DETROIT – For decades, gatherings known as “balls” have flown under the radar in Detroit. And that’s by design.
Balls are safe places for Black and brown LGBTQ+ people to be free from the constraints of the outside world.
“Ballroom scene is about having fun and making moments, being over the top,” said Lilianna-Angel Reyes, who attended her first ball in 2003.
Elijah Earnest is new to the ballroom scene.
“I was actually standing in the back of the runway and a friend of mine kind of pushed me to the front. And before I could say no, the whole room was staring at me. And I was walking a ball,” Earnest said.
At a ball, people compete for trophies and cash prizes in various modeling and performance categories.
“You can have best dressed, so really high-fashion categories. You can do vogue, which is a dance. You can do realness, which means in that moment, in theory, could you pass as being straight or cisgender?” Reyes said.
Earnest, who is Black, identifies as a trans man. He competes in the Transman Realness category.
“Watching realness, you are going to think it is just a guy walking up to a panel doing some looks. But once you understand the [meaning] behind it, you understand the way he stands, his demeanor, what is actually going into what is considered real,” Earnest said.
The judges decide who stays and who gets chopped.
“So when people come, if they see it, like OK you brought the category. You get 10s, which means you can go on to the next round. And if they don’t see, you get chopped -- and one chop, usually, that’s it. Try again next time. And after everyone get their 10s, you battle,” Reyes said.
Detroit native Marlon Bailey authored a book on Detroit’s Ballroom culture titled “Butch Queens Up in Pumps: Gender, Performance, and Ballroom Culture in Detroit.”
Ballroom culture developed in the 1960s in the Black and Latino LGBTQ+ community in New York City as a form of resistance to racism, homophobia and transphobia. It spread across the country, including to Detroit.
“Ballroom exists at these intersections that provide spaces and kinship and sites of affirmation for the community members,” Bailey said. “And so ballroom becomes a way to address, survive, in some cases thrive within those contexts of oppression and marginalization and exclusion.”
Reyes, who is of Mexican descent, identifies as a trans woman. She said she went to her first ball in Flint shortly after she transitioned.
“It seems really chaotic when you are not from the scene. But it also seemed really empowering. And that was the very first time I went, and I never stopped going,” Reyes said.
Now she not only competes, but also helps organize balls at the Ruth Ellis Center in Highland Park. The organization serves LGBTQ+ young people.
“This idea that not only did I get here in this place in my life, but I am also creating spaces. I never thought that could happen,” Reyes said.
For those who are estranged from their families because of how they identify, they create families in the ballroom scene. Most ball walkers belong to a house, which is not necessarily a physical structure.
“Houses are like little families,” Reyes said.
And that gets to the heart of ballroom culture. It’s much more than what meets the eye.
“It has saved my life. When I first transitioned, I wasn’t fully accepted by my family,” Reyes said.
Earnest said attending balls changed his perspective on the LGBTQ+ community.
“I grew up on Joy Road and Tireman, so like over there, you don’t really hear too many positive things about the LGBT community. So I was a little transphobic myself getting to know myself,” he said.
The ballroom scene empowers Black and brown LGBTQ+ people to be bold on the runway and beyond.
“It is the community changing community, because now we have the resources and power to do it,” Reyes said.