Organized by Erin Severson, University of California, Los Angeles
The Ballroom scene (at times synonymized with the performance art form of “vogue”) began in the Black and Brown queer club scene of late 1970s New York, and has since flourished as an increasingly globalized space for building personal identity and community. Please join us for this workshop on the vogue dance form, which we will explore by considering performance itself as both a contemporary art form and a historical practice. Featuring a vogue showcase produced by writer and Ballroom historian Sydney Baloue and the House of FUBU, attendees will serve as an audience to a roll call that presents different voguing styles and competitive categories commonly walked in balls around the globe, which will be introduced for the first time into the Clark’s historic drawing room. Through a series of dramatic readings given by graduate students and scholars, the workshop will place the textual performance of identity in dialogue with contemporary performance art. The title references the seminal 1990 documentary film Paris is Burning by Jennie Livingston, which helped make Ballroom culture visible in mainstream culture. Drawing on material from the Clark’s own institutional archive as well as its core collections ranging from seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British literature and culture to Oscar Wilde and his circle, this event propels us into the future through a thoughtful consideration of the past, as contemporary identity is negotiated both individually and collectively, through bodily contortion and gesture.
As a member of the House of Xtravaganza, a Ballroom academic, a producer on HBO Max's Legendary, and a performer himself, Baloue has been carving out space for trans masculine representation in the scene for years. He is in the process of writing a history of Ballroom entitled UNDENIABLE: A History of Voguing, Ballroom and How It Changed My Life (and the World), under contract with Crown Publishing Group and Sugar23. The LA-based Kiki House of FUBU (their namesake “For Us By Us”) is a chosen family of performers, competitors, and artists that train for and walk (i.e. “compete in”) pageant-style competitions referred to as “balls” across the country. It was founded in 2023 by Packrat and Carlos, two heavy-hitting members of the house Ballroom scene who have dedicated much of their lives to the community and culture.
The opening performance will be followed by a Q&A on the history of queer performance and what it means to build community in a space that was started by Black and Latino LGBTQIA+ individuals who fought to combat the forces of racism, discrimination, abandonment, and other important social and economic issues across history. The latter half of the event will consist of a reception in the style of a "high tea," which honors another form of LGBTQIA+ community practice—connecting to the history of tea dances as safe spaces for the gay community in the pre-Stonewall era—as a nod to the taste for drama which ties together modern Ballroom culture and Regency-era society. Attendees can visit the "literary salon" taking place in the North Book Room, which will feature a display of rare material from our collections highlighting gender nonconformity and performance as selections from these pieces are read from the balcony above.
The workshop is free to attend with advance registration, and will be held in-person at the Clark Library. Registration will close on Thursday, June 13 at 5:00 p.m. Seating is limited at the Clark Library; walk-in registrants are welcome as space permits. Please note photography and filming will take place as a record of this program. By attending this event, you irrevocably consent to and authorize UCLA and its licensees to photograph you, make sound and/or video recordings of you, and use such recordings in all media now known or later created, in perpetuity for any purpose whatsoever, including but not limited to, publicity and promotion of this event and UCLA generally. You represent that you are at least eighteen years old. If you are under the age of eighteen, you represent that you have obtained your parent’s/guardian’s consent to attend this event and to be bound by these terms.
Image: Clark Library vestibule ceiling mural by Allyn Cox. For more information on the art and architecture of the Clark, please see here.
The workshop is free to attend with advance registration, and will be held in-person at the Clark Library. Registration will close on Thursday, June 13 at 5:00 p.m. Seating is limited at the Clark Library; walk-in registrants are welcome as space permits. Please note photography and filming will take place as a record of this program. By attending this event, you irrevocably consent to and authorize UCLA and its licensees to photograph you, make sound and/or video recordings of you, and use such recordings in all media now known or later created, in perpetuity for any purpose whatsoever, including but not limited to, publicity and promotion of this event and UCLA generally. You represent that you are at least eighteen years old. If you are under the age of eighteen, you represent that you have obtained your parent’s/guardian’s consent to attend this event and to be bound by these terms.
Image: Clark Library vestibule ceiling mural by Allyn Cox. For more information on the art and architecture of the Clark, please see here.