It Do Take Nerve
How one angry drag queen gave birth to a culture that keeps conquering the world.
Welcome back to Angelic Troublemakers and to Week 3 of our Black History Month celebration of Black queer communities that changed the world with their art and ideas.
To recap so far, we first met Essex Hemphill and his friends Joseph Beam and Marlon Riggs, part of a group of Black gay poets and artists who made space for themselves in the face of the AIDS crisis in the 80s and 90s. Then we met Barbara Smith, who mentored Hemphill and Beam, and who changed both feminist politics and publishing with the Combahee River Collective and Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, created in collaboration with her sister Beverly and friends Demita Frazier and Audre Lorde.
This week, we are starting once again with Essex Hemphill. In the summer of 1991, Hemphill was at the height of his notoriety thanks to the controversy over Marlon Riggs’ Tongues Untied, which he was featured prominently in and which aired that summer on PBS. He was at work on completing the Brother to Brother anthology and working on his first major collection of his own work, Ceremonies. And in the middle of this, he got an assignment from the US edition of The Guardian to review a new documentary which, like Tongues Untied, chronicled the lives of queer people of color.
He started the review, as he often did, by quoting his late friend Joseph Beam:
The gay life is about affectation, but style is not image making. Style, at best, is an attitude, a reaction to oppression, a way of being perceived as less oppressed, a way of feeling attractive when we are deemed unattractive.
Hemphill would go on to say that the film, which documented the “ballroom” culture of Black and Latinx LGBTQ+ people New York City:
Shows us a world where illusion and signifying are valued precisely because they have the power to engender confidence and self-esteem. For those who are brave enough to participate in this highly dramatic milieu, for those brave enough to “walk a ball” and “snatch a trophy,” the most coveted reward is to earn the adulation of their peers and the judges who will confer the title of “legendary” which is the same as becoming a “star.”
Or, as one of the film’s subjects, Junior LaBeija, might put it, “it do take nerve.”
By the time Paris Is Burning was released nationwide in the summer of 1991, the subculture it documented had been around for nearly 20 years. Built in response to the white-dominated drag pageant scene, ballroom created a space for many of the most marginalized members of society to display the creativity, beauty, and talent that the rest of the world so often ignored in them and to become, at least for a night, “legendary.” And over the course of the past several decades, its creativity and expression have changed popular culture over and over again. And it all started with one angry drag queen.
Crystal LaBeija: Mother of Them All
While the art of drag has been around since at least the late 19th century, drag as we understand it today was largely shaped by a now little-known performer and impresario known as Flawless Sabrina. In the late 50s, while still a college student, Sabrina produced her first drag pageant and by the mid-60s, was producing a circuit of over 50 local and regional pageants around the country, with the winners competing in an annual national pageant known as the Miss All America Camp Beauty Pageant.
Though Stonewall was still years away and both homosexuality and cross dressing were still illegal in most of the country, Sabrina built her pageants into major, semi-mainstream events, filling large venues like Town Hall in New York City, where the national pageant was held, and attracting hip celebrities such as Andy Warhol, George Plimpton, and Terry Southern to serve as judges.
In 1967, Sabrina raised money to produce a documentary about the pageant, which was released in 1968 as The Queen. Narrated by Sabrina herself, the film both shows the logistics of producing such an event and explores the lives of the gay, trans, and gender nonconforming pageant participants, giving us a valuable glimpse into the lives of queer people at the time.
But then, at the end of the film, something strange happens. A young queen named Harlow, a pupil of Sabrina’s whom everyone in the film believes will be the Next Big Thing in drag, wins the crown, which is not a surprise. But then another queen, whom we’ve only seen glimpses of up until this point, storms off the stage. And it is hard not to notice that this queen, unlike all of the participants who have been given significant screen time throughout the film, is not white.
The film ends with a backstage shouting match between Sabrina and this new character, whose name we learn is Crystal and whose sash identifies her as Miss Manhattan. Crystal accuses Sabrina of rigging the pageant for Harlow. Sabrina is offended at the accusation. Crystal delivers a now-iconic line, referring to Harlow: “I didn’t say she wasn’t beautiful, but she wasn’t looking beautiful tonight. She doesn’t equal me. Look at her makeup, it’s terrible!” The film ends with a dejected-looking Harlow leaving with her crown, obviously hurt by the drama that marred her victory.
To use a term that would become popular with the rise of reality TV shows, including RuPaul’s Drag Race, decades later, Crystal LaBeija gets the “villain edit” in the film. We only know her as the sore loser who ruins Harlow’s big moment. But as is often the case, the real story is much more complicated.
By the time of this pageant, Crystal LaBeija had been competing for years on the drag circuit and was known as one of the few queens of color to win titles in the white-dominated drag pageant world. Like many other performers of color, Crystal would often intentionally lighten her skin tone to meet the standards of white beauty and femininity the pageants and judges favored. But as we see in the film, she would still often find herself on the losing end to white performers like Harlow. Her explosion in 1967 was the result of years of simmering frustration at racism within the drag world and the larger gay community. (Incidentally, queens of color getting the “villain edit” when they call out racism is still an issue today.)
This frustration with racism in the drag scene is what led Crystal and her friend and fellow Black performer Lottie LaBeija to host an event in 1972 exclusively for Black queens. The event was promoted as “Crystal and Lottie LaBeija present the first annual House of LaBeija Ball.” The event was a success, and spawned an entire alternate scene of drag balls exclusively for Black performers. Soon, the “House of LaBeija,” which was initially coined just to market the ball, would become real and launch the phenomenon of drag “houses.” By the late 70s, participants in what became known as the ballroom scene started by House of LaBeija had organized themselves into several competing houses, which served as a combination surrogate family, social club, and dance troupe. Most houses initially included only Black performers, though House of Xtravaganza, launched in 1982, would become the first Latinx house. House Mothers such as Crystal recruited and tutored their “children” in how to win trophies and become “legendary.”
Over time, the balls would evolve to become more complex and inclusive than Sabrina’s drag pageants. An ever-shifting lineup of categories would allow people to not only win trophies for classic drag but all types of performances which troubled people’s expectations of race, class, and gender, from “banjee,” in which the queer performers imitated the macho swagger of tough street youths, to “executive realness,” in which performers adopt the look and bearing of wealthy white executives and demonstrate their ability to “pass” in a world that has excluded them.
Through it all, Crystal would build House of LaBeija into one of the largest and most respected of the houses while mentoring young performers and also travelling the country performing in gay clubs. The world’s most famous drag queen, RuPaul, experienced drag for the first time by seeing Crystal perform at a club in Atlanta in 1979.
Crystal would serve as Mother of the House of LaBeija until her death from liver failure in 1982. Though she died tragically young, Crystal had already built her legacy and the House of LaBeija, along with the entire community she built, would continue on without her. One of Crystal’s children, Pepper LaBeija, took over as House Mother and shepherded the house and the ballroom scene into its unexpected next phase.
Willi Ninja: Make Paris Burn
One of the unique aspects of the balls that would distinguish them from drag pageants was voguing. Voguing is a dance style that, according to legend, was created by ballroom great Paris DuPree one night when she won a dance battle by taking out an issue of Vogue magazine and imitating the models’ poses. Voguing soon developed into its own competitive artform and vogue competitions took their place as a ballroom category alongside more typical look-based categories.
One day in 1983, a young aspiring photographer and graduate student named Jennie Livingston, who had just recently moved to New York, was walking by the piers when she saw a group of young people voguing. She asked to photograph them and soon learned about voguing and ballroom culture. She later filmed Paris Dupree’s annual “Paris Is Burning” ball for a short documentary for a class assignment. The class assignment would eventually grow into the feature documentary Paris is Burning, which premiered in 1990.
Many queer people (and anyone else who has seen it) have vivid memories of seeing Paris is Burning for the first time. And for a film less than 80 minutes long, it has so many indelible moments. Pepper LaBeija opening the film by entering in an over-the-top gold lamé dress with shoulder pads as big as her head. Scene elder Dorian Corey offering world-weary wisdom while perpetually beating her face. Young Freddie Pendavis teaching Livingston the meaning of “mopping” on a trip to Roy Rogers. But perhaps none is as memorable as the first time you see Willi Ninja, moving his body in unnatural contortions as he explains the role and responsibilities of being a house mother.
Influenced by martial arts (hence his house name) and Egyptian heiroglyphics, Willi took voguing to a new level of sophistication with his clean, geometric lines and gymnastic contortions. Willi started House of Ninja in 1982 and it gained a reputation as a rare multiracial house, which even included white members. In the following decades, as Willi traveled the world, the house would add European and Japanese members and currently claims 220 members worldwide.
Willi’s world-conquering ambitions give Paris Is Burning its title, as he tells Livingston of his plans for the art of voguing:
It’s starting to make a name for itself but I want it to be known worldwide and I want to be on top of it when it hits. I want to take voguing not to just Paris Is Burning but I want to take it to the real Paris, and make the real Paris burn.
As shown in the film, by the time Livingston had finished shooting, Willi was well on his way to achieving this goal. In a coda filmed in 1989, Willi tells of how he has begun to gain mainstream recognition, appearing in music videos such as Malcolm McLaren’s “Deep in Vogue” and fulfilling his dream of traveling to Paris and Japan.
Between the film’s completion and release, voguing would reach a new level thanks to Madonna, whose single “Vogue” was released in March 1990. Though the “Vogue” video and Madonna’s subsequent Blonde Ambition world tour would feature backup dancers from the ballroom world, including multiple members of the House of Xtravaganza, the version of voguing Madonna introduced to mainstream society was watered down at best. Just compare this compilation of Willi Ninja highlights from Paris Is Burning to Madonna performing the song at the 1990 MTV Video Music Awards.
But while Madonna appropriated and whitewashed voguing, she also definitely increased its visibility and was a driving factor behind Paris Is Burning getting a wide theatrical release in the summer of 1991. To promote the film, Willi, Livingston, and several other of the film’s stars appeared on a truly surreal episode of Joan Rivers’ daytime talk show that August, where Willi taught Joan how to vogue. He continued his mainstream media appearances regularly over the next 15 years, appearing on shows such as America’s Next Top Model and building a successful career as a dancer, choreographer, and modeling coach.
In 2006, Willi died of AIDS-related heart failure at the tragically young age of 45.
Indya Moore: The Next Generation
Over the next several decades, Paris Is Burning would take its place as perhaps the preeminent queer film, serving as an inspiration for generations of LGBTQ+ youth and becoming a staple of Queer Studies classes and endless Gender Discourse. Both bell hooks and Judith Butler wrote essays about it. RuPaul kicked off a revival of interest in the film when he referenced it frequently and reintroduced ball lingo such as “shade” and “reading” into the mainstream on RuPaul’s Drag Race. In 2020, the venerable Criterion Collection cemented its place in the Canon with a 30th anniversary DVD release.
But while the film was on its way to becoming a classic, the community it documented was still marginalized and at risk. As we see at the end of the film, one of its main stars, Venus Xtravaganza, was murdered by a sex work client, in a probable instance of anti-trans violence, in 1988. Dorian Corey and Angie Xtravaganza both died from AIDS in 1993. Pepper LaBeija would die of a heart attack in 2003, Willi Ninja in 2006, and Paris Dupree in 2011. A 1993 New York Times article, noting the mainstreaming of voguing and drag and the deaths of many of the film’s principles, declared the ballroom scene already dead two years after the film’s release with the headline “Paris Has Burned.”
But the scene was not dead and would continue on, still largely in obscurity, for the next several decades, with younger members stepping into the roles of their mentors, just as Pepper LaBeija had done when Crystal died in 1983. By the mid-2010s, the mainstream rediscovery of drag through RuPaul’s Drag Race and two generations of queer millenials and Gen-Zers raised on Paris Is Burning had revived interest in the ball scene. In 2016, the documentary Kiki profiled a new ballroom scene dedicated to teens and young adults and the Vice docu-series My House showed the New York ballroom scene today. But the most prominent mainstream reemergence of ballroom would take us back to the 80s.
Pose, which debuted in June of 2018, is a fictionalized account of the 80s ballroom world that draws heavily on Paris Is Burning. Writer Steven Canals, one of those queer millenials raised on the film, had written the pilot script as a class project and it had been widely rejected until falling into the hands of gay superproducer Ryan Murphy, who had by coincidence recently signed a deal with Livingston for a TV series based on Paris Is Burning. The combination of the two projects led to Pose.
Though Paris Is Burning has long been controversial within the ballroom scene for perceived carpetbagging by the white Livingston and disputes over financial compensation for the participants, the creators of Pose went out of their way to include the ballroom community and employ ballroom participants and other queer people of color throughout the production. During its first season, the show employed 140 trans actors and crew members, representing more than half the total cast and crew. Surviving members of the 80s ballroom scene, such as Hector Xtravaganza (who worked on the first season before passing away in December 2018) and Freddie Pendavis consulted on the show and have cameos. And many of the actors chosen to play the ballroom legends of yesteryear came from the current ballroom community, including Indya Moore, AKA Indya Xtravaganza.
Born in the Bronx in 1995, Moore had a tragically typical upbringing for a young trans person. They left their parents’ house at the age of 14 due to their parents’ transphobia and bounced through foster homes. They dropped out of high school at 15 due to bullying and began working as a model. While working as a background dancer for the Netflix hip-hop series The Get Down, they met Jose Gutierez Xtravaganza, who inducted Moore into the House of Xtravaganza and encouraged them to pursue acting more seriously. In 2017, they were cast as Angel Evangelista on Pose.
Moore being a member of the House of Xtravaganza gives their portrayal of Angel an extra poignance as Angel, especially in her Season 1 storyline, is heavily inspired by Paris Is Burning star Venus Xtravaganza. (Note on pronouns: Moore is nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns and I refer to them as such throughout but the character of Angel identifies as female and is consistently referred to in the show with she/her pronouns, so I’m following that here.) Like Venus, Angel is breathtakingly beautiful, very aware of the privilege her ability to “pass” gives her. But at the same time, she works the piers while dreaming of being a “spoiled white girl” with a house and a family in the suburbs. In Season 1, Angel comes tantalizingly close to the dream Venus never achieved through a romance with a Trump Organization employee played by Evan Peters, but it remains just out of reach.
Outside of Pose, Moore has become an outspoken activist while continuing to build a career as an actor and model. In 2019, Moore became the first trans person on the cover of the US version of Elle magazine and that same year voiced the nonbinary character Shep on the queer-inclusive kids series Steven Universe.
Most recently, they have been using Instagram as a platform for deep, difficult discussions about identity and navigating the world as a queer person of color. In a January post, they summarized an essay they wrote but said they aren’t sure if they’ll ever share, discussing, “my theory around the fear of queerness in gender/sexuality particularly within communities of black/indigenous colonized peoples.” They concluded by saying:
Anyways. I dream of a world where we allow and encourage each other to heal & grow without becoming cops and that world includes trans and queer people.
Much like in the early 90s, the queer people of color at the center of the ballroom scene have the mainstream’s attention. But Moore and their contemporaries are working to ensure they are not treated simply as curiosities this time, as they often were back then, and that their culture is not simply coopted by others. And any of us who have derived joy from the beauty this community has created owe it to them to listen to people like Moore and let them lead the way.
Further Exploration & Announcements
The Criterion Edition of Paris Is Burning, which includes the aforementioned Joan Rivers Show episode and a commentary track featuring Willi Ninja among others, is streaming on The Criterion Channel.
Donate to The Okra Project, which provides meals to Black trans people experiencing food insecurity, or the BTFA Collective, which provides support to Black trans femmes in the arts.
This Saturday, Virtual Arizona Pride is hosting its next Third Saturday event, dedicated to Black History Month. Events include a Drag Story Arizona Author Talk with author Shambrekia Wise at noon MST and a Black LGBTQ+ Literature Salon at 6:00pm MST. RSVP here to not miss anything.
Next Week: We finish out Black History Month by looking back on a community that provided inspiration for all of the other communities we have discussed this month and whose queer influence is still not properly appreciated: The Harlem Renaissance.