take me out to the ballroom

The history and significance of ball culture.

By Hadiyah Muhammad

For over 40 years, queer Black and Latino individuals have immersed themselves in their community to gain security and acceptance for who they are. Ballroom culture has served as a stepping stone for the queer community and allowed queer Blacks and Latinos to display self-expression and competitive spirit through elegant pageantry. Their performances are thoroughly rehearsed to perfection and topped off with elaborate props and dazzling costumes. Today, these balls are known for their charismatic orchestration; however, they weren’t always as they are now.

In the late 1800s, balls were considered distasteful spectacles. Decades later, during the height of the Harlem Renaissance, the Rockland Palace became the infamous host of the Hamilton Lodge Ball, an extravagant event hosted specifically for the cross-dressing community in Harlem.

According to an article from the Black Youth Project, “The organizers of this ball ‘Hamilton Lodge No. 710 of the Grand United Order of Odd Fellows’ called it the ‘Masquerade and Civic Ball’ officially. However, it was also known in Harlem as the ‘F*ggots Ball’ by the late 1920s.”

Despite the negative opinions toward the ball, it maintained its popularity throughout the 1920s and ‘30s. In 1937, the ball recorded having up to 8,000 guests in attendance. An observer of the Hamilton Lodge Ball explained that the ball brought together “effeminate men, sissies, ‘wolves,’ ‘farries,’ ‘f*ggots,’ the third sex, ‘ladies of the night,’ and male prostitutes… for a grand jamboree of dancing, love making, display, rivalry, drinking, and advertisement.”

Balls were popular in big cities such as New York, Boston, and even Washington D.C., a place of strict political and social structure. However, despite the growing popularity of the balls, there was still a cloud of secrecy over the heads of the men who hid their feminine personalities behind briefcases and heterosexual relationships.

As time progressed, crimes against the queer community increased. By the early 1960s, racial tensions found their way into ball culture. Blacks and Latinos were competing against white drag performers. Tim Lawrence, a notable journalist and author, says that though the balls were “notably integrated,” Black performers were often seen using lighter makeup to appear “white.” This particular makeup technique was believed to increase their chances of winning, as they were often being judged by an all white panel.

By 1962, tired of the ashy makeup and white-washed competitions, a man named Marcel Christian went on to host what is now known as the first all-Black ball. It was then that Black and Latino performers started to bloom; their opulence and glamour were incomparable.

A decade later, the first ballroom house was born from the minds of drag queens Crystal and Lottie LaBeija. In response to the racially oppressive drag pageant system of the 1960s, they established the House of LaBeija, with Crystal known as the “mother” presiding over the performers who were referred to as her “children.”

Houses, as they’re called, were a necessity in the early days of the Black ballroom scene. Queer youth were ostracized from their biological families and many were found beaten in the streets, turning to drugs and prostitution to sustain themselves. Black and Latino queer people found solace and security in these houses and attempted to reclaim a typical family dynamic with a father, mother, and children. The houses also provided a way to create performance teams to attend balls. The more balls attended and conquered, the more recognition for the house.

By the end of the 1970s, more than a dozen houses had formed after the House of LaBeija. These houses were introduced on camera to the mainstream world in the midto-late ‘80s in a documentary called Paris Is Burning, which debuted in 1990 at the Frameline Film Festival in San Francisco. The documentary was made over the course of six years, detailing the horrors and triumphs of living as a queer individual in New York. The film also detailed the breakdown of the ball performance categories and the origins of the popular dance style known as “voguing.” Interviews with prominent figures in the ballroom scene such as Pepper LaBeija, Willi Ninja, and Angie Xtravaganza were highlighted.

Through all the glitz, glamour, and trophies, a dose of unfortunate reality eventually struck the ballroom scene. Throughout the late 1970s and the 1980s, a heightened paranoia around drugs and HIV/AIDS threatened to dismantle ballroom culture as a whole. Many houses were losing their “parents” and “children” to the epidemics that were affecting the entire world at a rapid pace.

Jennie Livingston, the director of Paris Is Burning, stated in a 2020 interview for Refinery29, “There was an economic boom, but there was a lot of poverty and struggle. The AIDS crisis was ascendant in the gay community, and that certainly affected trans people too. It was a time in the community when people of a certain generation were dying en masse.”

Despite going through endless trials and tribulations, the ballroom scene has remained at the top of its game. Many houses, including the House of LaBeija, have catapulted themselves into international status, carrying on the legacy of their founders. Today, the House of LaBeija is an international ballroom house with 16 chapters across the world. A short documentary film titled The House of LaBeija premiered at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival; the film paid homage to the House of LaBeija through a series of letters from its members.

Ballroom culture has even taken over social media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram, garnering attention from a younger generation of voguers and ballroom performers. Ballroom culture and the queer community have been, most notably, welcomed with open arms by none other than Beyoncé, whose most recent album Renaissance paid homage to various houses and legends who have laid the foundation for new generations to come. With its history in mind, it’s clear that ballroom culture will continue to evolve and serve as a way for queer Blacks and Latinos to be unapologetically themselves.