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Martez: It’s an out of body experience. You get up there and that adrenaline starts
going and you hear the beat and take off.
Leiomy: The passion for vogue for me was immense especially in the beginning because I used
voguing to let out my frustrations.
Michael: It was an intervention around being ostracized, around being marginalized
out of your own community.
I came out as bisexual to my mother when I was 16.
I knew I was gay I was just like this is the best way I know how to lay it on her easy.
And then I think when I was 17, around the time I got my first official boyfriend,
I finally came out to her and told her, "Mom, I’m not bisexual".
Darnell: Martez Smith is 24 years old.
He’s originally from Columbus, Ohio, where he made his first friends, had his first relationships,
and where he eventually learned about the underground ballroom scene and vogue.
Martez: I dated a guy who told me about his ex, and he said after him and his ex broke up,
his ex became really, really feminine and flamboyant
and he started going to balls and voguing and I'm like, "What the hell is that? I want to know what that is".
Darnell: New York’s black and latino LGBT communities first developed voguing to imitate
the poses and attitudes of models.
The stylized dance was a way for people to both express their talents and combat stigma.
Voguing is one of many performances in the ballroom scene.
Balls go back to the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920’s,
when drag queens of all colors hosted ball competitions across New York.
Black and latino performers eventually broke off to create their own scene,
after feeling excluded by white members.
In the 70s and 80s, they came together and formed houses, or family networks, named after
high fashion brands like Chanel and Dior.
But the houses weren’t just for dance and competition.
House leaders, known as house mothers and fathers, provided shelter, resources, and protection to members
who wouldn’t have it otherwise.
That support was especially crucial when the *** and AIDS crisis hit in the 80s.
The Reagan administration was notoriously unwilling to respond to the disease,
leaving LGBT communities to fend for themselves.
Homelessness, discrimination, rejection and abuse are some of the outcomes LGBT people might face.
And these issues are exacerbated in the lives of *** and trans youth of color.
Darnell: A new study by the CDC announced that 50% of black gay men will contract *** in their lifetimes.
And spaces in NYC where *** and trans youth once built community are rapidly disappearing.
Michael: Houses became this space, safe space, because people were being kicked out of their families,
people looking to be mentored. I don't care how supportive a heterosexual
black, man could be of his gay son. A heterosexual black man cannot teach a young black gay boy
how to be an adult, black, gay man in a black, gay community, can't do it.
Darnell: Michael Roberson has been that father figure to many.
He’s a ballroom leader and public health advocate, someone who’s made it his life’s work
launching research initiatives, advocacy groups and public health interventions that
focus on the ballroom community.
Michael used to hang out here on the Christopher Street Pier in lower Manhattan.
New York’s LGBT community has found refuge
in this area since the 1970s, but gentrification and increased policing eventually pushed people out.
This space was the theological notion that there's nothing wrong with people of the same sex
touching and loving and eroticizing each other.
Darnell: Because you’d see that here. Michael: Oh please, baby.
Michael: And in many ways, this looks the way that it looks
in response to homophobia and the AIDS epidemic.
So the notion of folks having sex here for 10 years began to be the thing that people begin to tout,
that this is the reason why *** and AIDS. Darnell: So what happened to the young people?
Where are they?
Many dead. Many dead.
I remember looking in the mirror and I was like what the hell.
I had lymph nodes right here and on my pelvic area.
I was 99% sure that I was *** positive but, I wasn’t sure if i was ready to find out.
So I'm like "let me just go and get tested and find this information out".
And sure enough the results came back positive.
So this is my Strybild. This is the medication that I take for ***.
When you're living with *** you have to have a place, a safe place to store your medication,
You have to have a place you have to have a place to take your medication, right?
I know people who, though they have housing, they may not truly trust the people who they live with.
Just think about that, think about every time you have to take medication kind of having sneak around in doing it.
So yeah not good at all.
Darnell: Martez learned he was *** positive in 2012, just one year before he’d graduate from Ohio State University
with a degree in social work and move to New York City.
He always knew he wanted to serve young LGBT people and his diagnosis encouraged him to
focus on *** prevention and care.
Darnell: So Martez is starting an advocacy program called
the “Keeping the Community Alive Network.”
The group plans to set up ballroom conferences, arrange medical support,
and create courses that preserve the history of ballroom.
Martez: If anybody else is working on anything and they would like to share, the floor is yours.
Darnell: Martex often meets here at The Hetrick Martin Institute, or HMI.
The organization provides programming support to LGBT youth, and holds after school sessions.
HMI has touched lives across the ballroom scene, including my own.
I used to work here, developing educational initiatives.
The government partially funds several community-based organizations like this one.
CBOs partner with Ball Houses to provide medical resources,
but sometimes it's not enough.
And Martez says you can't rely on just outsiders.
Martez: If I know that you are engaging in behavior that could place you at risk for contracting
*** or any STI period, I’m going to set up and have a real conversation with you.
I’m not going to send you to a local CBO to get that information especially if I know
that i have it, right? I do this to save lives. I don’t do this for no celebrity or nothing like that.
Darnell: But sometimes celebrity just happens.
Leiomy Maldonado is the wonderwoman of vogue.
She was the first transgender performer on MTV's "America’s Best Dance Crew"
and she's danced alongside stars like Willow Smith and FKA Twigs.
Her signature moves have been copied by the likes of Beyonce.
She travels the globe spreading her work and she recently formed her own house, The House of Amazon.
It’s a world away from her early start in the Bronx.
She found ballroom at 15-years-old and credits the community with saving her life.
I've always felt like I was never male. I never felt like I was male since I was young,
but I didn't know how to express that and it was through voguing that I realized that the
people that I was watching were transgender.
Invite us into the world of the trans, young girls, what is that experience like?
Being trans and working and just having a place of your own is very hard.
You have to be dedicated. You have to really, really work hard. There's times where a lot of trans women,
they turn to sex work and things like that, because that's the easiest route that they can take.
Our culture, American culture, shades the hell out of LGBT people.
Which means, you learn to do that to the people that are your reflection, right?
But part of creating a family structure
is about loving people out of that energy, you know, giving an alternative.
That's a main thing, also, with my house. The main thing with my kids is like unity, support, love, compassion,
like, all of the good things, the good quality that bring people together,
and all that shade and stuff, we can deal with it together, not within each other,
but with the people who throwing at it from outside, and that's my motto.
Darnell: Ballroom is all about the discovery of an alternative self or maybe even a truer one.
For those in the scene who don’t identify as transgender,
gender fluidity is a key part of confidence and acceptance.
Hello, ladies and gentlemen. I am Cynthia, the legendary Cynthia. I am one of the fabbest girls in the scene.
Darnell: Tyrone Smith will perform as Cynthia at tonight’s Legend’s Ball in New York.
Tyrone: I look so flawless! I need to give you a hug right now.
Darnell: He hasn’t performed as Cynthia for three years now and is both nervous and excited
to compete in the ball’s opening category, "Cosmic Gods and Goddesses".
Tyrone: I’m here to rock your world on the floor and give you what you need on and off the floor.
Darnell: It’s the Legend’s Ball 10 year anniversary. This is the premiere event in ballroom’s Kiki scene.
Kiki is a branch of ballroom that focuses on young people who may or may not be ready
to take part in more mainstream houses.
Today’s ball is called “The Apocalypse,"
in reference to a growing sense that this
10 year milestone marks a renewed commitment to youth activism.
Several health organizations are here, some providing free condoms,
and on-the-spot *** tests.
Tyrone: When I'm getting ready, when I'm coming down the stairs, I'm going to be a little nervous.
But y'all will never know.
Martez: Voguing is very much like medicine for me.
When you hear that beat, and you get that feeling, I'm telling you it runs through your body and you
feel it in every inch of your body, like I feel it in my finger tips.
Leiomi: Voguing like six hours a day,
just going crazy for no reason.
I be looking at myself like what the hell.
Darnell: But it probably literally saved your life though.
Leiomy: It did. I don't know. I probably would have turned to drugs or try to hurt myself or something.
You never know.
Darnell: For over 100 years ballroom has revolutionized the meaning of family.
It has given several generations a platform to be celebrated and a space to matter.
In the face of racism, exclusion, criminalization, and illness
still they rise, they dip, they spin, and walk.