(upbeat music) - [Speaker 1] Ballroom is gay Hollywood - [Speaker 2] It's a chance for us to get dressed up, walk the runway, show who we are and feel fabulous for a night - [Speaker 3] For that one night, sometimes you can forget about everything going on at home.

It's therapy - When you walk ballroom, it's truly a dog eat dog world.

And if you're able to be successful and make a name for yourself, hurray for you.

- Ballroom was created because main society rejected us.

We created ballroom for our own safety, for our own sanity.

We're a subculture within a subculture within a subculture.

But it's our home.

- It is a movement.

It is a resistance from the church.

It is the resistance from toxic abusive families who did not accept us.

It is the resistance of toxic the piece of neighborhoods that refuse to accept us.

It was resistance from schools that we know were going to be traumatic every single day we went there.

It's a movement.

- Ballroom actually saved my life - Ballroom has took a turn so fast.

It's blown up overnight.

And I mean, everybody went in.

- Vogue has hit number one on the charts - We have ?

and my house, and we have all these other outlets that's like spotlight us.

Celebrities having balls, celebrities just coming to balls.

- Nobody knew that ballroom would blow up and be this popular because it was so underground.

If you have not a part of ballroom then you didn't know about it.

- Don't be shady be fierce.

Give it to her.

Tanya - Philly ranked in number three, as far as opening the ballroom scene.

For the first city to host the ball was New York city, The Mecca.

Following after that was north New Jersey and then Philadelphia ballroom scene 1989 .

(people chanting) People need to know what happened 30 years ago to keep the city alive for the next 30 years.

- This is still all.

And if we don't preserve it, we're going to lose it.

(music playing) - [Speaker 4] Tonight February 2nd 2019 - The ball is a competition that ballroom houses compete in to win trophies and money.

- And this is what we go through for ball.

This is what people don't see, the preparation.

- The scramble.

- It's scrambled, the chaos.

- You have a house mother and father which are the people that run the houses.

So basically becoming your parents and whatever house you in.

That's your last name to represent the house that you're a part of (crowd chanting) - The first ball that I walked was in 1996.

This was before I transitioning.

Transitioning was hard when you are dark skinned and poor and homeless.

Had a lot of insecurity and stuff with me but then pre-performance was like my escape.

It was my way out.

(upbeat music) How do I define vogue?

Vogue is a unique expression of queer bodies and queer movement.

But more importantly it is a unique expression of black thought and black resistance.

Vogue is joy.

Vogue is freedom.

Vogue is, is life.

Components of Vogue, hand performance.

Floor components.

Spins and dips.

Catwalk.

And then duck walk.

There's five components.

But the elements of Vogue is style, grace, precision, attitude, and choreography.

I've always loved when I get to a point, when I'm performing, where I'm not thinking anymore.

I'm not worried about being technical or doing the right thing.

I just let the music kind of take over and I've had a few moments in my career where that has happened.

And it's probably been the biggest moments I've ever made.

- Everybody wants to vogue.

Like all they want to do is vogue.

Like, that's it.

But it is so much more to ballroom than voguing.

I want to see the glitz.

I want to see the glamor.

I want to see the amazing costumes.

I want to see all of that - The category that tends to bring everybody out is femme queen face.

The girls are absolutely beautiful the way they present themselves.

I mean it's an astonishing, the way they actually pull it together.

- Face as a category consists of skin, teeth, structure a nice smile, nose, your eyes, your eyebrows, clean nails, your haircut.

Outside of the face, once you got two people next to each other and both of them equally look good and they're perfected, okay what's next?

How are you selling it?

What's your garments look like?

What is your attitude giving?

Have you commanded the room?

- When they would do fashion categories, most of the fashion was being custom made by designers like myself and those designers were extremely creative and the outfits were over the top and it was absolutely mesmerizing.

Now you're talking fashion.

It's all about labels.

So if you're doing the fashion category, you know you have to have labels.

It's all about the labels.

With fashion you're pretty much just selling clothes.

Me coming from a runway background, I already had like that arrogance and that like attitude.

- The categories I walked were mostly garment categories.

Foot and eyewear, high fashion sportswear, head-to-toe have overness.

Your looks should tell a story Is it a Miami look?

Is this New York chic?

Is this jet setter?

Is it preppy chic?

Is it hip hop?

It should, say something.

- When I first started out, I was just walking butch realness which is females who look like males.

Can they pass for a male?

- Two different genders.

But which one of them is representing the male gender the strongest.

- Ballroom was the only place where it was not only accepted but revered that I had natural facial hair as a female.

So that was beyond anything I had ever experienced.

Realness is my life, so it's a lifestyle, it's not necessarily a category.

- Mmh, that's true.

- That's it.

- Yeah, that's it.

- This is definitely my workout for the week.

Giving ball is a headache.

It's a lot of work, a lot of running around.

You just don't know what to expect.

You never know who's coming.

You know the girls so damn new.

I am the unofficial mayor of Philadelphia.

Plain and simple tonight.

I'm the founder of the iconic House of Prestige.

I've been in ballroom about 31 years This August, 2019, we'll be celebrating 30 years of Philadelphia ballroom scene.

- Lot of people think I created Philadelphia ballroom scene, I had to let them know I didn't.

Michael Gaskins was like one of my best friends which he is the founder of the Philadelphia ballroom scene.

He created and produced the first ball here, which was the Onyx ball August, 1989.

- When we first got started, we were new.

It was just about getting our name out and establishing Philadelphia as a community where we can have ballroom Because again, everything was in New York.

- Now let's give the floor and let them know we looking for her.

Face, Face and more face for the butch queen.

- Probably around '92 when people started getting ball fever.

The House of Prestige was out.

The Quran's, the excellence is the Syrah.

Gummo jeez.

- When I came into the ballroom scene in the early nineties the big thing at that time was supermodels and fashion.

They was looking for the transgender women and Butch Queens who looked like Naomi and Tyra.

And those girls who had the high cheekbones and you know chisel noses and stuff like that.

- When I first came out, you probably had about maybe 10 categories at a bowl at the most.

Now ball's got 30 and 50.

I just started collecting the ball flyers and keeping them ever since you would think by now would to throw them away.

But this is important.

People are like, well, I was at such and such bar on such and such a year.

No you wasn't because I got the flyer right here.

You wasn't there.

I love being able to go back and open up these photo albums and look at these pictures.

And Hetty's memories of a time that we was youthful and everything was carefree.

- A lot of the leaders and stuff don't teach history.

Also the ballroom scene has changed a lot.

So a lot of the kids that join now don't join for the same reasons we joined 25, 30 years ago.

Some of them are in it for the family aspect but some of them are in it because it's just like, you know, it's entertaining.

I can get on TV.

I make it become famous.

Somebody may hire me.

So I didn't nobody care about the history.

- This is Renee.

She was the co-founder of the house garage who passed away Renee.

That was the queen of Philadelphia, faith body realness sex appeal.

Okay.

- Renee is like the mother of all mothers are Philadelphia.

I mean, you can't talk about Philadelphia and not mention her.

You know, it was a Tom in Philadelphia, the prestige ball.

When she came off a balcony, there was these steps from the balcony that spiraled Dale, we was upstairs.

I kept saying, they call me your category, come on, come on.

And everyone else dance, or you could walk her.

She was like, oh, I'm not going as I'm not going downstairs.

And for the life of me I didn't understand why she didn't want to go downstairs.

They was counting the category down.

Won't be turned back around.

She was leaning over the balcony backwards.

Her head was hanging down off the balcony and the crowd was going crazy.

And she was a lifestyle of her face and throwing her hair over the balcony.

And it just was a moment.

But she always gave you those type of moments.

- Renee was the mother of Philadelphia.

She was, when we talked about giving mother, we met her.

Everybody wants to act like Renee, everybody, any of us who were coming up and wanting to transition back then we strive for that kind of preservation.

We strive to look that good.

- Really haven't been too many transgender women and the Philadelphia ballroom scene that has had the impact on the city.

Like she did.

Some of those girls have never met her and they act just like her.

When you can influence generations of girls and those girls don't even know why they talk and walk and act a certain way.

It's crazy.

I had this magazine since they published it.

Colors did this magazine and January, February of 1995.

And I already was in love with her this magazine.

And before I'm more in love with her.

This is her here.

The transgender platform was different when I came out.

So when you saw girls like her, who were so authentic and they realness, which is always amazing to see those girls back then, you know, not just be a category at a ball, but to be living at category in real life.

- Renee was living with the HIV virus.

She had a very tough time with addiction.

Ergo, we lost her.

They hit us hard in the house, real hard.

I was in the house crown five years.

I left shortly after any passed away from our own mental health.

I had to kind of step away and kind of move on and do my own thing.

I know that we're at this new place, embalmed myself now but it was real hard for people to embrace our unique womanhood especially back then.

They wanted us to be these, the submissive, subservient rigidly defined images of what they thought women should be.

And every time we would try to redefine that they just received so much pushback.

And I think Renee, she was just this this different definition and needed a different kind of love, a different kind of understanding because she was a woman anyway.

And she continued to be one anyway.

I think sometimes, especially with trans women in the scene, we have to be so strong all the time.

Sometimes it's more important to the scene around us to perform than to live.

I would have preferred her to live young black trans women who are going to be coming up in Philadelphia need to see who we were when we're gone.

What we left in this city, what we left in this world while we were here and that we were from here - I don't think Philadelphia's borrowing history.

Hadn't been well-preserved there's so many stories that are like lost because we didn't had, like the age of YouTube feels like it's not on YouTube and never happened.

- I'm contemplating that somebody will step up and take over the role as a historian of the Philadelphia barbering community because it needs to be in tech.

- I want this culture to be studied.

I want to hear about it.

And college lecture halls.

And part of that is then finally admitting that bottom culture is indeed.

And in fact, black history, cause we won't be here forever.

There's going to be a new batch a new breed of fierceness, a new breed of awareness a new breed of Philadelphia ballroom power.

They're going to want to know where they came from and that's us.

And even if people try to access out, I want us to make sure that we keep record of that for them, for our future.

- No one else.

This is our world we created.

So what we do, we, we do what we do.

It doesn't matter what society has to say in the next five years is going to it's going to be on somebody's TV show.

Hey, compete ball now to just have a TV show about ballroom but an actual ball is going to be on television.

- Hi everyone.

I'm James Clayborne, director of programming at the African-American museum in Philadelphia.

I'm so excited to be here with three amazing journalists to celebrate and talk about this project.

Legendary 30 years of Philly ballroom with Philadelphia Inquirer.

Maybe you can each just take a second and introduce yourself.

- I'm Cathy Owens.

I am modern life reporter here in Philadelphia and I often cover stories on marginalized communities in Philly.

- I'm Lauren Schneiderman.

I'm a filmmaker at the Philadelphia Inquirer.

- I'm recite hard net a video editor and a filmmaker at the inquire.

This project feels really timely.

We're sitting in a moment.

That's very important for ballroom with the launch of series is like pose.

You have legendary on HBO.

And so it feels like this film lands in a very appropriate moment.

Maybe we could just take a second and you can tell us like about the Genesis of the project.

How do we get here?

Pretty much working in the newsroom and doing some research and came across an article that a freelancer had done for us McKell street.

And at the time he was working at out but he wrote an article kind of detailing a little bit about the ballroom scene in Philly and how there was a 30 year anniversary coming up the following year.

And this was I think, towards the end of 2018.

And so immediately, you know, my like video brain is going off right?

Thinking this is something that could make a really interesting film if you know, we're able to get the access.

And like I walked over to Cassie who was on the other side of the newsroom and I was just like, Hey, what do you think about this idea?

And her being like, my aunt was in ballroom I'm down.

Do you mean?

And I literally went back to the other side where I was sitting Lauren right next to me, very also interested in, you know, telling the story.

And so that next year in January, 2019, we kind of started setting out and we spent that entire year attending every ball in Philly - We were a little naive in the beginning, thinking when someone would tell us the ball started at 10 and we'd get there at 10 and then yeah, we'd wind up being there till three or 4:00 AM.

It was important journalistically.

And it was important, you know for the whole project for us to actually understand and try to capture it the way that folks were experiencing it.

And so if we weren't going to put that time in we wouldn't have had that experience.

- Yeah.

I think one of the things that I really appreciate is that you anchor yourself to the history and to the structure of a ballroom - Something that was coming up in interview after interview was the history.

And there was just a very widely shared concern that Philadelphia's history with ballroom was not only not being preserved, but extremely significant to the history of ballroom Ballroom has always been documented and people have constantly been, you know taking photographs and video.

I feel like this film in some ways preserves that archive and it's able to share some of this, some of the stuff that people have kept personally, because there isn't really a place where people can go to find that - I see that this was something that had never been in the Inquirer in this way had never been in a lot of major publications black or traditional mainstream publications in that way.

And that only was still there and still able to be documented and shared because someone who cared had really held onto it.

Yeah.

- Did you, as, as journalists enter the space thinking that you were creating a project that in some, you know I think really sits within the Canon of, of ballroom.

I don't think that we set out to do any of that when we first got started.

Well, you did - We've had some requests for the film to be like archived at universities or community centers and use this like an educational and research.

- I just want the film to have impact on the ground.

I mean, I especially want for kids and black kids to be able to see this as a space that can be a home for them.

And so know that this is a legacy that exists for folks to step into as well as for it to be a piece of a growing archive of content that does keep these collections safe.