EVERY GENRE PROJECT - June 8 - Ballroom

Genre of the Day - Ballroom

Album of the Day - Box of Chocolates by Kevin Aviance (1999)

June 8, 2024

Initial apologies for profanity—today the material just entails it. 

Have you ever heard a cacophony of the word ‘c*nt’? Perhaps better labeled a c*ntcophony? Well, you will in listening to today’s album, and the sheer power the word holds within this genre may never leave you. You may not think that the British expletive could ever weasel its way into your head as a song’s hook. Think again. Ballroom is sheer power, and you are not just a listener today: you are a subject. 

Happy Pride Month, first off, and it’s a stroke of good luck that we get to cover probably one of the few solely queer-spurred music genres during June. If Beyoncé didn’t get through to you a couple of years ago, or Madonna thirty years ago, I guess it’ll have to be the Every Genre Project who gets you up to speed. Ballroom is a massively impactful culture and rich ecosystem, with an accompanying slew of recording artists who have immortalized it through music. You can derive precious little understanding of it if you only listen to the music, though. 

Ballroom culture has been a haven for the Black and Latino queer communities in major US cities, particularly in the northeast, for decades. Given the underground and participatory nature of the phenomenon, historical documentation can be scant, but we know that it goes all the way back to the late 1800s when a formerly enslaved man William Dorsey Swann dubbed himself a drag queen in the first noted instance. The word drag likely came from the term ‘grand rags’ to describe exquisite costume balls, and ballroom culture leaned into their glamor and extravaganza while protecting the flock with a space that was cordoned-off and free from judgment. 

Swann held competitions at his drag parties to heighten the excitement and perhaps to steam off personal struggles and tensions with some good old theatrical fun. These were dance contests, initially resembling the old practice of ‘cakewalks’ in the pre-emancipation era, in which enslaved people mocked slaveowners with prancing processions. Though cakewalks quickly became a relic of the past as next generations had no direct memory of their significance, the idea of meticulous coordination and exquisite choreographic feats remained core to the ballroom scene.

The 1990 documentary Paris Is Burning was seminal in elevating ballroom culture to the world. Ballroom has always been about embracing femininity, particularly through high fashion: Vogue magazine as the pinnacle of haute couture became a core reference point. Serving good face during your physics-defying dances became known as voguing, a testament to the deeply unique culture and language of ballroom dance. Ballroom’s social structure is also distinctive: skilled dancers became known as the mothers of their houses, essentially troupes and little families. Willi Ninja, the mother of the House of Ninja (a name that goes quite hard), demonstrates voguing and ballroom’s essential aspects in the below video. Like many genres with dance as a major component, there’s only so much the music can do: witnessing it visually is the closest you’ll get to understanding the ballroom until you’re in there marveling at the queens. 

Kevin Aviance is one of the few iconic ballroom dancers of his time to remain with us—much of the community was decimated by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. In Renaissance’s anthology of sounds like disco and house most essential to ballroom music, Aviance scores as the front-and-center sample of the track that pays the most direct homage to the scene. Ballroom music takes you into the world of voguing and shading while sonically drawing upon the house and techno that similarly provided safe spaces for the Black queer community in the ‘80s. Nowhere is this immersion more evident than on “Din Da Da”: over a rich, euphoric groove, Aviance populates the track with syllable utterances that resemble yesterday’s konnakol and jazz scatting, though with the purpose of punctuating and accentuating the dancers’ rapid, constant flow of movement and providing hype. Even over the vocal nothings, the song teems with his personality and commanding force.

On other tracks, he’s not afraid to apply that force directly; he asserts that he’s not only excellent, but essential over the simmering heat of “The Need” and lays down the law on the straightforwardly-titled techno cut “Rhythm is My Bitch.” There’s tracks that meander like “Do You Know Me?” and “Dance For Love” that eschew the emphases on queenliness and tact that define ballroom culture for indistinct dance-pop flavors. Even so, nothing can detract from the sonic roundhouse kick of “Cunty” with its colliding crashes, clipped horns, and the greatest employment of the term c*nty in the English language, used endearingly in ballroom spaces, forming the sound of ballroom heaven, a heaven populated by Kraftwerk’s robots if they were fierce divas as explored in the subsequent track “Robots.” After this flurry of competition, someone must be crowned a winner and the hype subsides, culminating with a tender, Janet Jackson-esque closer in “Home.” If read as a letter to the community where Kevin Aviance and his peers not only made their names, but found safety and acceptance, it’s a poignant and touching ode. But if you’re going to cry, don’t forget to serve face as you do so.