ARCHITECTURE IS BURNING: AN URBANISM OF QUEER KINSHIP IN BALLROOM CULTURE

A ball is a gathering of people who are not welcomed to gather anywhere else. A celebration of a life that the rest of the world does not deem worthy of celebration. There are categories--people dress up for them, walk. There's voting, trophies. Better than money--you can actually make a name for yourself by winning a trophy or two. And in [the ballroom] community, the glory of your name is everything. Late at night in the streets of New York City, a figure engulfed by a billowy golden ensemble of sequin and lamé is illuminated by flickering neon and fluorescent lights. She walks up the streets of Harlem to the fire-engine red doors of the Imperial Elk's Lodge. As the doors open--in a metaphorical hinge between architecture and urbanism, dividing a queer interior and a normative exterior--indistinct shouting over upbeat techno erupts from a crowd of joyous black and brown bodies that are clapping, cheering, and zig-zagging their fingers through a humid and hazy air.