has something to say,” says Michael Roberson, a community leader, advocate, activist, and professor, “and to teach the world about what it means to be human in the struggle for freedom in the face of catastrophe.” Since the beginning, it has straddled the line between the visible and invisible; between discrimination and aspiration.

Ballroom’s roots reach back to the Antebellum South, when enslaved people would pantomime their masters at dances. Then, in the early 20th century, came the Hamilton Lodge Ball and Fun-Makers Ball in Harlem, spaces where drag queens, gay folk, and gender nonconforming people—before such a label existed—“got together for a grand jamboree of dancing, love making, display, rivalry, drinking and advertisement,” as the playwright Abram Hill put it in 1939. Yet their growing popularity meant increased scrutiny. “The new City authorities didn’t think much of this ‘horrible’ gala of men posing as women,” Hill continued. “The new District Attorney of the City of New York brought an end to the Hamilton Lodge Ball in 1937, much to the dissatisfaction of the boys-in-the-gowns.”

Still, other balls proliferated throughout Manhattan (and beyond), marching on through Prohibition and the onset of the Great Depression, before they started to fracture along racial lines. It was at that point, in the late 1960s, that drag queens Crystal LaBeija and Lottie LaBeija—having grown tired of anti-Black bias—established the House of LaBeija, and began hosting balls of their own. From then on emerged the system that we know today, with ball contestants walking in different categories and battling it out for prizes—and filmmakers, musicians, and fashion designers mining the scene for inspiration.

Through the four chapters in this story—compiled from close to 40 hours of interviews—celebrated members of the ballroom community, and a handful of those who witnessed its brilliance, tell the story of how a queer, underground subculture became a global phenomenon.

Chapter 1: The Beginning

Ballroom as we know it began in the early ’70s, with the first houses stemming from the drag pageant circle in New York.

Kia Michelle Benbow (also known as Kia LaBeija), fine artist:

Crystal LaBeija was a part of drag culture. She walked a ball called Miss All-America Camp Beauty Pageant, which is the ball that’s in the 1967 documentary The Queen. There’s that iconic moment when she doesn’t win, and she knows that it’s because she’s a Black queen. She gets off stage and they’re like, “Crystal, darling, you’re showing your color,” and she says, “I have the right to show my color, darling.” Another queen named Lottie convinces her to form a house and throw their first ball, both under the name LaBeija. That is the moment in ballroom history that is the explosion.

Michael Roberson:

We have that famous moment in which Crystal LaBeija resisted colorism and racism in the [drag] pageant circuit. That was in ’67, and the first house, the House of LaBeija, was created in 1968. Next to Crystal you had the other four famous mothers, who [together ] I call the five freedom fighters: Dorian Corey, Avis Pendavis, Paris Dupree, and La Duchess Wong, who is the only one living, and there was also Pepper LaBeija, who was a LaBeija. The first houses were named after them.

Sydney Baloue, House of Xtravaganza and author of the upcoming UNDENIABLE: A History of Voguing, Ballroom and How It Changed My Life (and the World):

The House of Xtravaganza, founded in 1982, is very significant because it’s the first Latino house, or at least the first founded with that principle. Latinos in ballroom had to fight for their place because a lot of them got systemically chopped or looked over because they were seen as a threat to this idea of what’s considered beauty.

Sydney Baloue:

The mothers [Crystal LaBeija, Avis Pendavis, Dorian Corey, Paris Dupree, Pepper LaBeija, Angie Xtravaganza] were performers and came from the world of female impersonation. This lays the framework for what ballroom is by the ’70s. It was centered on the “femme queens,” which could be a trans woman, but there’s also “Butch Queen Up in Drag,” which is another category of gender identity. It’s important to remember that people like Paris Dupree and Pepper LaBeija were actually butch queens up in drag, whereas people like Avis Pendavis, Dorian Corey, and Crystal LaBeija were “full-time femme queens.” Over time, butch queens, who would help the performers, lobbied to have a category.

Michael Roberson:

In 1973, a gay man called Erskine Christian walked in the category “Model’s Magazine Face.” Then you begin to see men not only participating, but creating houses, and the notion of the house begins to shift. The first houses were named after these trans women who were mothering a community that was only for women. When men began to be part of it, the construction of a house shifted.

Kia Michelle Benbow:

Historically, “Butch Queen Vogue Femme” was started by Tiny LaBeija, which he told me. He said that he was at a ball in Philadelphia, and none of the girls were walking, so he decided to walk like his mother.

David DePino, as told to Tim Lawrence for photographer Chantal Regnault’s 2011 book Voguing and the House Ballroom Scene of New York 1989-92:

It all started at an after-hours club called Footsteps on 2nd Avenue and 14th Street. Paris Dupree was there and a bunch of these Black queens were throwing shade at each other. Paris had a Vogue magazine in her bag, and while she was dancing she took it out, opened it up to a page where a model was posing, and then stopped in that pose on the beat. Then she turned to the next page and stopped in the new pose, again on the beat. Another queen came up and did another pose in front of Paris, and then Paris went in front of her and did another pose. This was all shade—they were trying to make a prettier pose than each other—and it soon caught on at the balls. At first they called it posing and then, because it started from Vogue magazine, they called it voguing.

Ricky Tucker, ballroom academic and author of And the Category Is…Inside New York’s Vogue, House, and Ballroom Community:

[The beginning of] voguing is hard to pin down. There’s different stories, including about Paris Dupree, and I’ve talked to some people who said the first time they ever saw voguing was at Paradise Garage in the late ’70s, early ’80s.

Sydney Baloue: Voguing was originally called “Performance.”

Paris Dupree would hit the floor and hit a pose when the beat dropped before the ball began. This started to become a thing, so they decided to create a new category, which was “Performance.” Over time it became more defined and refined and it became “Pop, Dip, and Spin.” The idea was that you had to be able to pop your joints, and you had to spin at some point. That’s the original style of voguing that was also seen in Paris Is Burning.

The published story was far too long to include in its entirety. To read in full, please visit the article as originally published on vogue.com.