A group of ornately decked-out young people form a circle under pulsing disco lights in NYX Nightclub, a recent addition to Old Townâs slew of sweaty dance spots. Brandon Harrison, sporting a red beret instead of his otherworldly âHydrangea Strangeaâ drag persona, rhythmically chants over the energetic dance-pop track booming from the speakers.
âCategory is... art heaux,â he says. And the competition begins.
Illuminated by photographer Rakeem Saltâs handheld flash, extravagantly painted and embellished folks take turns strutting into the circle in search of 10sâa passing score needed from judgesÂÂ to advance to the next round. An intensely poised contestant enters the ring with a stunning blush kimono, sleek black wig, and Japanese kitsune mask. Exclusively referred to using feminine pronouns, the host says sheâs serving âconcept art face.â She exits after swiftly securing her 10s. Later, a towering contender elegantly twirls onto the floor wearing a perfectly tailored floral jumpsuit with a plunging neckline. Despite the darkness of the room, a pair of tiny circular sunglasses stays miraculously perched on the bridge of her nose. And her faceâairbrushed in an ombrĂŠ of pistachio and rose to match the jumpsuitâremains stoic and self-assured.
After nearly 10 minutes of individual walks, sirens blare and the battle commences: They now compete head-to-head, until one final contestant remains.
Portland Ballroom, also known as #PDXBall, is a monthly gathering that continues the decades-long tradition and evolution of drag balls, which are a unique subculture separate from drag shows, albeit a derivative. In Portland and beyond, every ball features a handful of categories (like art heaux) in which participants compete against one another for the winning title. Unlike larger, more serious ballsâlike New York Cityâs Latex Ball (now in its 27th year), which caters to the sceneâs crème de la crèmeâPortland Ballroom is a laid-back, tenderfoot affair referred to as a kiki.
The first Portland Ball was held in June, inspiring the eventâs organizers to host an educational course on ballroom etiquette and its vivid history for the first time in November. As the organizers grow into their roles as teachers, they stress the importance of fostering and maintaining an atmosphere of intentionality and respect as the scene flourishes. That means passing along the sceneâs history and preserving its oral tradition.
Kerry Yamaucci ended up in Portland by way of Hawaii and Arizona. She says understanding the historical context of ball is essential before jumping in.
âThe ballroom scene was centered on building community and literally keeping each other alive during the AIDS epidemic,â she says. âThatâs how a lot of children found resources to live better lives and practice safer practices. With Portland being so white, a lot of people donât quite view the aspect of community as so importantâbut we need to center it back on community.â
Competition rarely equates with community, but for ball scene participants, itâs impossible to have one without the other.
Even as balls have been synonymous with formal dance and heterosexual elitism for centuries, sometime between the 1920s and â30s, drag balls quietly emerged in Harlem to provide a space for communities of gay men. The earliest iterations of drag balls were lavish costume parties, but over time they became the queer answer to beauty pageants. With the passing decades, the most coveted looks shifted from sparkly Las Vegas showgirl to elegant old Hollywood and later, sleek supermodel fashions. That said, traditional notions of beauty were still celebrated and reigned supreme.
As word of the counterculture spread, drag balls were frowned upon by uptight society, and outlawed. Nevertheless, drag balls persisted, and like much of the queer community, they continued to thrive underground.
As highlighted in the 1990 documentary Paris Is Burning, drag ballsâsimply referred to as âballsâ under the umbrella of ballroom cultureâhave continued to evolve. And with that came a deeper sense of inclusion and kinship. While balls provided a sense of security and self-expression for some, many Black and Brown performers were treated like spectators for yearsâoften excluded from participation or ignored in competition.
After decades of being pushed to the sidelines, an exclusively Black and Brown drag ball circuit formed during the 1960s. With this increased attention, however, participating in balls became even more dangerous than before, inspiring the organizers to move the start time to the wee hours of the morning for added security. Unlike those held at the midnight hour, Black and Brown balls began between 3 and 5 am, which made the festivities more accessible for sex workers, and the practice continues to be honored in the New York City ball circuit today.
By the mid-â70s, Crystal LaBeija, a Black drag queen from Harlem, introduced the concept of ballroom houses. Modeled after family units, mothers and fathers of houses provide guidance, love, and community for their children in the ballroom sceneâoften in place of biological relationships. Houses marked a new shift from balls as a pastime to an act of survival. Even if members werenât interested in competition, they still had a place to call home.
Daniel GirĂłn, father of the House of Ada in Portland and a dance instructor at Vitalidad Movement Arts Center, was 11 when his family relocated to Oregon from his hometown of Veracruz, Mexico. When he was 23, he decided to leave Wilsonville for Portland in pursuit of dance.
âIt didnât take long to realize that although there were a lot of gay dancers, there was not a queer scene for dancers,â GirĂłn says. âThe more I learned about dance, I started finding out about vogue.â
Voguing, which is often conflated with ballroom culture and often overshadows it, is a style of dance that originated as a game between gay inmates at Rikerâs Island who battled each other by quickly striking poses to mimic the poses of models in Vogue magazine. In Portland, GirĂłn is a leading instructor of the dance style, and the ballroom scene here emerged in part from collaboration with his vogue students and friends.
Kumari Suraj, an internationally renowned leader of vogue, waacking, and house dances, taught GirĂłn how to vogue, and after a few years living in Portland, began to lay down the foundation for the future ballroom scene.
â[Suraj] noticed there were a few voguers in town, so she decided to throw a couple of balls in 2014,â says GirĂłn. âThrough her I was able to train, travel, and learn more about the culture, which led me to kiki with friends.â
Suraj hosted Nostalgia and Waack Fest a few times per year, while Critical Mascaraâthe now-defunct TBA event hosted by Pepper Pepper that was dubbed a âpost-realness drag extravaganzaââprovided another yearly space for LGBTQ people to gather and meet likeminded folks. In 2014, during an installment of kiki function Love Ball, GirĂłn formed House of Ada; at Critical Mascara 2015, he befriended Yamaucci, Harrison, and Marquise Dickerson. Together with Leigh Sachiye and Paula Metzler, the six are leading the ballroom scene in Portland today.
Check out the Ballroom Glossary too.
Harrison and Sachiye (both Portland locals who met while taking dance lessons from GirĂłn) formed House of Flora in the spring of 2016.
âHouse of Flora was more about drag and the look,â says Harrison. âWe were coming in for the categories of runway and face. It was nice to have House of Ada, which was very vogue and dance-centered, and then have this other house that could offer the girls something slightly different.â
He explains that house relationships are friendly and symbiotic, with each unit encouraging the other to step up their respective game in all categories. Unlike established houses in New York City with decades of history and legacy, Portlandâs houses are referred to as kiki houses, because theyâre new and flexible, with fluctuating membership.
âWith a growing scene, itâs super important not to be viciousâbecause itâs going to turn people away,â says Harrison. âWeâre literally all learning. Weâre not professionals. We share resources and try to build community.â
While Harrison continues to guide House of Flora as the father, Sachiye has stepped down, and Metzlerâa Sexy Heels instructor at Vitalidad who came to the US from Fukuoka, Japan when she was fiveâis the House of Ada mother.
âI make sure the children of the house are feeling good about themselves, their place in the community, and have a platform where they can choreograph or do an important performance,â she says. âI want to be their mom and make sure they feel valid as fuck in the community, because they are amazing and I love my babies.â
While the ballroom scene is revered for serving excellent looks, Sachiye stresses the importance of seeing the deeper meaning behind houses and their histories.
âPeople conflate an artist collective with a house,â Sachiye says. âBut the idea of a house is centered on community, while art collectives might be focused on image and production of work.â
When Dickerson adds that itâs especially disrespectful to claim the title of a house without ever winning, Yamaucci quips, âHow are you going to keep your house warm without a trophy?â
Sachiye cries, âThe children are freezing!â
Jokes aside, Portlandâs ballroom scene can be summarized by this display of balanced playfulness and ferocity. As the six performers accept the onus to share their knowledge within the cityâs scene and beyond, they frequently remind me of their newbie status when compared to the larger, flourishing network of balls around the country.
âAll of us are in a really unique position because weâre now the leaders in this community, but all of us are students,â Sachiye says. âWe might be bigger fish in a small pond here, but when we went to New Yorkââ
âWe were guppies!â Harrison finishes.
Metzler says that one way the group chooses to further the tradition of making balls inclusive while remaining uniquely Portland is with their category distinction.
âOur categories arenât as specific to gender, which is a very traditional way to set categories. But instead [ours are] OTAâor, open to all,â she says.
âWeâre so small, OTA is the best way for us to go,â Harrison adds. âWe [also] include a gender-neutral and gender non-conforming division for folks who donât believe in gender or whose gender is not represented.â
âEven though weâre trying to build the scene, we are respecting the legacy. We want to make it Portland in a way that can still be respectful,â adds GirĂłn.
Each of the sceneâs leaders is grateful for the strong kinship and visibility they attribute to the ball scene, and for the empowerment they get from being involved. Sachiye says the ball community has helped her feel like she has a place thatâs honored within the LGBTQ community.
âThereâs really not a space for women and femmes in the gay scene,â she says. âBut Iâve found people that really see me and celebrate my femme-ness and things that other people outside of this community dismiss or actively try to shut down. The idea that you can come into a space like this and be celebratedâthatâs really powerful and beautiful.â
For Yamaucci, sheâs thrilled to reclaim a mentorship role.
âAs Iâve become more secure in being a trans woman and what that means and looks like to me, itâs meant helping other trans women figure out what that looks like and feels like to them,â she says. âBefore transitioning, I was really into LGBTQ student resources and providing support. When I transitioned, I felt like I lost a lot of that, because I didnât know what was happening and didnât know how to handle it. Itâs nice to be back in a position where if people do have questions, I have some answers, ways to help, [and]know people who can do this. What I used to say was, 'Youâre always one gay away from solving your problem,â and I feel that a lot more.â
âThe idea that you can come into a space like this and be celebratedâthatâs really powerful and beautiful.â
As a queer Black femme, Dickerson echoes similar sentiments.
âBeing involved in the ballroom scene has helped me connect to all parts of myself,â Dickerson says. âItâs helped me find the power in being a femme and embracing that. Iâm able to use that as an armor as I walk through the world. Itâs really hard to be Brown and queer, especially here. How our scene differs from LA or New York is that those scenes are so Black and Brown and queer. We struggle to find each other here, but [the ballroom scene] gives me a link to the ancestors and people that came before me. Thatâs why I love it so much.â
Portland Ballroom will continue to host monthly balls and plans to teach another etiquette course at the beginning of 2018. As the histories of queer culture are carried through oral accounts, the dates vary depending on sources, but the team is excited to keep learning and sharing with others.
With growth, they say itâs even more imperative for them to stay true to the history of ballroom culture and respect its traditions.
âIâm not Black or Latinx and Iâm not a trans woman, but this culture is a really beautiful gift,â says Sachiye. âItâs something that all of us must try really hard to preserve and honor.â
âItâs important for people to know how to act at a ball and how to walk,â adds Dickerson. âIf youâre a white body walking these categories, itâs important to understand and respect the culture that you are, honestly, a guest in. Youâre really just on vacation.â
âItâs a visa,â Yamaucci says.
âIf youâre not careful, it will get revoked,â Sachiye warns.